Nintendo continuously ignores its fanbase when we say that we want a new F-Zero game, leaving other companies to fill the void. This is one such instance, as we are given Millennium Runners, a game that looks like F-Zero, but plays like Wipeout. Can this game give us a healthy dose of nostalgia while offering something new, unique, and exciting?
Let’s Go!
Title: Millennium Runners
Platform: PC (Steam)
Developer: Commodore Industries
Publisher: Over the Game
Release Date: February 3, 2026
Price: $12.99
Gameplay & Systems
Millennium Runners offers up a couple of different modes in Career Mode and Arcade Mode. In Arcade Mode, you have a few options, such as Base Race, Grand Prix, and Time Attack. Each one of those sub-modes allows you to pick a vehicle and a track to just play the game with various circumstances attached to each one.
Each ship has different properties, as one would expect with acceleration, handling, etc. If you’ve played any sort of racing game in the past 30+ years, this is all par for the course. What matters most is finding the right ship for your playstyle and going at it.
Career Mode is a bit different. You start by picking a male or female pilot, and in a pretty cool personalization feature, you get to name your pilot. Here, you are taken on a linear journey through the game’s worlds along with their courses as you try to improve your standing within the different leagues that you can be a part of.
The tracks, like any arcade battle racer, offer weapons that you can pick up and use against your opponents. There are weapons such as an EMP Mine, an EMP Missile, a turbo boost, a shield, and more. You can only hold one weapon at a time, and if you run into another weapon node while holding a weapon, you will not get a new one. There is no roulette wheel either, so you’re stuck with what you’re given.
An Unfinished Game
Now that I have gone ahead and loosely explained the systems, there is a good reason as to why I glossed over everything. I made four attempts to play this game, and every single time, I was met with a Fatal Error within 5 minutes of racing, rendering the game unplayable. With what little I could play the game with, there are some pretty big issues with it aside from it constantly crashing.
One of the things I had issues with was my controller simply not being detected by the game on startup. Despite plugging in an Xbox One controller prior to booting the game up, nothing would cause it to register until I clicked on the game window with my mouse. You might be wondering if I was tabbed out, thus causing the game window to not be selected, but nope. The window was selected, and on top of everything else. The controller simply wouldn’t do anything until I clicked on the game itself.
Speaking of the controller, I hope you enjoy the default controls because in the settings menu, there are two controller layouts you can choose from; however, the UI doesn’t change when you select the second controller layout. All the buttons appear to be mapped identically, thus not showing a preview of how they are mapped between the two variations. For those who like custom controls, you’re out of luck because I couldn’t immediately see anywhere you can provide custom inputs/remapping. It’s not that big of a deal, but when both offered layouts don’t even show a difference in button mapping, that makes you scratch your head.
Next up are the tracks themselves. I tried out Career Mode, where my laps around the first track were about 1:00 to 1:15 per lap. Then, in the second track, each lap was around three and a half minutes… making this a near 10-minute race. That’s a HUGE disparity between the first and second track, and even still, asking someone to race on a single track for nearly ten minutes is a bit much. I wish I could describe what the other tracks were like, but again, the game kept crashing. I could have done them in the Arcade Mode, but I was trying to get a feel for the main mode of the game.
When I was able to race on a track, it felt as if I was racing by myself… mainly because I was. Other racers either failed to render on the screen or glitched out because my position kept changing, and yet, I never passed or was passed by other racers. In one instance, when I finished a race in 1st place, it showed me as finishing in 3rd place on the results screen… right before it crashed again! Sometimes I would be in 1st place, and magically jump to 7th place. No matter how many turbo boosts I used, I could never see any racers, and therefore, never passed any. Then I would jump back to 2nd place, then back down to 3rd… again… without seeing anyone else on the track.
As far as the speed of the racing itself, it’s quite fast. I will give it that, which is usually right up my alley, but the tracks feel a bit claustrophobic for a game of this speed. Weapon boxes and traps on the course come up so quickly that you either miss the weapon box or have no choice but to eat a trap like an EMP Mine. The weapons don’t matter anyway because with the other racers seeming to be in constant stealth, there’s nothing to aim or shoot at. It’s just you flying through a course by yourself in hopes that you finish the race before the game crashes again, or finish in a way where the position you place is reflected on the results screen.
Overall Thoughts
I tried my best to give this game a fair shot. I thought the first crash was just random luck. When it kept happening over and over, I knew this game was going to be unplayable, but I did try many times to work through the errors to find some good in it. What I did find is a game that feels unfinished, poorly designed, and just riddled with bugs.
One of the things I couldn’t wrap my head around was the quick recharge of turbo boosts. You drain your turbo, and within 2 seconds, it’s fully recharged. That’s quite a huge imbalance, having a turbo with a 98% uptime. Then again, it never mattered due to the random assignment of positions the game gave you, and the lack of presence of the other racers.
The collision detection on the racers was also hit or miss. When I actually did see another racer, I flew straight through them. I definitely made contact, but the collision failed to register. Another time, a racer was hit with a weapon and wiped out, and yet, I collided with him, coming to a complete halt. No crash… no slowdown… no shoving the other guy out of the way… just a complete stop. At one point, I was completely stuck and couldn’t even move until the game decided to let me go about 10 seconds later, but it didn’t matter because just a couple of turbo boosts later, I jumped 5 positions!
I’m sorry to say that unless the developer puts some serious effort into fixing this game, this is one you should steer clear of. I did my best to give it the attention it deserved, but I can only review what is put in front of me, and what was put in front of me was an unplayable, broken game.
It’s very rare for me to hand out a 5/5. When I do… it doesn’t mean perfection. It means that it left a lasting impression that will stay with me for the rest of my life. I have given out very few 5/5s, but what is even rarer than that is that I’ve never given out a 0…. Until now.
When a game is broken and unplayable… I just can’t score it. So, for the first time in my history as a reviewer here on The Outerhaven (11 years, by the way), Millennium Runners gets my first-ever 0/5.
If the game gets fixed and becomes playable, I would be more than happy to give this another shot for a redemption review, but until that happens, I just can’t give a score to a game that can’t even last for five minutes before it breaks.
Overall Rating: 0/5
Review Disclosure Statement: Millennium Runners for PC (Steam) was provided to us by Commodore Industries for review purposes. For more information on how we review games and other media, please see our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy.
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