Star Fox

Star Fox is a weird game to me. One one hand, I have a ton of respect for it especially in terms of its visuals and creativity, but on the other, it's plagued with issues and I had to almost force myself to fully finish it.

Let's start with the positives first. I think this is quite an important game in Nintendos catalog for being the (unless I missed something) first true 3D game that they've made. 3D games in the early era were fairly difficult to pull off because you'd need to properly communicate the 3rd axis or otherwise have a sense of depth. To that extent, I think Star Fox succeeds as a 3D game. It does feel clear a lot of the time how close or far away enemies, powerups, walls, etc. are. Being able to communicate that is a key foundation of the core on-rails shooter gameplay and if that didn't work then Star Fox would be awful to play. Another positive are the graphics and soundtrack. The soundtrack gets a lot of praise for good reason and the game looks pretty beautiful all around, with some excellent sprite designs and pretty sensible 3d polygon designs too. I especially like the look of the Arwings and the visuals of the Andross fight. One final praise I have for this game is that it's not afraid to be fairly creative with its themes and level design. The Space Armada level has a lot of sections to destroy cores of big ships, Sector Y feels like you're underwater, Fortuna pretty much has you fight a lot of the wildlife and Titania involves some weather manipulation, the Level-2 path of Venom leads you to a highway level, and of course I have to mention the level where you fight a slot machine as a boss fight. It's a very fresh and interesting game all the way through at least when considering those positives.

That being said though, this game kinda sucks to play a lot of the time. It feels like an inconsistent experience caused by some problems. For one thing, I wish a lot of the level design is better. There are several sections in the game that feel either cheap or hard to react to, such as plasma beams being fired at close range from certain enemies, suddenly appearing or moving blocks within the Venom surface stages, or the one part in Section Z that has a million spinning rectangular blocks which I'm shocked if anyone cleared that first try without taking damage. This extends to the boss design too, some of these bosses are just really tedious to fight even if a good portion of the others are fun. I'm particularly thinking of Great Commander in the Level-3 route because I feel like they programmed the hitboxes weirdly. Another problem is that the Arwing's control options are limited. I'm talking more about what I can actually do as the Arwing. It really feels like the core functionalities are: move, shoot, and occasionally tilt the ship in a direction to make dodging a bit easier. There is a barrel roll move but honestly you almost never need to use it, same for the accelerate and brake buttons that the game gives you. It's probably a nitpick but I feel the game could have benefitted from a deeper selection of controls.

Those two problems don't compare to the biggest problem of the game though, and the reason why it felt like more of a chore to play the more I actually played it: the framerate. The framerate for this game is pretty awful, having both a low on average fps and also being very inconsistent. There are points in the game where it feels responsive (I think the highest fps I usually experience is on the Venom space stages) and other times where it's sluggish due to bad slowdown. Nintendo isn't a stranger to having slowdown problems in their games but, in general, their instances happen rather infrequently. This game in comparison even has slowdown during the CREDITS SEQUENCE. I get that this game is very ambitious for its time on a visual front but this pretty much kills any chance at it aging well in the slightest as well as any chance of me having an experience that is both fun and consistent. I don't think it's an exaggeration to claim that low, unstable framerate has the potential to kill a lot of enjoyment for any game and I think this isn't an exception, especially since a lot of it focuses on reaction to what is on screen. It's a shame because this game does have quite a bit going for it and the core gameplay works well enough, not to mention the list of positives that I already explained.

Overall, this game was fun at first but became more and more frustrating to get through as time went on especially due to the slowdown problems. I appreciate its impact and ambition as a Nintendo game and the visuals and soundtrack are great but I definitely never want to play this again. It's worth trying out but not worth attempting to complete even though it's a short game.

Despite some glaring clunk and generally being obscenely difficult, Star Fox is still carried by a sense of charm and intrigue - what does each planet look like? Why is there a slot machine in the middle of space? What will happen when I defeat Andross? Stylistically, the polygons and limited graphics still maintain a peculiarly primitive marvel which has aged better than the low-res polygons of the console generation that would be kicked off by this very game.

It's probably VERY easy to look at this game now and say: "Man, this looks like a pile of s***!". But what if I told you that this is actually one of the best Star Fox games ever made? If you can actually get your hands on this game, be it emulated or on your SNES, you may come to realise that the dated visual style is rather deceitful, because SNES Fox is a surprisingly epic and action packed experience from start to finish! Star Fox 64 may have been the maturation of this series into a more cinematic and visually impressive experience, but SNES Fox still holds the crown for the most skill based and adrenaline pumping game in the series.

