"F-Zero: And Then, to the Gods of Speed" Dark tie-in novel

In 1992, an official tie-in novel for the F-Zero franchise called "F-Zero: And Then, to the Gods of Speed" was released by a publisher called Futabasha that was written by an author named Katsuyuki Ozaki with illustrations by Kagumi Yasuhiro. This was virtually unknown for decades until scans of it surfaced online a few years ago, but even now, there's very little that's been written about it, and attempts to translate it into English have stalled. All that was really known about it in the English speaking world is that A. The protagonist is named Swan Lee, B. The novel presents a darker take on the setting of F-Zero than usual, and C. It involves Captain Falcon's death.

Since I figured there wouldn't be a translation for who knows how long, I decided to put each page into Google Translate one by one. Of course, it didn't yield very good results, but my mission was to at least understand the overall story and put together a plot summary to share with others, and I feel I mostly succeeded at it besides the ending, which I'm not 100% sure about because the book got kinda weird at the end.

Since there was so little info about the book, I was completely blindsided at just how dark "Gods of Speed" could get. There is no way the Nintendo of today would allow a few of the things that happen here, especially with Captain Falcon. I've been talking quite a bit about this book lately, but I'm trying to spread the word about it because I feel it's a fascinating relic of that pre-1993 Mario movie/Phillips CDI era where Nintendo were much more hands-off about how other people handled their characters. I'm hoping that I'll drum up enough interest in this book to get a real translation made of it, but I'm not holding my breath.

I posted my comprehensive summary to both Reddit and Tumblr and they're both pretty much the same so pick whichever you prefer. Last time I shared the Reddit one with others they weren't able to see it, but I think it's been put up on the F-Zero subreddit now? If for whatever reason any of you can't see either post, I'll write out a shorter version here. Remember that the translations I got might not be totally accurate so don't take this as the gospel. Spoilers below.

The protagonist is an anti-hero former street gang member named Swan Lee who is able to communicate with a mysterious entity called the Supreme whose true nature isn't revealed until the very end and who guides Swan in his racing. Following a prologue set ten years before the main story, the main four characters of the original SNES F-Zero (though Samurai Goroh is called Kamikaze Goroh here) have retired and now Swan is looking to enter the Grand Prix.

The odds are stacked against him, but Swan cheats his way to victory thanks to the Supreme, causing the now old Captain Falcon to reach out to him, wanting to sponsor him and giving his blessing to inherit the Blue Falcon. The main villain, Mr. Richter, who is the president of the company that runs F-Zero, also has his eyes on Swan. After Swan cheats his way to victory with a concealed weapon in one of the circuits, Richter rescinds the rule forbidding racers from directly attacking each other, believing that Swan will bring in a new age where F-Zero is more than just entertainment, but will become a political battleground.

It's also revealed that Captain Falcon has become an alcoholic with terminal cancer heavily implied to have been brought on by his years of racing, and towards the end of the story he dies in bed, with his last request to Swan before he dies being to go seek out Dr. Stewart, Goroh, and Pico so he can learn more about racing from them.

However, Swan's girlfriend gets kidnapped by vengeful gamblers who say they won't release her unless he drops out of the next circuit. Swan plans on racing anyway and brings a collection of bombs with him to blow up the other racers and win, but before he can become a (sanctioned) domestic terrorist, the Supreme stops the Blue Falcon from moving, and Swan's girlfriend is safely returned.

As the last circuit is about to start, Richter reveals his plan is to use the Grand Prix to spark a war between the planets of Sand Ocean and Silence so he can buy up the oil on the former. Swan finally goes to see Stewart, Goroh, and Pico, but narrowly avoids being assassinated, only surviving because he was rescued by angels (the Gods of Speed in the title I guess?)

The surviving SNES characters build a new version of the Blue Falcon, and at the final race the Supreme shuts down Richter's plans, allowing the Grand Prix to go without incident and Swan to win. At the end, it's revealed that the Supreme is the personification of the collective memory of racers throughout history.

So... yeah. In my longer summaries I also had to leave out a ton of worldbuilding the book had, which went into a surprising amount of detail about the politics and socioeconomics of the setting, but I wasn't very confident in the translation of those parts. The book's portrayal of Captain Falcon as a kind of loser who apparently spent all his racing money on booze, lives alone with only his robot butler for company, and croaks in bed from cancer is a total 180 from his death in the anime where he goes out in a blaze of glory, but it does make more sense when you consider that the only portrayal of Falcon the author of the book would have to go on then is the SNES tie-in comic where he's a mostly serious character. 

There's other solemn parts of the book as well, such as one of Swan's friends, Mamoru, becoming permanently disabled from a crash at the beginning, which leaves him unable to work and finally kills him 10 years later, or Swan's other friend Eddie being so disgusted at his plan to kill the other racers in the Grand Prix that he leaves him, and the two never make up with each other.

Even though my understanding of the book was sort of limited, I can certainly tell you there's no other official Nintendo tie-in like it out there, and I hope that more people can discover and discuss what's in it.

EDIT: Silly me, I forgot to link to the scan. Here it is, even if you can't read the book there's some cool illustrations throughout in there.