Star Fox is peak science fiction.
I'm not referring to the simple narrative, or the space setting, or the admittedly cool and original ship and boss designs; I'm referring to the game itself. This 1993 console cartridge - with a graphics chip so powerful that the dev team joked that the SNES was just a box to hold it - had absolutely no right to exist. But exist it did, and much like the clunky-looking tablets and touchscreens in classic Star Trek, Star Fox was visionary: a pretty-good facsimile of Star Fox 64.
It has plenty of merits: slick minimalistic designs, very cool boss fights with multiple phases and moving parts that must have been quite the spectacle at the time, and animation that isn't the smoothest but good enough to parse what's going on most of the time. The soundtrack is extremely strong and deserves unequivocal praise with zero "for its time" qualifiers.
It's also considerably less refined that Star Fox 64, in ways beyond the obvious technical things like animation and draw distance and game feel. The three fixed routes through the game feel rather rigid compared to its reboot's more dynamic pathing. Your wingmen are considerably less useful (which makes the permadeath mechanic hit less hard). And neither of the two camera angles feel great: the cockpit view makes it hard to get a good sense of where you are and what will/won't hit you, but the third-person view lacks an aiming reticle, further exacerbated by the fact that there is no charged homing shot in this game.
And obviously I can't negatively judge an older game for not being as refined as a reboot! But it does mean that as someone who didn't play this when I was younger I'm less inclined to be patient with it. If I were a kid in 1993 with a SNES, there was literally nothing out there like this! So I would likely keep playing the game in spite of its rough edges, eventually get good enough to beat the third route, and it would become one of my favorite games. Now, every time I struggle... I can just play Star Fox 64 instead. So I'm content to have completed the first two routes and leave the last one unfinished.
Star Fox suffers a little bit of "you had to be there" syndrome... and unfortunately as a Genesis kid, I wasn't there. But I do feel that it does enough things right to fly on its own merits, nostalgia goggles or no. I wouldn't class it as a 'must-play' for everyone, but it's a still-very-playable revolutionary piece of gaming history.
I'm not referring to the simple narrative, or the space setting, or the admittedly cool and original ship and boss designs; I'm referring to the game itself. This 1993 console cartridge - with a graphics chip so powerful that the dev team joked that the SNES was just a box to hold it - had absolutely no right to exist. But exist it did, and much like the clunky-looking tablets and touchscreens in classic Star Trek, Star Fox was visionary: a pretty-good facsimile of Star Fox 64.
It has plenty of merits: slick minimalistic designs, very cool boss fights with multiple phases and moving parts that must have been quite the spectacle at the time, and animation that isn't the smoothest but good enough to parse what's going on most of the time. The soundtrack is extremely strong and deserves unequivocal praise with zero "for its time" qualifiers.
It's also considerably less refined that Star Fox 64, in ways beyond the obvious technical things like animation and draw distance and game feel. The three fixed routes through the game feel rather rigid compared to its reboot's more dynamic pathing. Your wingmen are considerably less useful (which makes the permadeath mechanic hit less hard). And neither of the two camera angles feel great: the cockpit view makes it hard to get a good sense of where you are and what will/won't hit you, but the third-person view lacks an aiming reticle, further exacerbated by the fact that there is no charged homing shot in this game.
And obviously I can't negatively judge an older game for not being as refined as a reboot! But it does mean that as someone who didn't play this when I was younger I'm less inclined to be patient with it. If I were a kid in 1993 with a SNES, there was literally nothing out there like this! So I would likely keep playing the game in spite of its rough edges, eventually get good enough to beat the third route, and it would become one of my favorite games. Now, every time I struggle... I can just play Star Fox 64 instead. So I'm content to have completed the first two routes and leave the last one unfinished.
Star Fox suffers a little bit of "you had to be there" syndrome... and unfortunately as a Genesis kid, I wasn't there. But I do feel that it does enough things right to fly on its own merits, nostalgia goggles or no. I wouldn't class it as a 'must-play' for everyone, but it's a still-very-playable revolutionary piece of gaming history.
