Gotta love how they used puppets as their artwork.
You could only imagination the excitement a 6 year old kid like me had when he first heard of this game in Nintendo Power magazine. To top it off, I was interested in all things outer space, so I was extremely hyped for this game. Nintendo and outer space combined? Sign me up. At the time, I couldn't afford it. The game had been out for a week, so I was a bit disappointed at the time since I had not played it yet. During that entire week, commercials were playing nearly non-stop...
Pure retro awesomeness!
One evening, my mother woke me and wanted to show me something. What she had in her Blockbuster video bag surprised me. She had rented Star Fox for me! That event would forever be etched into mind. To this day, every time I think of Star Fox, it brings nostalgic memories of waking up that night.
The moment I popped the game in, I was in awe at how amazing these 3D visuals were in the Star Wars styled intro. Remember: This was the first time I had seen 3D on my console in my room. This was a special moment in my life that I could never forget. I actually felt like I was in outer space! It was amazing for a kid my age to be witnessing this historical moment in gaming. I felt like I was writing history as I played it.
When it showed the Lylat System map, I was in amazement. The game felt like a complete universe. It felt much more massive in scope than it really was. I remember staring at the map screen for a few minutes and soaking up the music and cool effects like the spinning planets and occasional shooting star. Upon starting the game on the normal route, I quickly realized how difficult the game was. I was not used to 3D games, so it is understandable. It is still a tough game today, mainly because of the extremely low and choppy frame rate and unfair balance. Even if it is a difficult game, I still enjoy it. I eventually beat it on all it's difficulties over the years since it's release.
My favorite stage: The Asteroid Belt
The Lylat System
The music was
also amazing. Everytime I hear any of the music from this game, it
takes me back to 1993. Depending on the level, it gives you the feeling
of being deep in the vastness of outer space or on a strange uncharted
planet. Here are two of my favorite songs from Star Fox...
Pure awesome. I actually like the music in this game than in any of the other Star Fox games. Definitely one of the greatest video game soundtracks.
Looking back, I can honestly say that I was a lucky kid. I was right there in the middle of it: the early days of 3D gaming to it being the norm a few years later when consoles were powerful enough to produce 3D without extra add on chips or loopholes in programming. I admit that Star Fox is not a perfect game, and it does have flaws, mainly it's frame rate and slightly laggy controls. It was also a early 3D game, so it suffers from the same thing that most early 3D games suffer from, in that they don't age as well as 2D video games. It is very understandable though, since it was limited by the 16-bit SNES hardware. What Nintendo and Argonaut Software pulled off was more than impressive. Even with that said, any real gamer should never judge a game by it's visuals, but rather by it's gameplay and it does that really well.
There is no doubt that this is a very important game in the history of video games. Many modern video games owe alot to this masterpiece. Star Fox is definitely one of my favorite video games of all time. To this day, I still have fond memories of spending hours taking down Andross' forces. It's something I'll never forget. Leave it to Nintendo to create a outer space classic.
