Call me nuts for liking this game as much as I do, but I can't help, but think how ambitious and cool this title is mixed with a bunch of neat character and enemy designs along with some cool ascetics to boot. Star Fox 2 really saw the visual style and flow of the original Star Fox game and designed to match it with it's own unique twist and stakes.

Like if you look at the original Star Fox and look at 2, it's almost an inverted version of itself with having to defend a point rather than simply getting from start to finish. Due to RNG, player skill, and difficulty the layout of a playthrough will play out differently each time while it's a constant race with the clock to make sure you're not dilly dallying with each area you visit. As well, most playthroughs are roughly under an hour giving both a nice sense of pacing and urgency when going through each level or stage.

Where Star Fox 2 can fall apart for most is the all range dog fights that have a strong tendency to both get confusing and feel like they are purposefully wasting time. The sad truth is that their really isn't much a fix to it as the main problem is due to hardware, viewpoint, and the backgrounds they use for space. Thankfully, most fighters don't take that long to take down, and a lot of the chase missions with missiles are fairly easy on the eyes, but overall it's a pretty unavoidable fumble on the games part.

Thankfully, a lot of the main game's action is built around bases, and use of the arwing walker that feels rather easy to use and makes for an interesting combat vehicle. While I wouldn't say the bases have particularly interesting bosses, they are at least serviceable, and provide for a fine enough challenge. Although, when I think back on Star Fox 2's boss roster is fairly lackluster when compared to the originals stronger set up.

Still, I do think Star Fox 2 is a really neat fixture in both Nintendo's worst kept secret, and a dash of hope for an 8 year old me clinging for this game's release. It really did do a lot of interesting and neat concepts for the Star Fox series that honestly feels more impactful than anything Zero did as well as giving us the same kinda feel of the original SNES game. If you like Star Fox, I really don't see how you can go home not liking this one; just temper your expectations as it really is it's own flavor compared to our usual On-Rail Shooter.

Someone at Nintendo saw Star Fox and thought, what if this were a tower-defence game? And they made then shelved it in favour of more technical grunt on the N64.

It’s a surprisingly good match-up. You intercept missiles, viruses and attack bases. This has 360 degree cockfighting as well as some indoor on-foot 3rd perspective shootouts similar to Doom.

Also introduces the Wolf team and some never seen before and since cat and poodle.

I found the experience all consuming in my session, put aside 1-2 hours to beat this on Hard… probably less time on Medium and I’d wager more on Expert.

Star Fox 2 is great, but it’s definitely in the vain of the “sequel” space where the game is reinventing the wheel instead of iterating on the previous game’s format.

Definitely is more of a high score chasing game, there is a constant timer and beating the game sooner seems like a great challenge! I’d place it in my top 10 or so SNES games.

After playing this I was pissed. I mean, I was genuinely pissed off that this fantastic game that had evolved over so much over the first one in so many technical ways was thrown aside and then buried to only be discovered MANY years later! I mean...how DARE you Nintendo!

You release utter shite on your library, but you buried this gem?!?! The fuck?!?!

The game adds two new hot furry characters, the reason being so that you have three different types of ships with two each and you pair up the fighters in teams so that you can plan your advance along with how should focus on battle ships, the enemy armada, the missiles and directly at the base!

Something new that they added, which we don't need until much later, is the ability for the fighter to transform into a walker for ground combat and allowing such fun seamless transition is something that seemed impossible for the limitations of the system of the time, but they had done it!

The story is the villain has returned! (this won't be the only time) and he has started off yet another attack on the Lylat system! After repelling the attack it's easier to try and get to him, however, Wolf and his friends are there to stop you once again and prevent your progression!

I love the tactical idea to this as it feels a little more like a real war in how careful you have to be in your placement of troops and what targets should be your main source as those missiles will keep being fired, but enemy ships will also swarm and destroy the planet if ignored too!

Any fan of furries and Star Fox should certainly pick this up and have a lot of fun with it! I really wish there were more games like this in the future!
(Note: I'll regret asking for this...)