At this point in time, the SNES was already capable of doing plenty that other consoles at the time could only dream of doing. Not only did the games look better, sound better, and playing better than ever before, but with the introduction of such elements like Mode 7, it allowed developers to create many different types of games that was never possible before on previous consoles, leading to games like F-Zero and Pilotwings showing off what this technology could do, and many other developers taking advantage of this to make their games much more exciting than ever. But, of course, this wasn’t the limit that Nintendo was willing to stop at. They were willing to go even further with their technology, making things more advanced, and even going far enough to reach the 3rd dimension, all with the help of a little tool called the Super FX Chip. While not every big game on the system would use it, this chip was capable of making games with graphical power that was never before seen on a home video game system, whether it be with subtle, yet impressive differences with games like Yoshi’s Island, or games that would make a huge difference like with Stunt Racer FX. Amongst all of these titles though, without a doubt, the biggest title to take advantage of this hardware would happen to be the beginning of a little series known as Star Fox.
I have been a fan of the Star Fox franchise for quite a while now, with me playing the series off and on again for decades now, whether it be with the fan favorite title Star Fox 64, or even with some of the lesser beloved titles like Star Fox Zero, which deserves a lot more love then it initially got (seriously, it wasn’t that bad, people), but that’s a review for another day. In terms of the original Star Fox, I have had plenty of experience with this title, being one of the first games that I ever got when I bought a SNES at a flea market, along with Super Mario World and Donkey Kong Country. However, at that point, I was already very familiar with Star Fox 64, which was essentially this game but better, so I didn’t play it too much over that as a result. But, I did decide to do a full playthrough of it recently to give it the time it deserves, and while I still wouldn’t say it is as good as later titles, for being the first game in this series, it holds up pretty damn well. Obviously, there are elements that date it quite a bit, and it isn’t gonna blow you away if you try it out today, but for the time, it was really damn impressive, and it is still a fun time nowadays.
The story is pretty basic for a game like this, where the evil scientist Andross declares war against the planet Corneria, and it is up to the Star Fox team, consisting of Fox McCloud, Falco Lombardi, Peppy Hare, and Slippy Toad to take him and his army down, which works well enough as a plot for the first entry in a series like this, the graphics are….. well, let’s be real, they look like complete gutter trash nowadays, but for the time, this was pretty innovative for the SNES, some of the regular pixelated stuff does still look good, and I’m sure it looked mind blowing at the time, so I will give it credit for that, the music is pretty great, having plenty of action-packed tracks that still sound good to this day, and there were plenty of tracks that would get plenty of remixes later down the road, the control is pretty basic for the kind of game it is, but there are some actions that you could pull off that does make the game stand out from other games, such as turning your plane sideways and performing a barrel roll (or an aileron roll for all of you MatPat cucks out there), and the gameplay is pretty basic as well, being what you would expect from a game like this at the time, but in 3D, and to its credit, it is still fun to play after all these years.
The game is an on-rails 3D space shooter, where you take control of an Arwing piloted by Fox McCloud, take on many different stages while exploring plenty of different pathways of varying difficulty, shoot down many different enemy ships or other types of hostile creatures while trying to stop whatever Andross tries to do on these various planets, gather plenty of different healing items, upgrades to your ship, and bombs throughout to give you a better chance against the many threats that you will face, and take on plenty of ginormous mechanical bosses that will test your dodging and aiming skills to their limit. At its core, a lot of it is very similar to other space shooters, or even other flight simulation games, but aside from the fact that it is all in 3D, there are some things that make it stand out.
One of the biggest aspects of not just this game, but the entire series, would be your three wingmen, who will not only accompany you throughout the game, but will also assist you in dealing with several enemies and talk to you in various instances giving you advice on what to do. However, there are plenty of points throughout the game where you do have to help them out by shooting down enemies that will be gunning them down, which is essential for this game, because if any of your wingmen die, they are dead for the remainder of the game, and you don’t wanna let any of them that aren’t named Slippy die! Obviously, these guys are much more enjoyable and likable in later games, but for this first installment, they are still charming and likable enough, and I like how instead of having voice acting, they just talk in these goofy-ass mumbles, which is funny to listen back to.
