Time to take a look at the Star Fox series yet again…well the other games I haven’t previously reviewed, I’ve already reviewed Star Fox 1 & 2, but I’m reviewing it again. In terms of the Star Fox series, it’s claim to fame was the very first game, in which Nintendo gamers in the 90’s got to near enough have a full 3D game for the SNES, back then, 2D gaming was the name of the game, then Star Fox happened and blew people away with its graphics.
Now, gaming is at its peak, 3D graphics are now common place for both consoles and PC and I don’t see how it can get any better, and one of the games that got people excited about the possibilities of 3D graphics was about a bunch of animals flying ships and shooting stuff. What a time to be alive that must have been.
It’s time to relieve my gaming memories from about a couple years ago with Star Fox (スターフォックス Sutā Fokkusu), developed by Nintendo and Argonaut Games and was published by Nintendo and was released in 1993 in the US and Japan.
Now to fix what I wrote in my old review, there was a European release and it was released in 1993…though it had a different name, Starwing. And why was that? Now originally I said, and this is from my old review:
“There was an Atari 2600 game called Star Fox...the trademark for the Star Fox name was never filed in the USA, but Mythicon, Inc. managed to obtain the trademark in Europe, despite the fact they never used the name in Europe. When the company disbanded in 1983, the trademarks continued to be held by certain Mythicon directors. Because the trademark had not been filed in the United States, Nintendo was able to release Star Fox game without any issues. However, when it came to the European release, the game was renamed Starwing.”
However, that may not have been the case after all. According to Dylan Cuthbert, one of the developers who worked for Nintendo on this game and Jeremy San, who was head of Argonaut Software, they said that there was a German company called StarVox, which sounds like Star Fox if spoken in fluent German. To avoid any lawsuits that would delay the game in Europe, it was released as Starwing, confusing many gamers outside of Europe in the future.
So how did this game come into development? Well British game developer Argonaut Games made a game called Starglider, released in 1986 for 8-bit and 16-bit computers. They developed a prototype version for the SNES, titled NESGlider and told Nintendo that if they could make this game, but the only way to make it pretty was to make some custom hardware for the SNES carts to make it work. So I guess Nintendo said “DO IT”!
And this is where the Super FX comes into play, created by Argonaut Software; it’s a co-processor chip that was only used in Super Nintendo games just like Mode 7. It was programmed to act like a graphics accelerator chip that would draw polygons to a frame buffer, which means that the full 3D polygons will be crisper on screen and would play smoothly. From then on, a few more games would use the Super FX chip like Stunt Race FX, Vortex, etc.
The rest of the designers eventually would be Japanese folk, composed of Shigeru Miyamoto and Katsuya Eguchi who would game design, and the character designs would be created by Takaya Imamura. According to Shigeru Miyamoto, he wanted animal characters in a sci-fi action game and Fox McCloud was inspired by Fushimi Inari-taisha, a head shrine in Japan with a Fox as its messenger. Miyamoto was also a fan of English puppet dramas, such as Thunderbirds, so he wanted the game cover to feature puppets. I will say that British puppet shows like Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, Stingray and such, were quite popular in Japan. That’s right, some of the game design, and the Super FX chip, were all designed…in the UK.
Oh look, all that time and I haven’t got into the story, let alone the game.
The Emperor Andross, previously banished from Corneria after conducting dangerous experiments in its populated city, has returned to declare war on Corneria and has turned the planet Venom into a military base. So General Pepper, the commanding officer of Corneria’s defence force decides to assign Fox McCloud to fly the prototype ship ARWING along with his three partners in battle. That’s a very decent story, seems silly with animals, but its Nintendo, what do you expect.
The game is split into 3 parts depending on the difficulty, go to course 1, it’s in the middle and it’s the easy mode, the others are more difficult for newcomers with course 3 being the hardest, I said in my old review that it doesn’t tell you which level is the hardest but in fact it does and if I looked at the bottom right, it says Level 1, 2 or 3 depending on which one I pick with 3 being the hardest so there we go, I’ve corrected a mistake.
In terms of difficulty, it can be very hard, especially when playing Level 3, where you need skills, skills and more skills. But just because there’s three levels, doesn’t mean the game will be the same, as each will have different levels, with all three still starting with Corneria, then each of them will go on a different path, but the final level will always be Venom, the home of Andross.
You play as Fox McCloud, riding on an Arwing, it’s an animal Top Gun and he’s feeling the need for speed, and thank goodness Fox hasn’t heard of Scientology. Anyway, the objective of the game is to basically shoot and blow things up. You must navigate Fox’s polygonal spacecraft, an Arwing, through polygonal environments while polygonal enemies (spaceships, robots, creatures, etc.) try to attack him. You can either just play the game or train first by flying in rings, I know some of you have nightmares of Superman 64 but this controls better.
