Star Fox (Super Nintendo)

Star Fox

Developer(s) – Nintendo EAD & Argonaut Software

Publisher(s) – Nintendo

Director – Katsuya Eguchi

Producer – Shigeru Miyamoto

PEGI – 3

Designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Takaya Imamura, Star Fox, or Starwing as it was known in Europe due to copyright issues, Star Fox launched yet another successful Nintendo franchise. The game received commercial and critical acclaim upon release. Including an award for best shooter of 1993 by Electronic Gaming Monthly. As a kid, I thought much less of this game. But after revisiting it a few times over the last few years, my opinion of it has improved vastly. And I consider it a must-have for anyone who may own a Super Nintendo.

Graphics – 8/10

The first Super Nintendo cartridge to make use of the revolutionary Super FX chip, Star Fox was the first 3D video game I ever laid eyes on. And as a kid, it at least captivated me in this respect. As I alluded to earlier, I would also go on to learn about the various references to Japanese folklore that are present within this game. The four main characters are based on four well-known Japanese stories. Which I wrote about in greater depth in a previous article.

Gameplay – 9/10

The objective of the game is simply to get from A to B like many others. But it plays out much differently from the archetypical 2D platforming games that took precedence at that time. It was a rail-shooting game. This required players to fly through a multitude of different dangers and obstacles. Shooting down as many enemies as possible to accumulate as high a score as they possibly could. Though it took me too much time to realize what a positive change from the norm it was for the longest time, I would eventually come back to it frequently after religiously playing its sequel; Lylat Wars.

Controls – 9/10

Though there isn’t anything wrong with the game’s control scheme in the conventional sense, what weighs it down significantly is the extremely slow frame rate. Since the Super FX chip was inside the cartridge, the console still had difficulty running it. Giving it about the same frame rate as Bubsy 3D. Though the controls of that game were far more annoying, and harder to get to grips with. It all depended largely on how much was on the screen. And how much graphical information the console had to process at any one time, which was usually a lot.

Lifespan – 7/10

Though one playthrough can take up to an hour tops, multiple playthroughs can present multiple challenges. Since the game is actually non-linear to a certain extent. Players have the option of changing course depending on their preference of difficulty, giving the game a fair bit of replayability. And making it last slightly longer than what the average was at that time.

Storyline – 7/10

The story of the game follows the members of the Star Fox team, Fox, Peppy, Slippy, and Falco on their mission to free the Lylat System from the Venomian army. And their leader Andross. Though the basic structure of the story was extremely typical of most other video game stories at the time, it was, of course, kept fresh by the conceptual design of the scenery, and style. And design of the characters themselves, as well as their dialogue-driven displays of personality throughout. These principles would be carried on and further developed in further games. But it was in this era where it will have stood out most, I think; especially as the idea was extremely new at the time.

Originality – 8/10

Most of everything about this game is original, from the conceptual design to the gameplay to the graphical rendering techniques to the basic story structure. It was a shining example of Nintendo wanting to extensively innovate as they did throughout the third and fourth generations of gaming, which would go on to inspire the creation of many different games in the future, leaving behind a long legacy that would be renewed by the likes of Star Fox Zero and Star Fox Guard.

Happii

In summation, Star Fox is undoubtedly one of the greatest games on the Super Nintendo, and I would highly recommend it. Though I believe the sequel would improve on this to a massive extent, it served as more than a mere template for greater things to come.

Score

48/60

8/10 (Very Good)

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