Aside from that though, a lot of the charm and appeal of this game is the fact that, again, it is a 3D space shooter on the SNES. Obviously, there are things about it that don’t hold up that well, such as not just with the graphics, but also the fact that the game cannot possibly run without chugging along the entire time at like 15FPS, but again, for the time, it is still pretty impressive, and it can still be fun to play. A lot of the movement does feel very smooth, the shooting feels good, and whenever you do manage to dodge a lot of these obstacles that they aren’t afraid of throwing right in your face, it does feel pretty satisfying. In addition, like I mentioned earlier, there are several pathways you can take when you start the game, each one being at a different difficulty, all ending with you beating the game at Venom. This essentially means you have to play through the game three times in order to fully complete it, which I would usually frown out in a game, but thankfully for this title, there are different levels and things to see in each course, so it does get more interesting and fun as you keep exploring these different courses.
In terms of actual problems that I could have with this game, I think really the only one I could have, which goes without saying, is, again, how dated it is. Not only have there been plenty of sequels to this game that manage to do what this one does significantly better, but there have been plenty of other on-rails shooters in general that are much more appealing and fun to play, so it does make going back to this title much harder. That’s not to say that it isn’t fun, as you can still have a good time with it, but really, there isn’t much reason to go back to it other than if you wanna see where the series began. Aside from that though, the only other real minor complaint I have is, while I did mention that there are new things to discover down every route that you do take in this game, there are some repeated bosses and stages that you will have to take on again based on whatever path you do take. Once again though, that is only a minor complaint, as this thing doesn’t happen too often.
Overall, despite how dated it is and how repetitive it can be at times, the original Star Fox is still a pretty great title from the SNES era, one that is not only super impressive, but also manages to hold up extremely well even to this day. I would definitely recommend it for those who are big fans of the Star Fox franchise, or even those who wanna get into the series, because it is a pretty good place to start. However, for those who are just casual fans of the series, I would say just to stick with Star Fox 64 or some of the later games, as they do provide a similar experience, but obviously with higher quality. But hey, to this game’s credit, there isn’t any other Star Fox game that I know of where you are able to shoot up a slot machine in space to win a bunch of space money. And you also don’t have Slippy screaming your ear off, so that is a plus.
Game #418
I have been a fan of the Star Fox franchise for quite a while now, with me playing the series off and on again for decades now, whether it be with the fan favorite title Star Fox 64, or even with some of the lesser beloved titles like Star Fox Zero, which deserves a lot more love then it initially got (seriously, it wasn’t that bad, people), but that’s a review for another day. In terms of the original Star Fox, I have had plenty of experience with this title, being one of the first games that I ever got when I bought a SNES at a flea market, along with Super Mario World and Donkey Kong Country. However, at that point, I was already very familiar with Star Fox 64, which was essentially this game but better, so I didn’t play it too much over that as a result. But, I did decide to do a full playthrough of it recently to give it the time it deserves, and while I still wouldn’t say it is as good as later titles, for being the first game in this series, it holds up pretty damn well. Obviously, there are elements that date it quite a bit, and it isn’t gonna blow you away if you try it out today, but for the time, it was really damn impressive, and it is still a fun time nowadays.
The story is pretty basic for a game like this, where the evil scientist Andross declares war against the planet Corneria, and it is up to the Star Fox team, consisting of Fox McCloud, Falco Lombardi, Peppy Hare, and Slippy Toad to take him and his army down, which works well enough as a plot for the first entry in a series like this, the graphics are….. well, let’s be real, they look like complete gutter trash nowadays, but for the time, this was pretty innovative for the SNES, some of the regular pixelated stuff does still look good, and I’m sure it looked mind blowing at the time, so I will give it credit for that, the music is pretty great, having plenty of action-packed tracks that still sound good to this day, and there were plenty of tracks that would get plenty of remixes later down the road, the control is pretty basic for the kind of game it is, but there are some actions that you could pull off that does make the game stand out from other games, such as turning your plane sideways and performing a barrel roll (or an aileron roll for all of you MatPat cucks out there), and the gameplay is pretty basic as well, being what you would expect from a game like this at the time, but in 3D, and to its credit, it is still fun to play after all these years.