But in order to be the best pilot you can be, you must master the controls, the control pad moves the ship, up to dive down and down to climb up, like a real plane (mostly), L rolls ship to left, R rolls ship to right and X will give you a speed boost but the most important manoeuvre is the barrel roll, press L and R twice, I look forward to reviewing Lylat Wars. For the weapons, the A button fires a Nova Bomb, B fires Retro-Rockets and Y fires your Laser Blaster which is the weapon you’ll use the most since this is the normal default weapon. However you can change the controls to your suiting but the default controls I explained are fine with me but I now some of you will have certain requirements.
You go to various levels, shooting, dodging and using specific tactics and you need tactics to manoeuvre around to survive, but there will be items to help you along the way. The Supply Ring is your checkpoint and will restore your shield energy, Small Energy Supply does the same thing minus the checkpoint, Power Shield is the shield and you can get it by shooting a specific enemy or a specific object, same goes for Twin Blaster or Wing Gyro in which you can fire beams simultaneously (Twin Blaster) and you can repair damaged wigs (Wing Gyro), extra nova bombs and 1-Ups or Extra Ships.
The most important part of the game is your Wing Men, your team that will help you on your mission, but you also have to protect them or they’ll be shot down by enemies, there’s Falco Lombardi, Peppy Hare and everyone’s favourite to die, Slippy Toad, why, because he’s completely useless and you’ll probably let him die or you kill him yourself. Then again, all of them are useless and they’re just there for…emotional support? Yep, not one of these guys will actually shoot down ships with you, so it’s all up to you. And what’s worse is that they’re always in trouble, getting shot at by enemy fire…or yourself by accident because they don’t MOVE OUT THE FLIPPING WAY!!! Thank goodness for friendly fire.
I do like to point out the constant gibberish that comes out of their mouths and I really like the sounds of them. I mean, they don’t always talk when you’re good enough, but that electronic Lylat language, it’s good to my ears, I don’t know if it’s because I like to hear weird noises but it works.
The gameplay is simple, but it is a good example of “Easy to learn, hard to master”, dodging attacks can be hectic and a lot of things can just come out of nowhere and damage your ship. Yeah, if you clip one of your wings, you’re wing will be broken, as well as any power-ups you collected, your maneuverability is chucked out the bloody window and the game will be much harder for you because of this, and it’s your fault but not being good enough.
So yeah, the game is absolutely difficult when starting the game but it shouldn’t be too much of an issue overtime. That is if the draw distance in some levels weren’t a kick in the teeth, because objects can come out of absolutely nowhere and smack you in the face. Sometimes you can see some coming and you have time to dodge, but then there are ones where you REALLY need quick reflexes.
But at the end of it all, you go to Venom and battle Andross…I think. You see pictures of him as a monkey, but when you fight him, he’s this creepy looking face and then a cube. In terms of the face, it creeped me out as a kid, it was just weird and…you know the old 3D that was kind of awkward looking now compared to 3D of today. Yeah, just…yeah.
The graphics and the level design back in the day was considered amazing…but now, yeah, as much as I love retro games, this is a very dated looking game and hasn’t held up and the framerate can chug for most of the game apart from the tunnel sections because nothing was appearing like enemies so it ran faster.
But you see, that’s the thing with 3D games in the 90’s, I mean, most 2D games can be considered timeless when the designs are great, but 3D is a whole different story and Star Fox was that innovator that was left at the bottom whilst the next innovation was born, the cycle of technology folks and it keeps improving every day…for better or worse. On the bright side, the level design is still memorable and it’s still fun to look at designs of the game from playing it, it just feels good, you know?
The music is pretty epic for the SNES, it has that orchestral vibe that I absolutely adore, with the Corneria theme being cool and the ending after beating Andross and you’re with your animal friends, a victory for peace and a lovely piece of music plays as the camera moves around the Arwings.
Overall, Star Fox…or Starwing is a fun rail-shooter. The graphics…as well as other things have become dated by today’s standards, but at the time this was fantastic. Although I find it a bit iffy, I still appreciate the graphics, it pretty much showed what the Super Nintendo could do with the help of the British. I wished the game had a 2 player mode, but that was settled with Lylat Wars.
With Argonaut’s innovations and Miyamoto’s creativity, they managed to produce an atmospheric game for the time, and to make it a 3D Rail Shooter it’s fantastic, it gives that true Arcade feel right at home without ever been released in the Arcades. I recommend it but it can be challenging over time if you go for the harder levels, but that’s the beauty of a retro game after all.
You can get it on the SNES/Super Famicom.
Next Week: It’s time to take a look at one of the best SNES games never released...until now!