okay so Ryu Suzkau (or Rick Wheeler if you still think 4kids exist) was this cop in 2051. Was gonna engage to his girlfriend one night. Got in a car chase against this guy named Zoda. tl;dr he dies. then he doesn't, he was surgically fixed and cryogenically frozen. now he's 150 years into the future. why? we don't know, not until like the last episode.
So after like 10 minutes of a mental breakdown because he just got woken up in the future by space police who want him to do space policing even though he just realized his girlfriends probably dead, he hijacks an f-zero machine and bolts the scene. After meeting a space police guy who's the chad stereotype who picks up ladies Ryu learns an important lesson: racecars before hoes. So then he starts racing. He's pretty good. He meets Captain Falcon. Turn out he's a bartender. Neat.
Turns out Zoda's alive. Now he's a big pink monster. They don't even explain how he went from human to jellybean, he just is. the future is awesome. Black Shadow's there too and he's doing villainy things by being the most OP villain in existence. Zoda tells Ryu he took his girl, and man he is pissed. So pissed he almost dies. Then Zoda flies off and does Zoda things, like being the best character in existence.
Falcon's back with war stories and mad PTSD. Turns out he faked his own death and was Jody Summer's brother who got "bombed by Zoda". How tragic. Black Shadow's back, and boy did he get a good dose of Falcon DNA, and then he uses it to make Blood Falcons. "Is 1,000 Blood Falcons fine?" Black Shadow asks his assistant who is totally not a brainwashed cryogenically frozen Ryu's girlfriend. Turns out she is a brainwashed cryogenically frozen Ryu's girlfriend, and man Ryu is pissed. So pissed he almost dies. Again.
Turns out Black Shadow wants to nuke the universe, aw hell yeah. He's gonna do it by building a big reactor that is powered by tiny reactors that are also engines of F-Zero machines, aw hell yeah. Turns out Ryu's F-Zero machine and Falcon's Blue Falcon are running on these reactors, how plot convenient. Black Shadow invades the city and brings Zoda along. While Ryu's still being pissed about his girlfriend being alive he and Falcon get
SUCCED into a zone where Zoda is. Then like 100 Blood Falcons just try to ram them up, but Zoda literally inhales them into his stomach, pops a reactor that Black Shadow stuck in his body, and gets swole as ****. I'm not even joking, that actually happened. I'll even link it just to prove my point.
Now the reactor game is like the triforce piece sidequest in Wind Waker where its back and forth until Black Shadow wins because of course he does, the man can literally just wipe you out of living and was apparently the mastermind behind everything. Like, he made Zoda, sent him back in time to kill Ryu even though he knew he would live. It's stupid. What's even more stupid is the final reason we're here: why Ryu was revived. Prophecy said Ryu and Falcon were supposed to be the ones to kill Black Shadow. So Black Shadow had the idea to help Ryu by literally giving him the baby steps to get up to the final moments just so he could give him the disrespect. Now Black Shadow has the things and the universe is closing in on its itself- nevermind Falcon just blew himself up along with an entire galaxy. Ryu lives somehow, becomes Captain Falcon, and his girlfriend is now not brainwashed and now they can live happily ever after in the future.