The game is an on-rails 3D space shooter, where you take control of an Arwing piloted by Fox McCloud, take on many different stages while exploring plenty of different pathways of varying difficulty, shoot down many different enemy ships or other types of hostile creatures while trying to stop whatever Andross tries to do on these various planets, gather plenty of different healing items, upgrades to your ship, and bombs throughout to give you a better chance against the many threats that you will face, and take on plenty of ginormous mechanical bosses that will test your dodging and aiming skills to their limit. At its core, a lot of it is very similar to other space shooters, or even other flight simulation games, but aside from the fact that it is all in 3D, there are some things that make it stand out.
One of the biggest aspects of not just this game, but the entire series, would be your three wingmen, who will not only accompany you throughout the game, but will also assist you in dealing with several enemies and talk to you in various instances giving you advice on what to do. However, there are plenty of points throughout the game where you do have to help them out by shooting down enemies that will be gunning them down, which is essential for this game, because if any of your wingmen die, they are dead for the remainder of the game, and you don’t wanna let any of them that aren’t named Slippy die! Obviously, these guys are much more enjoyable and likable in later games, but for this first installment, they are still charming and likable enough, and I like how instead of having voice acting, they just talk in these goofy-ass mumbles, which is funny to listen back to.
Aside from that though, a lot of the charm and appeal of this game is the fact that, again, it is a 3D space shooter on the SNES. Obviously, there are things about it that don’t hold up that well, such as not just with the graphics, but also the fact that the game cannot possibly run without chugging along the entire time at like 15FPS, but again, for the time, it is still pretty impressive, and it can still be fun to play. A lot of the movement does feel very smooth, the shooting feels good, and whenever you do manage to dodge a lot of these obstacles that they aren’t afraid of throwing right in your face, it does feel pretty satisfying. In addition, like I mentioned earlier, there are several pathways you can take when you start the game, each one being at a different difficulty, all ending with you beating the game at Venom. This essentially means you have to play through the game three times in order to fully complete it, which I would usually frown out in a game, but thankfully for this title, there are different levels and things to see in each course, so it does get more interesting and fun as you keep exploring these different courses.
In terms of actual problems that I could have with this game, I think really the only one I could have, which goes without saying, is, again, how dated it is. Not only have there been plenty of sequels to this game that manage to do what this one does significantly better, but there have been plenty of other on-rails shooters in general that are much more appealing and fun to play, so it does make going back to this title much harder. That’s not to say that it isn’t fun, as you can still have a good time with it, but really, there isn’t much reason to go back to it other than if you wanna see where the series began. Aside from that though, the only other real minor complaint I have is, while I did mention that there are new things to discover down every route that you do take in this game, there are some repeated bosses and stages that you will have to take on again based on whatever path you do take. Once again though, that is only a minor complaint, as this thing doesn’t happen too often.
Overall, despite how dated it is and how repetitive it can be at times, the original Star Fox is still a pretty great title from the SNES era, one that is not only super impressive, but also manages to hold up extremely well even to this day. I would definitely recommend it for those who are big fans of the Star Fox franchise, or even those who wanna get into the series, because it is a pretty good place to start. However, for those who are just casual fans of the series, I would say just to stick with Star Fox 64 or some of the later games, as they do provide a similar experience, but obviously with higher quality. But hey, to this game’s credit, there isn’t any other Star Fox game that I know of where you are able to shoot up a slot machine in space to win a bunch of space money. And you also don’t have Slippy screaming your ear off, so that is a plus.
Game #418
Now my fingers really fucking hurt.
Solid start for the series, but the visuals are obviously hella outdated and the game has a serious problem with offscreen enemies and projectiles that are impossible to see coming. Still, it’s super impressive that they were able to get this behemoth running on the SNES.
Solid start for the series, but the visuals are obviously hella outdated and the game has a serious problem with offscreen enemies and projectiles that are impossible to see coming. Still, it’s super impressive that they were able to get this behemoth running on the SNES.
I find it sad how this 30-year-old, VERY low-poly shoot 'em up made for a 16-bit console still runs way better than recent Pokemon games.
Star Fox released on February 21, 1993 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and is a rail shooter that you play in both first-person and third-person perspectives. The special part about it is that this is a 3D game during a time where this was uncommon, and from the get-go you can tell that what Star Fox does is pretty unique, especially for the platform it released on.