Gameplay + Stream

Star Fox 2 fue desarrollado por Nintendo y Argonaut Games y probablemente sería lanzado para la SNES allá sobre el año 1995... si no hubiese sido cancelado por no estar a la altura de lo que ofrecía la competencia respecto a gráficos en 3D por aquel entonces.
Por suerte Nintendo lo rescato y publicó para la Nintendo Classic Mini: SNES en 2017. Mas tarde llego al Nintendo Switch Online: SNES en Switch.
Star Fox 2 se diferencia bastante de la entrega anterior, en vez de tener 3 rutas fijas el juego nos presenta un tablero con unidades enemigas atacando Corneria. Podemos movernos libremente por el tablero, pero las unidades enemigas también lo harán a la vez que nosotros. Cuando toquemos una unidad enemiga, empezará un nivel.
Los niveles son mucho más variados que en el primer juego y en ellos podremos volar libremente en el espacio (en todas las direcciones), explorar la superficie de planetas en busca de bases enemigas y luchar contra el escuadrón Star Wolf.
Está acción en tiempo real del tablero crea una atmosfera mucho más interesante y le da un toque de estrategia que no estaba presente en el juego anterior. Además, en los niveles con tierra tenemos la posibilidad de cambiar en cualquier momento entre el modo vuelo y el modo bípedo, lo cual es muy divertido la verdad.
Star Fox 2 corre gracias al chip Super FX 2 que viene a ser como el chip original, pero al doble de velocidad (21MHz). A pesar de eso el juego ahora se atreve con algunos modelos en 3D con texturas o sprites en vez de solo colores sólidos y los fotogramas acaban cayendo igual que en el juego anterior, especialmente en los niveles sobre el suelo o en interiores.
Star Fox 2 supone una ligera mejora gráfica (desde luego lejos de la Saturn o la PSOne) pero una gran mejora en gameplay respecto al juego anterior. Es un juego para sentarse una hora con él y terminarlo de una tacada y me alegro mucho que no haya quedado en el olvido.

If nothing else the scope and visuals are astounding, this is tech that nearly matches the peak fidelity of 32x with Nintendo's trade optimization tricks and 2D/3D hodge-podging. The change to a mission based structure is fine but these levels are extremely low effort, they're all like one hallway with 2 pincushions to shoot. The dogfights are pretty bad until you learn to cheese them with the charge shot. Music is way worse, neither rockin' nor movin', it's a shame.

It's easy to see why this was canned when the game still needed a huge amount of content to fill out the world, and the cost of FX-2 boards would eat out their profits.

Feels more like an extra game mode than a proper sequel. Don't get me wrong, there are new things like multiple playable characters and walker ships, but the game can be beaten in like 15 minutes (on a first playthrough + inexperienced). Also there are no on rails sections unfortunately, just open arenas this time. Framerate is somehow even worse than the original. The only notable thing this game does is a ranking system which helps with replayability, but honestly I'd just rather play the original again.

Game Review - originally written by Shih Tzu

One of the holy grails of console game prototypes, the unreleased Starfox 2 is apparently indeed the first developed sequel to the SNES 3D polygonal shooter Starfox. Fox McCloud and his equally anthropomorphic crew are back to battle the evil ape Andross, with two new female pilots, Miyu and Fay, joining the fight. In contrast to the first game, however, which features lots of arcade rail-shooter action, the sequel adopts a somewhat more strategic, exploratory tone. The game plays out on a galactic map, where you direct a pair of pilots around, intercepting enemy squadrons, attacking enemy bases, and so on. In the meantime, mean old Andross is launching missiles at your home planet of Corneria, and if you let too many get by, you won’t have any home left to save.

This shift toward strategy extends to the core gameplay as well. While there are plenty of Wing-Commander-style dogfights, many of the scenarios require the player to find switches to press or navigate through enclosed mazes. A key innovation is the ability to transform your Arwing into a bipedal gun turret and walk through some stages Doom-style, firing, strafing, and dodging. All the while, the clock ticks down as other battles rage elsewhere in the galaxy, and you will frequently get frantic radio messages from your commander about incoming missiles and other threats.

