Gaming Memories: Starfox

Haven't done one of those in a while... (I'm doing doing this one because the game I'm planning to cover next is taking me longer than I expected.) Anyway!

Starfox

Super Nintendo Entertainment System

March 1993

The Super Nintendo was an impressive console on its own for the time, home to many technological advances. With the gift of hindsight, it feels like where the greatest updates happened. Most distinctly, the in-between from an all-2D to an all-3D. Most games on the SNES were still pretty clearly 16-bit, 2D entries. Some games played around; Donkey Kong Country is not any less impressive nowadays when you take into consideration its release date, but the trickery of turning all 3D assets into 2D sprites to create the perfect illusion was genius. Super Mario Kart had 3D tracks, but the racers were still obviously 2D. And then, we had the first actual 3D games.

And in that field, Starfox was a pioneer. Like a glimpse into the future. Its hardware had to be tailor-made for it, too, requiring an extra processing chip in the cartridge to make these graphics run right. And do they? Well... We do have true polygonal 3D on the screen, but everything is cut down to allow the console to run it; lowered framerate and resolution, and the models are about as simple as can get, but IT WORKS. The more demanding parts of the game cut on those elements even furtther.

Starfox is the story of the Lylat System's Fox McCloud, who is sent on a mission with his colleagues Falco Lombardi, Peppy Hare and Slippy Toad (the latter of whom keeps getting into trouble and we hate him for it). The task is to deal with the ominous Dr. Andross, who has his sights on multi-planetary conquest. The gameplay involves shooting at threats by aiming at their red-and-yellow weak points. The boss battles are fairly impressive considering the technology.

The structure of the game is also quite odd, split into three routes of differing difficulty, letting you have a tailor-made experience based on what you think you can do. (Did I ever play any other set of levels than on Easy? Maybe I did try them, failed pitifully, and stayed in my lane. I was young, after all.) Top this off with two bonus levels, and you get something special. It always ends in a fight with Andross, and that pristine white polygonal face with bright eyes, spitting white bricks at your Arwing, is still to this day one of the most iconic sights in the franchise. I did defeat this guy.

Starfox secured a spot for itself in fans' hearts, and would only grow from there, though later entries in the franchise would experiment more with genre and tech (...not always to the best results, as the Starfix game on the Wii U can attest). We even recently got Starfox 2, finally "released" first on the Super NES Classic Edition, then later on the Switch. For what it's worth, I keep fond memories of that one, and it's one of those games I grew up with that I'd happily go back in a heartbeat to see if I can fare better... if I didn't already have a backlog of 230+ games to get through, that is...