It was developed by Nintendo and Argonaut Software and has turned into a pretty popular series, warranting multiple sequels from Star Fox 64 in 1997 all the way to Star Fox Zero and, I suppose it is worth counting, a sequel to this original Star Fox game called Star Fox 2 released alongside the SNES Classic Edition. Star Fox 2 never ended up releasing back in the day, but it did exist, so it got its debut all these years later, which is pretty fascinating stuff.
In this original Star Fox, you control the character 'Fox' and his spacecraft, the "Arwing" in scrolling 3D environments. You dodge obstacles in the environment, shoot enemy spaceships and take on boss battles in each stage. Before you begin, you can select one of three routes to take to the final boss on a planet called 'Venom'. I took the Level 1 route thinking it was just the first level. Turns out, no, the Level 1 route is simple one of three routes that all lead to the same ending. The difference is that each route has a distinct difficulty, which is a system that allowed the devs to forgo any difficulty options. Personally, I like this a lot because it adds a lot of replayability to the game. Each route takes you through different planets and missions and therefore not only plays more difficult, but simply different in terms of the design of the levels. In turn though, the routes individually are not very long. The main reason why you might take more than a few hours per route is the difficulty, which even on Level 1 is no cakewalk.
That's in large part to how the game plays. The game is undeniably impressive and ahead of its time, but one negative that comes with that is that you will have to compromise. Compromise in Star Fox rears its head through low FPS (10-15) and below-average controls. Low FPS for a flight sim was very common in 1993 and the years before it, and those games usually had even less, so it's not the worst thing here. But just like many of those flight sims, this makes the original Star Fox slightly harder to play today and means it didn't age quite as well as some other games of its time. That said, I didn't have a lot of trouble with the low FPS apart from the parts where many effects on the screen would lead to slowdown.
The poor controls on the other hand I didn't quite get used to until the end of my playthrough. I dislike inverse control schemes in general, so that wasn't great when I had to decide to move up or down within a second, but often I felt the controls not be very responsive, I felt that it was hard to judge whether I was far enough away to evade certain projectiles and figuring out where to aim to actually hit something always took me a second of shooting somewhere (and missing badly) and then adjusting from there, which wasn't quite intuitive.
Issues like these were exacerbated by the fact that sometimes so much action would be on the screen, that projectiles would not be visible until they were very close, leading to a hit that would take quite a lot of health, so expect to die quite a lot of times early on due to things like that. Otherwise though, the polygonal graphics looked good enough here and were generally quite a big deal at the time. Having played dozens of games from its time before this, I can attest to not playing many games that were graphically impressive like this from a technological standpoint.
You also do get used to the controls, so there is that, but it's never feeling great, so I'm not sure if that's something one would necessarily deem a lot of fun at this day and age. I think it's fair to say that it's easy to appreciate Star Fox even today, but don't be surprised if you turn it off after the novelty wears off. If you really get into the boss fights however, which for the most part are well done and fun to tackle, you might get hooked enough to want to see one route through like I did, for which I recommend the first one. Whichever route you take though, you start on the planet Corneria, which has a great soundtrack, so look forward to that, while I myself look forward to playing Star Fox 64 one day, which I hope brings a lot more to the table at a time when 3D graphics were much more common and for the fact that it is the best selling Star Fox game to date.
(This is the 83rd game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
It was developed by Nintendo and Argonaut Software and has turned into a pretty popular series, warranting multiple sequels from Star Fox 64 in 1997 all the way to Star Fox Zero and, I suppose it is worth counting, a sequel to this original Star Fox game called Star Fox 2 released alongside the SNES Classic Edition. Star Fox 2 never ended up releasing back in the day, but it did exist, so it got its debut all these years later, which is pretty fascinating stuff.
In this original Star Fox, you control the character 'Fox' and his spacecraft, the "Arwing" in scrolling 3D environments. You dodge obstacles in the environment, shoot enemy spaceships and take on boss battles in each stage. Before you begin, you can select one of three routes to take to the final boss on a planet called 'Venom'. I took the Level 1 route thinking it was just the first level. Turns out, no, the Level 1 route is simple one of three routes that all lead to the same ending. The difference is that each route has a distinct difficulty, which is a system that allowed the devs to forgo any difficulty options. Personally, I like this a lot because it adds a lot of replayability to the game. Each route takes you through different planets and missions and therefore not only plays more difficult, but simply different in terms of the design of the levels. In turn though, the routes individually are not very long. The main reason why you might take more than a few hours per route is the difficulty, which even on Level 1 is no cakewalk.