On “Normal” difficulty, the game can be beaten without much effort or time; I won my first game in under 15 minutes (and I’m frightfully bad at these games). The higher difficulty levels, however, feature new enemies, expanded stages, and a lot more gameplay in general. “Expert” level is truly demanding, but it’s also where you’ll see the most interesting developments. Factor in the challenge of topping your high scores and a healthy amount of randomness, and you’ve got a good amount of fun to be had for fans of this series who want to pull back the curtain for a glimpse of what might have been.
(editor's note: iirc the way the original prototype leaked, and don't quote me on this, was that Sonic Cult administrator Pachuka was hanging around in the #rareroms IRC channel on EFnet pretending to be one of the channel owners, when a regular messaged him with a download of the rom thinking he was the guy he was disguised as, fascinating story)

Holy shit, where did this come from? I was honestly slightly dreading playing Star Fox 2, after finishing its predecessor with only a technical admiration of what it achieved on the console equivalent of a toaster rather than much fun, how could its unreleased, unfinished followup be any good?

How wrong was I, this game is honestly great. Unlike Star Fox 64 which is in all but name a souped up remake of the SNES original, Star Fox 2 goes in a new direction. Rather than being limited to the rails of before, here each level is an open field to be explored at will. Most start in an open area where you find/shoot/sit on some targets before entering a base. There you can transform at will into a strafing mech walker and navigate through to find a simple boss fight.

While the stages are fairly repetitive and simplistic, they're a brilliant proof of concept of what it could have been. But it's the level select screen that truly surprised me, as what was before a simple route select is now a strategic metagame about protecting Corneria from attack. It's almost like FTL, you choose a planet or ship to travel to and as you move, so do the enemy missiles advance on your homebase. While in missions, time continues to pass, meaning if you don't finish them quick enough, you risk losing the entire game. It's a great balance between trying to keep Corneria's health as full as possible while attacking to avoid Andross making you repeat levels.

If this all sounds as though I'm gushing, then that's about to change. Star Fox 2 is by no means perfect, chiefly because it feels at most like a prologue to a more substantial game. The whole thing took me less than an hour to beat, and that was me playing on the hard difficulty setting. Star Fox 2 is laughably easy too, with most enemies going down in only a handful of shots. It runs abysmally too, some interior sections taking me down to what could only be single figure framerates, but this is a flawed it's inherited from its forebear. The ability to choose two fights to swap between at the start is an interesting concept, but incredibly underdeveloped. The art is definitely improver though, with the character portraits being good enough now to please furries.

Overall, I was very pleasantly surprised. I only wish Nintendo had embraced Star Fox 2's innovations and applying them to future games. There's more complexity here than either 1 or 64, at times it reminded me more of Freespace or Wing Commander than of Star Fox. Hopefully someday the big N will see fit to make one less Mario spinoff and instead return to one of its long neglected series and give us a new Star Fox in the same ilk as 2. Don't hold your breath though.

One of the rare cases where playing the Leaked Beta is significantly more fun than playing the actual finished game.

Unlike the finished game which locks the charged shot behind pretty much 100% completion, the Beta lets you use it by default. The charged shot in Star Fox 2 (at least the Beta, I ain't 100%ing this lol) was busted. Totally busted. It deals absurd damage, like half of Leon's health bar or some shit, and actually has surprisingly good lock-on properties. It's very easy to just lock onto a target, release the A button, and let the charged shot do all the work in all-range combat, even with polygon graphics and a janky framerate. Miyu and Fae were also insane, they started with double lasers and while they had the lowest health, that really didn't matter. 12 hits is still plenty of room for error (in the Beta, I'm pretty sure all enemies deal 1 damage at most) and there's multi-use bomb items that can heal you back to full. By no means is any of this well-balanced and would probably need to be ironed out for a final release.

But when the gameplay is only somewhat less janky than the original Star Fox, I will gladly take every advantage I can get. Yeah the charged shot is overpowered as hell...but you know what? It's pretty fun to use! But in the final game, you're instead relying on your lasers, and not only are they a lot weaker (especially without a double power-up) but they're harder to aim too. Just like that, the game becomes way more balanced but way less fun and playable 25 years later.

Hell, playing the Beta on ZSNES is a great idea, because inaccurate Super FX emulation actually means that the framerate is somewhat smooth.