People saw a connection to Gamergate mostly because of the “Five Guys” thing, which Gamergaters have spent years tying to Zoe. It’s not absurd for people to make a connection, even if further examination shows there likely isn’t one.

There were threads on KiA several days before Zoe made a comment about it. Gamergate quickly pivoted from “lol Nintendo just rekt Zoe” to “omg how can she possible believe this is about her?” as soon as she became aware of it.

Woah woah woah. Even generally SNES-favoring voters typically prefer Sega’s Aladdin.

Oh the Sega Gen/MD definitely has enough grunt to pull of an F-Zero-like game. Closest I can think of offhand is Outrun 2019, which looks a bit similar but has hills and dips. Maybe someone else knows of a better example, but this game engine could handle F-Zero.