That's in large part to how the game plays. The game is undeniably impressive and ahead of its time, but one negative that comes with that is that you will have to compromise. Compromise in Star Fox rears its head through low FPS (10-15) and below-average controls. Low FPS for a flight sim was very common in 1993 and the years before it, and those games usually had even less, so it's not the worst thing here. But just like many of those flight sims, this makes the original Star Fox slightly harder to play today and means it didn't age quite as well as some other games of its time. That said, I didn't have a lot of trouble with the low FPS apart from the parts where many effects on the screen would lead to slowdown.
The poor controls on the other hand I didn't quite get used to until the end of my playthrough. I dislike inverse control schemes in general, so that wasn't great when I had to decide to move up or down within a second, but often I felt the controls not be very responsive, I felt that it was hard to judge whether I was far enough away to evade certain projectiles and figuring out where to aim to actually hit something always took me a second of shooting somewhere (and missing badly) and then adjusting from there, which wasn't quite intuitive.
Issues like these were exacerbated by the fact that sometimes so much action would be on the screen, that projectiles would not be visible until they were very close, leading to a hit that would take quite a lot of health, so expect to die quite a lot of times early on due to things like that. Otherwise though, the polygonal graphics looked good enough here and were generally quite a big deal at the time. Having played dozens of games from its time before this, I can attest to not playing many games that were graphically impressive like this from a technological standpoint.
You also do get used to the controls, so there is that, but it's never feeling great, so I'm not sure if that's something one would necessarily deem a lot of fun at this day and age. I think it's fair to say that it's easy to appreciate Star Fox even today, but don't be surprised if you turn it off after the novelty wears off. If you really get into the boss fights however, which for the most part are well done and fun to tackle, you might get hooked enough to want to see one route through like I did, for which I recommend the first one. Whichever route you take though, you start on the planet Corneria, which has a great soundtrack, so look forward to that, while I myself look forward to playing Star Fox 64 one day, which I hope brings a lot more to the table at a time when 3D graphics were much more common and for the fact that it is the best selling Star Fox game to date.
(This is the 83rd game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
Wait wtf this has aged well?? And is actually fun???
Perhaps the biggest example of being spoiled by a game’s sequel. Star Fox 64 really is just this game but better in every conceivable way. I still appreciate this a lot though, if technology never advanced past 1993 and this was still the latest technology, I’m sure I’d be throughly impressed! However, being born 10 years after this game released makes it a little hard to get used to, simply because I’m so used to the standard of every other game I’ve played that’s released after Star Fox. This feels very slow by comparison. It’s still a good time though, the levels are good and flying the Arwing is still fun. I was disappointed by how many levels force you into a first person view and have you shooting that way, though. While you still control the ship, you don’t move it around in quite the same way, which destroys a lot of what I love about the gameplay of these games.
All in all, it’s still worth a shot, especially with how short it is. At the very least, I appreciate this game a lot for its impact on the industry as a whole. I can’t imagine how crazy this must have been at the time!
All in all, it’s still worth a shot, especially with how short it is. At the very least, I appreciate this game a lot for its impact on the industry as a whole. I can’t imagine how crazy this must have been at the time!
https://youtube.com/watch?v=J5RjssMC-_I&feature=shared
(level 1 route review)
I’m not gonna lie this game has always been in that small subsection of games that I’ve booted up briefly when they dropped on something I can access them and then I don’t touch them forever. I tend to have a “follow my heart” approach when it comes to picking a game to just hang out with (this is a good and pretty annoying thing), well I did not expect to sit down and beat this game in one sitting lmao and my opinion of it drastically changed but I highly respect its design and appreciate it a lot more now honestly.
While having 3D graphics that made me initially question if I truly was a human being with the ability to perceive depth, over time the game’s on rails design and pattern signaling really helped pull it through even with the rather basic vector graphics. I think it says a lot also that this was an early 3D game where Nintendo was not only trying to welcome new players (it’s probably why it’s this easy lol) but also added detail with your allies being in the fight and wildly different boss patterns. A lot of these things were improved on in the sequel Star Fox 64 but here it feels like the glue that kept the vectorized cardboard together, I went from completely wanting to drop this game to being a fan that says enough.