The evil scientist Andross has been banished from Corneria and is taking his revenge by sending his massive army out to terrorise the galaxy. The mercenary group Star Fox agrees to aid in the counter offensive and the rest is history! From the moment you start this game's campaign the pacing is practically non-stop GO GO GO! You're taking down massive enemy fleets in outer space, ravaging military installations on meteorites, waiving through asteroid belts, and visiting crazy alien planets. There are 3 different routes to take to get to Venom, each increasing in difficulty. There are tons of epic stages in this game that each sport their own unique boss (with the exception of a couple recycled bosses), ranging from assault carriers, rock crushers, weird bio-weapons, battleships that you destroy from the inside out, and the telekinetic psycho-path that is Andross.

There are quite a few series highlights in terms of Star Fox stages in this game, from the large galactic battle of the Space Armada, the ocean inspired (and very disorienting) Sector Y, the bad ass assault on the Venom Highway, fighting off those water dragons in Fortuna, plus Sector's Z and X are personal favourites if only for dodging all of those floating girders and structures as you try to prevent Venom's forces from constructing bases, Every stage in this game has a sense of urgency and imminent danger, and it only helps that the game's sound track is epic as s***!!! This is also a pretty challenging game, you're tasked with piloting your Arwing with enough accuracy to survive the many outrageous obstacles and bullet hell situations you're thrown into. The game makes excellent use of braking and boosting, and you're given a cock-pit view in certain levels that require precise dodging.

Let's talk about some issues with this game; how about aiming? Well unfortunately it's pretty tricky because you're not only given very small targets and weak points on most enemies, but there's also no aiming reticle outside of the cockpit view making things a lot more challenging. It's admittingly tough to get past this hurdle but once you get in enough practice; aiming begins to feel more like second nature. Then there are the visuals..... Yes, it's very much out dated, the pop-in is wack, the depth perception is tricky, levels with black backgrounds make it hard to see exactly what's going on in a lot of instances. Also the enemies/bosses/structures all look like weird geometrical polygons as opposed to real things... It's for all of these reasons that I can't put this game on a pedestal, time has not done it ANY favours. But let's sit back and appreciate some of the more admirable aspects that this game's visuals have to offer shall we?

There weren't too many SNES games that could pull off 3D polygonal art quite as competently as this game did, now fuel that with the fact that this was the first game ever to introduce the Super FX graphics co-processor and you have a game that makes it look like you're legitimately soaring through space in 3D!... Back then anyway... Do you know how many minds were blown when this game dropped? And try using your imagination a little, for instance; the lousy pop-in experienced in some levels (like sectors X and Z) kinda made them feel more ominous and unpredictable. Also take into account how there are real particle effects showcased here for the outer space levels in particular, it actually feels like you're blowing s*** up in zero G which is sweet for such an old game.

If it sounds like I'm trying to push this game as an underrated gem that's because I am. The game might look and feel very dated by today's standards - And sure, it totally is - but the reality is that there's still so much creativity on display here. Star Fox for the SNES still stands as the most skill testing Star Fox game and it elicits epicness through almost every aspect of it's design! DO NOT OVERLOOK THIS GAME PEOPLE!!!

Everyone knows the Star Fox [スターフォックス] franchise by Nintendo. The first one, "Starwing" (Known as "Star Fox" in the USA), was a phenomenal SNES game back in 1993 because it used a special built-in Super FX chip, a coprocessor used to accelerate graphics display, which became Nintendo's first game to use 3D polygon graphics. Although the framerate is kind of awful if comparing it to modern games but back then it was groundbreaking. To be honest, once the game becomes familiar, the framerate won't bother that much.

"Starwing/Star Fox" is a rail shooter in a third-person and first-person 3D perspective. There are three different routes to pick: easy, medium or hard. During the space trip player faces three-dimensional enemy ships, meteor showers and many other obstacles. Even hidden routes. The goal is to keep the team safe and blast everything in order to reach the final boss Andross. Enemies drop ammo upgrades and health so it is essential to shoot everything that moves.

This game is a fun space shooter. The sequels may be more polished but "Starwing/Star Fox" is a great addition to the SNES game library.

平澤創 [Hajime Hirasawa] kicks the living crap out of the SNES soundcard, thus, making the game sound very uplifting yet versatile 16-bit synth rock with memorable themes and melodies. Once you hear the futuristic Corneria theme you'll never forget it!