I had the same experience, however haven't picked it up since. The excessive blur, instant death obstacles and uncomfortable gamepad controls (the game physically hurt to play after a while) had me put it away and forget about it somewhere in the second cup or speed. 6/10 from me.

I would recommend Track Mania Turbo instead, more fun, no blur, 100 player online lobbies are crazy. (you race against up to 100 ghosts at the same time, set best time in 5 minutes)

As a fan of F-Zero and Wipeout, I really enjoyed FRN.

The motion blur and fisheye effect at high speed didn't bother me so much; my only major annoyance was that dying sets you back so far that a single crash can effectively ruin your chances of placing first. I get that this is done to emulate the unforgiving difficulty of the 1990s game Shin'en draw influence from, but it's still frustrating.

On the other hand, I really like its heart-pounding intensity, its impressive graphics, its 60fps clip, and just the fact that this kind of game just doesn't happen much any more, and I miss it.

This is a real game, casuals will struggle with it, i was blasting around the tracks in time trials last night boosting through the tightest bends and corners without hitting the sides.

This is a game I wanted to pick up. Then I realized I'm not exactly an F-Zero guy (I can't even fully beat Kinetica despite being pretty good at racing games, and that game is slow compared to this or F-Zero!). This reminded me that I should still grab it to support the devs!

I'm still waiting for the patch, so haven't played for quite some time. Why does Nintendo need more than three months for certification?
While the review is reasonable I'd still give 8.5. Probably patched though.

According to Shin'en the weird lap times are because the timer operates at the same 60fps refresh rate as the rest of the simulation. They say the upcoming update will fix this.