I am taking a damn break from it cause I also have motion sickness now lmao
(level 1 route review)
I’m not gonna lie this game has always been in that small subsection of games that I’ve booted up briefly when they dropped on something I can access them and then I don’t touch them forever. I tend to have a “follow my heart” approach when it comes to picking a game to just hang out with (this is a good and pretty annoying thing), well I did not expect to sit down and beat this game in one sitting lmao and my opinion of it drastically changed but I highly respect its design and appreciate it a lot more now honestly.
While having 3D graphics that made me initially question if I truly was a human being with the ability to perceive depth, over time the game’s on rails design and pattern signaling really helped pull it through even with the rather basic vector graphics. I think it says a lot also that this was an early 3D game where Nintendo was not only trying to welcome new players (it’s probably why it’s this easy lol) but also added detail with your allies being in the fight and wildly different boss patterns. A lot of these things were improved on in the sequel Star Fox 64 but here it feels like the glue that kept the vectorized cardboard together, I went from completely wanting to drop this game to being a fan that says enough.
I am taking a damn break from it cause I also have motion sickness now lmao
Impressive for its time, but that frame rate takes some serious getting used to. And forget about using a romhack to increase it, you're just gonna wind up with a game that's too fast to react to things. Obviously, the game was designed with this frame rate in mind. But I just can't get over that, and would rather play the later Star Foxes instead.
Genuinely pretty fun and charming. I love the blocky visuals and killer music. If the frame rate and draw distance wasn't so bad, this'd easily be one of my favourite SNES games.
The low framerate makes the controls feel sluggish and unresponsive. Star Fox is a neat example of early 3D, but hasn't held up well.
Grew up with Starfox 64, discovered this on emulators years later. Insanely impressive what they were able to do on the SNES here, and the rail shooter gameplay would go on to be significantly improved but the essentials are all here
It's really impressive for the console, really feels like this game is pushing its technical limits, sadly this sometimes make the game feel more janky than it actually is. I could go on, but honestly, other than to see what the SNES was capable of, there isn't a good reason to play this game when 64 and Zero are basically the same game but better
Saw this game was only an hour long and decided to give it a shot one night. Pretty fun 3D shmup, I'm excited to see what the rest of the series has in store. Impressive for the console it was released on, but heavily dated today. Still, I can see why this is so revered in the world of classic video games.
the whole experience is like smoking a blunt filled with gunpowder besides the spider boss, where the blunt is filled with uranium
Why did Nintendo stop publishing arcade-style games? This is immaculate. Nintentubers need more STG in their diet.
playing a game with a budget equal to the gdp of mille lacs county: wow. they really were not able to maintain a solid 60 frames in performance mode. visually stunning, yet it falls short of a true technical marvel… was this not the promise of next gen? our covenant with tech conglomerates to give unto our fle-
playing this game: wow. you can go inside the space ship. (calls my nearest family member) look at this. you can go inside the space ship ! that’s very cool.
playing this game: wow. you can go inside the space ship. (calls my nearest family member) look at this. you can go inside the space ship ! that’s very cool.
In a technology standpoint, this is absolutely astonishing what they could realize in this game, thanks to super FX chip, but in a gameplay front, it kinda aged, specially because of the frame rate that is inconsistent and sometimes it is difficult to see what's in front of you, but it's still a fun game to play from time to time
I've been on a Starfox streak these days, just feeling the urge to replay all of the main games in the franchise for seemingly no apparent reason, something I haven't done since I was in 10th grade.
One cannot talk about Starwing without mentioning the elephant in the room, the Super FX chip for the SNES. What was at the time among the strongest feats in 16-bit console GSUs, we're talking about complex sprite processing and hundreds of polygons being rendered at the same time, in 1993 !!!
It undoubtedly was a technological milestone, was marketed as such and therefore is mostly remembered as a strong tech demo and a fairly decent game. It sure is clunky at times, with low (but surprisingly consistent) framerate making some of the trickiest obstacles even trickier and questionable boss design that usually doesn't go further than "shooting the big orange thingy".
