After the success of Star Fox, a sequel was bound to be made on the SNES, and Nintendo was going to use the new Super FX 2 chip to do so much more. Yoshi's Island, Winter Gold and the SNES port of Doom were the only three released games to take advantage of the chip. And the sequel to a tech demo was going to be the final game to use the Super FX 2 Chip.
This was the once unfortunate tale of Star Fox 2 (スターフォックス2 Sutā Fokkusu Tsū), developed by Nintendo and Argonaut Software and published by Nintendo, it was released in…well that’s the thing, it was never officially released (wait for it). But let’s see what we have here anyway.
Andross is back and is completely vengeful and once again attacking Corneria, complete with battleships, missiles and an enemy team, Star Wolf. General Pepper once again calls for Star Fox, now with two new recruits, Fay and Miyu. They have to defeat the evil forces of Andross before they completely destroy Corneria.
In terms of characters, you can now pick any of the pilots from the Star Fox team to play as, Fox, Falco, Peppy, Slippy and the new characters, Fay and Miyu. You can pick one and a partner will be selected for you at random. Each character control the same but they have different stats, meaning some characters are more balanced, some have better attacks but are weaker and can be damaged easily, but then there’s the characters that are the opposite, where your attacks are weaker but you’re a toughie.
You start with a map, complete with a set of planets; the main objective is to protect the planet Corneria. You must use a pointer to point where the Star Fox team should travel next, sometimes Andross will launch a missile at the planet Corneria, you can travel there to shoot it down or go and do something else, Corneria can take some damage, but you should do your best to protect the planet and should the damage go to 100%, the planet is gone.
There will be planets or Space Stations. In planets, you need to drop on a switch to activate a base and go in there and take down the source of its power, and this is where the Walker is introduced, turning your Arwing into a walking AT-AT from Star Wars and it’s mind-blowing, it now feels like a full-3D game, but the controls are quite finicky, I mean you can turn around with L and R but it feels clunky but I’ll forgive it since this was quite the experimental feat and I think they pulled it off well for what the SNES can do. When you travel to take down a Space Station, go inside and shoot whatever you need to shoot to continue on, go to the source and BOOM, you leave the explosion, a job well done, but it ain’t done yet. And that’s pretty much it until everything is destroyed, leaving Andross quaking in his boots.
But there’s more where that came from, as Star Wolf, the team rival of Star Fox, come from nowhere and attack them, so you need to defeat them in dogfights in space, it’s intense in the hardest difficulties but they’re fun and you show them who the better team are, the bloody gits.
The game is for the most part about strategy, though it isn’t the deepest representation of that element. In terms of difficulty, there are three with Normal, Hard and Expert and Normal should be the easy mode because it REALLY is easy, try Hard or even Expert to get some true Star Fox action. And even then, if you’re an experienced Star Fox player, even the Expert mode can be a piece of cake. I mean, you have to protect Corneria from evil forces and that should be heart-pounding, but you can easily protect Corneria without the planet being completely destroyed.
In terms of gameplay, minus the Walker, it’s more or less the same, but now you have a reticle and a lock-on blast, where you hold the shoot button, target your enemy and let it go, and the enemies will take extra damage. And THANK GOODNESS for this as it makes fights less awkward and more natural; I can have the knowledge of knowing what I’m shooting at. You also have All-Range Mode, where you can fly whether you like to shoot down enemies; this occurs during the Missile chases and protecting Satellite stations.
The graphics and level design are much better, there’s more detail, there’s backgrounds, and despite being dated, it’s a much better looking game than the first one. The music is OK, but it’s not as good as the first game.
Overalll, Star Fox 2 fun, but it’s short, easy but I enjoyed it nonetheless. As a sequel, it improves upon what was done in the first game and added much needed mechanics to make it more than a supposed tech-demo. I recommend giving it a go.
Star Fox 2 was going to be released for the SNES, but was suddenly cancelled at the last minute. Why? Shigeru Miyamoto. Apparently, due to the Nintendo 64 soon to be released at the time, he wanted to give the series a true fresh start and so cancelled a game that was pretty much finished and instead release a fully 3D Star Fox game. The game I played was a leaked alpha ROM with an English translation patch.
BUT, according to Star Fox 2 programmer Dylan Cuthbert, he says that there is in fact a complete version of Star Fox 2, which he got to take a look at during the development of Star Fox Command and this was the finished version with many elements that weren’t in the alpha or beta versions. Unfortunately, it can’t be released for legal reasons. So the game I played barely scratched the surface of what the game truly was, and I don’t know if we ever will. Maybe one day, someone will leak it out onto the internet by accident and we will grab it as soon as possible and Nintendo will get annoyed and will try and destroy many websites to prevent it from spreading, without them knowing that you can’t delete anything from the internet because once it’s there, it won’t go away.
Well that’s a shame, because I believe what Nintendo holds is one of the best games for the SNES, and this won’t be Miyamoto’s first mistake and I’ll explain this once I get to one of the Star Fox games.
If you want to try out what we have so far, it’s on the internet for you to find.
A couple of years after I wrote this (I'm not kidding)...
HOLY SHIT! IT GOT OFFICIALLY RELEASED!
Yep, thanks to the Super Nintendo Mini that was released last year, Nintendo decided to finally release a complete version of this game to the shock and awe of many Nintendo fans. And since I have a way of playing this, it's time to give it another go.
The game is near enough the same as what I played ages ago but there have been some changes. First off is the difficulty, we still have Normal, Hard and Expert, but Normal has jumped in difficulty, but not to the point of annoying, think of it as Level 1 difficulty from the original Star Fox game, it's good but it did take me by surprise.
For some reason, they omitted the lock-on feature...well not really, it's now a power-up, but without it, the dogfights go back to being sluggish, but it does increase the difficulty. I'll miss it, but I can understand that the game needed balance. Another annoying feature is the lack of a third-person mode...it what I would say if I did any research since you have to use the pause menu to switch to it mid-dogfight since hitting select was too hard for newer players.
So what else...erm, they fixed a few bugs, translated it much better. And well, I'm not saying I don't have a SNES Mini, I may have one, maybe I do. I got a ROM from the internet, and played it on an emulator and the game runs smooth like butter. And for some reason, if you play it on an actual SNES Mini, it chugs like hell. In fact, any game that worked with the Super FX chip 1 & 2 have framerate issues. So I was going to moan about IGN because of this, but they were half-right after all...I will however tell IGN to go do one for saying it deserved to be cancelled.
So...I'm kind of stuck in a bind, I can't exactly recommend a ROM version that came with the system...OK, so for the sake of legality, all I can say is purchase a SNES Mini (preferably a non-scalped one) and play that version...I'm not saying where you can get the ROM or if you have it, but if you have a SNES Mini and the ROM, then it's OK. Now I'm going to Star Fox 64 before I get in trouble.
You can get the game and more on the Super Nintendo Mini.
