Entertainment

F-Zero GX golden cars unlocked by cheat codes 23 years after release

Vince MaglayaPublished 5m ago3 min readBased on 4 sources
F-Zero GX golden cars unlocked by cheat codes 23 years after release
Photo by Evan-Amos / Public domain

Five golden racing machines locked behind Japan-only events in F-Zero GX can now be unlocked by any player, 23 years after the game was released in 2003.

The codes were found by Japanese modder BTEST4HE, who analyses game code to find hidden cheat codes. The discovery was reported on 12 October 2026 by Video Games Chronicle.

F-Zero GX is a futuristic racing game developed by Sega for Nintendo's GameCube. Players can build their own craft in its shop from body, cockpit and booster parts, which change speed and handling. The five gold vehicles are made from 15 special golden machine parts.

Those parts were previously only available in Japan. Players had to bring a GameCube Memory Card, a small storage card that held save files, to an in-person event to have the parts copied across.

The history is specific. The Gladiator car was distributed from October 2003 at around 30 stores across Japan, using a special GameCube demo disc to copy data to players' Memory Cards. The Thunderstorm car was available at the F-Zero Galaxy Cup in Akihabara on 4-5 October 2003. The Chrono Symphony car was available at the F-Zero Galaxy Cup at Tokyo Joypolis on 8 November 2003. Bahamut parts were unlocked through the arcade version, F-Zero AX, by inserting a special licence card from the limited first print run of the GameCube version in Japan alongside a Memory Card.

The new method needs no event and no old save. The codes must be entered on the F-Zero Shop screen, using four controllers at once. Each controller handles part of the sequence. The game allows a 10-frame leeway, a window of about a sixth of a second, for the presses to count as simultaneous.

Grab three friends. The inputs use the GameCube pad's buttons and direction pad:

  • Thunderstorm: X, Z, Y, Z, X, Z, Y, X
  • El Dorado: X, RIGHT, X, Z, Y, LEFT, LEFT, Z
  • Chrono Symphony: LEFT, RIGHT, Z, RIGHT, LEFT, X, RIGHT, Z
  • Bahamut: Y, Y, Z, RIGHT, LEFT, Z, X, Y
  • Gladiator: RIGHT, Z, X, LEFT, LEFT, RIGHT, Z, X

The codes work on all versions of the game, including the version in the GameCube library on Switch 2.

What makes this stand out is access. For more than two decades these parts were out of reach for almost everyone outside those rooms in Japan. Now a living-room controller trick opens them for all.

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