Star Fox

Shelved sequel

Argonaut Software and Nintendo had almost finished the first sequel of the game, Star Fox 2 for the SNES, when the project was shelved due to the imminent release of the N64. Years later, several ROM images of the game made it to the emulation scene, and eventually patches were created, which deleted the developer tools and translated the game to English. The game was officially released in 2017 as part of the SNES Classic Edition.

Development

Star Fox started out as merely a technical demo for the SuperFX chip programmed by Argonaut Software, but Nintendo liked the demo so much that they made a full game out of it. It took approximately 37,440 hours to program the game. (Sources: Nintendo, World Features Syndicate)

Inspiration

It's quite obvious that much of the look, feel, and sound of Star Fox was inspired by Star Wars. Also, the way you blow up the Atomic Core bosses is straight out of the Death Star battle in Return of the Jedi.

Intro

The launch sequence shown when entering the first level features the voice of Dan Owsen (also heard during the Super Metroid introduction).

The sound effects and music played during this sequence make it difficult to hear the dialog, and inaccurate emulation of the game's FX chip results in a significant portion being chopped off (the scene progresses too fast). This has been the case since the advent of FX chip emulation and it has led to misinterpretation and inaccuracies.

The full, correct, dialog is: "Emergency! Emergency! [first pause] Emergency! Emergency! [second pause] Incoming enemy fighters. Prepare for launch."

Title

In Europe, the original name Star Fox was changed to Star Wing due to legal reasons. This is often attributed to the Atari 2600 game Star Fox, but it is more likely that the home computer game Starfox from 1987 (called The Rubicon Alliance in the US) was the problem. Both the SNES and Atari 2600 Star Fox were released in the USA with no reported issues.

Awards

• GamePro
  • Vol.6, Iss.2 - Shoot-em-up Game of the Year 1993
• Electronic Gaming Monthly
  • June 1993 (Issue #47) - Game of the Month
  • February 2006 (Issue #200) - #115 out of 200 of the "Greatest Games of Their Time"
• Power Play
  • Issue 02/1994 - Best Super NES Game of 1993

Information also contributed by Big John WV, Echidna Boy, Terok Nor, Julian Turner, Neville and Tiago Jaques