But now, take a closer look.
See how charming the art style is ? While tech demos do age much faster than anything else due to all of them being the definition of "products of their time", Starwing maintains something in its low poly-ness and bright few colors.
Hey, talking about bright colors, while some concessions had to be made given the resources being used for all of the 3D rendering (you did not expect detailed textures did you ?), it also was quite a genius game design compromise, making the game somehow extremely readable for the most part !
Maybe you could glance at those particle effects when destroying anything, or that glorious sound design, or anything you could find.
Starwing is a product of its time, sure, but if anything, that makes it even better. Could we ever burst through 16-bit space again ?
One cannot talk about Starwing without mentioning the elephant in the room, the Super FX chip for the SNES. What was at the time among the strongest feats in 16-bit console GSUs, we're talking about complex sprite processing and hundreds of polygons being rendered at the same time, in 1993 !!!
It undoubtedly was a technological milestone, was marketed as such and therefore is mostly remembered as a strong tech demo and a fairly decent game. It sure is clunky at times, with low (but surprisingly consistent) framerate making some of the trickiest obstacles even trickier and questionable boss design that usually doesn't go further than "shooting the big orange thingy".
But now, take a closer look.
See how charming the art style is ? While tech demos do age much faster than anything else due to all of them being the definition of "products of their time", Starwing maintains something in its low poly-ness and bright few colors.
Hey, talking about bright colors, while some concessions had to be made given the resources being used for all of the 3D rendering (you did not expect detailed textures did you ?), it also was quite a genius game design compromise, making the game somehow extremely readable for the most part !
Maybe you could glance at those particle effects when destroying anything, or that glorious sound design, or anything you could find.
Starwing is a product of its time, sure, but if anything, that makes it even better. Could we ever burst through 16-bit space again ?
Played this for the first time recently and was surprised how genuinely cool it was. Must have been wild to see this back in 1993.
I don't have some deeper analysis like I usually like to give - I just never knew the OG starfox slapped this hard. Not usually big on rail shooters but this one makes me ooze. Especially hot on original hardware~
I don't have some deeper analysis like I usually like to give - I just never knew the OG starfox slapped this hard. Not usually big on rail shooters but this one makes me ooze. Especially hot on original hardware~
For some reason I had a really hard time getting used to the control scheme (any of the control schemes really) and would play the practice level over and over again and get really frustrated. Eventually it just clicked and I had a lot of fun breezing through the levels. There are still a lot of issues, notably framerate problems and obstacles popping up out of nowhere right in front of your arwing. You really get the feeling that this was pushing the SNES hardware to the absolute limit. But despite, or maybe because of all that, there is an irresistible charm to the abstract geometric aesthetic. It really feels like those retro-futuristic 80s sci fi targeting computers and shit in Star Wars. And the soundtrack and sound effects really elevate that aesthetic.
I can acknowledge that for the time, this shit was VERY impressive to see on the SNES, but MAN this aged like shit, it still technically feels playable but it is just not a fun time to go through unless you grew up with it.
This one is better than 64 by virtue of soundtrack alone
Pure arcadey on rails fun. The original Star Fox its quite primitive by today's standards, but if you play the Star Fox EX hack with framerate improvements and QoL features to make it closer to Star Fox 64, this game holds up quite well. Besides Star Fox 64, there hasn't been an on rails 3D shooter that has felt as satisfying as Star Fox. Everything about this game and series is great. The gameplay, the music the characters. No need to play this one since Star Fox 64 is essentially a remake, but the EX hack is definitely worth playing.
I think we were visiting family out of state when we finally picked up our own SNES from a pawn shop with two games, this one and SMW. Fond memories of originally playing this hooked up to a motel TV. Would love to eventually try out Star Fox EX.
The animals drive better than me
I appreciate Star Fox as a game for its time in the 90's, but as a modern-day experience, it falls flat due to its controls aging poorly. This game feels like a custody battle between you and the game controls.
Polygons
Haven't played since I was real young, so my rating is purely based on my memories of how much I liked it then...
This game hurts my eyes. I guess it's kinda cool for an early "3D" game. Would probably like it more if I was like 40 years old.