Star Fox

1. I had finished off my Super Nintendo backlog long before I acquired Star Fox a couple of months ago. It's a game I remembered playing as a kid, and even beating, and I've long felt that it deserved a place in my own library. When it was left out of our recent gametimebro Super Nintendo Hall of Fame entirely, I figured I owed it another shot. Was I overrating the game in my own memory, or were the rest of the bros wrongly not giving it a fair shake?

2. Star Fox wasn't even originally envisioned as a full-fledged game, let alone a franchise. Instead, Nintendo wanted to develop a space-based rail shooter with a new piece of hardware called the Super FX chip. Only with this additional hardware in the cartridge was the Super Nintendo capable of real time polygon rendering. Argonaut Games was tasked with developing the chip, and also co-developing Star Fox. Only later on in development did Nintendo have the forethought to turn the space pilots into anthropomorphic animals - a decision that would pay off in spades down the line, particularly for diversity within the Super Smash Bros. series.

3. I never really loved Star Fox 64. Liked it, but didn't understand why so many people absolutely loved it. But after playing through this 1993 game, I can't look back on that 1997 game without anything but a sense of awe. Comparing the two and noting that only four years went by between the pair makes Star Fox 64 look, well, pretty damn impressive, to say the least.

4. Star Fox was clunky and ugly, to say the least. It's not charmingly dated as much as it is almost unplayable. It's got a slow frame rate and a headache-inducing number of flashing planes zipping around. On the other hand, it's fairly easy and incredibly quick. Keith, J, and I got four-fifths of the way through it yesterday despite having no understanding of the controls or gameplay mechanics heading in. Keith even found a secret wormhole shortcut of sorts by attempting to kamikaze into an asteroid that looked like the evil moon from Majora's Mask. The brevity alone may make this worth playing today for anyone who missed out 22 years ago.

5. Really though, there aren't a lot of reasons to play Star Fox today from a sheer gameplay perspective. It's sluggish and slow and hideous to look at, far more so than other early 3D games on the PlayStation and the Nintendo 64. All the same, the game was a milestone for console gaming, and if it wasn't the first example of real-time 3D rendering, it was at least the first one with any sort of popularity or staying power. As a game, Star Fox is garbage by modern standards, but it makes for a great history lesson.