I must have been 16 at the time when Starwing was released in Norway. Yes, the EU release of Star Fox was called Starwing, but we didn't care about that. For sure I had seen the preview of the game leafing through gaming magazines I don't even remember the names of, and the naming was odd. As a Norwegian Nintendo gamer, I was used to Nintendo of Europe screwing up everything that was good. We had two robots in "Super Probotector" instead of two badass marines in "Super Contra" so when Starwing was identical to Star Fox except for the title screen, me and my fellow Nintendites in Norway were more than satisfied.
The title screen also clearly showed us that this game was different. Except for the lettering and cast, everything filling up the screen was vector graphics, the stuff I had already seen in in the Star Wars arcade game and Stunt Car Racer on my friends Amiga. Pressing START greeted me with a short intro, complete with voice samples and formation flying of some very cool looking spaceships known as "Arwings". The next weeks would be spent in front of my 14-inch CRT-TV that I had modded to stretch out the screen. This to alleviate the bad EU conversion that had Mario and everybody else look even plumper because EU-TV's had more scanlines. All this while my friends were out chasing girls, drinking beer and smoking dope...
Many years later I am 41 years old with a wife, two baby daughters and a music career. I have tried both beer and weed (I preferred the weed), and I have chased my share of girls. This time I get to play Star Fox with the correct title and correct speed (the EU version was slowed down because we had 50 Hz televisions).
The game has definitely aged, but it didn't take me long to get used to the almost constant slow-down and extremely sparse visuals. What is more striking is the soaring score and the fantastic direction of the game. The enemies are distinct, sometimes comical but always fascinating. The powerups are simplistic, consisting of 3 levels of your main gun and a smart bomb that uses the typical mode-7 inflated circle to convey nuclear doom. There are great end-of-level bosses, and you can use the L & R buttons on the controller to dip your wings or even...do a barrel roll! Talking about controls. Simple and tight is the word here. No landmaster-tank and other fluff...up-down-left-right, speed-up and speed-down. Just as any nerdy 16-year old in a 41-year old body wants it.
The story in the game is typical space opera, the characters are animals (you play as a fox...duh). Your wingmates, a falcon, a frog and a rabbit (technically a hare, Peppy Hare to be precise) will mostly just get in trouble and rely on you to shoot whatever bogey is on their...tail. A haggard dog is your commander and the main villain, Andross, looks like something out of Planet of the Apes. There is plenty of Nintendo-charm here and it all works while you are flying through meteor fields, dinosaur planets, space armadas and moon bases. Somehow Dylan Cuthbert and Q-games managed to do things with the Super Nintendo that was cutting edge in 1993 and still retains style today.
Although this is at the core a rather simplistic action-shooter, the game has 3 different paths to the final boss with different environments and difficulties. There are also some awesome secrets in the game, including a black hole. There is a scoring system and tons of replayability. Some might say that Star Fox 64 took everything the original did and did it better...and technically I must agree. However, this game has so much charm and lore of its own and it really shows how much love and effort that was put into this title. If you love space, shooters, cockpits, dramatic music, gaming-history and games that keep giving, give Star Fox a go!
Jam Solo-Score
7/10
BONUS!
Star Fox 2 Review
Star Fox 2 was canceled because it was slated to launch only a year before Mario 64, and Nintendo didn't want people to be confused with what kind of qualities Nintendo could provide as a 3D game developer. With the release of the SNES Classic, we can now play this unreleased gem in all its glory...Except it is no gem and there is no glory.
Star Fox 2 takes the formula from Star Fox and muddles it up with forgettable new characters and free-roaming gameplay that makes the SNES and Super FX chip grind to extremely low framerates. This causes the controls to feel sluggish and sucks the fun out of the original control scheme. The scenery and music in Star Fox 2 is bland to the point where the game seems unfinished and badly planned. Most of all you can tell that the team has lost the love for the game under the development process. Maybe the internal vibes at Nintendo would somehow have hinted that this would eventually be canceled. Play this game only if you are an avid Nintendo-fan or very interested in gaming history.
Jam Solo-Score
4/10