Star Fox was one of the first games I had on my Super Nintendo, but I'd never before beaten the game! With the Super NES Classic Edition now safely in my home, I started to beat the first level to unlock Star Fox 2, and then enjoyed it so much I just finished the game up right then and there.
Star Fox is the story of Fox McCloud. He's a fox and he shoots down bad guys in his sweet space ship, and that's about as much as you need to know about the story!
Star Fox features the now legendary Super FX chip that enabled the Super Nintendo to reached graphical heights that would be otherwise impossible on the console. Examples of games using the expensive chip included Star Fox, Star Fox 2, and Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, but it's pretty uncommon in games in the library.
The game uses the Super FX chip to excellent effect in creating a fully polygonal 3D rail shooter experience on the SNES, which would be impossible without the chip. The game looks dated in that no one would make a game that looks like it today, but like Super Mario 64, dated doesn't mean ugly, or that people shouldn't make games like this anymore. Star Fox is actually remarkably beautiful, with huge objects that fly past you, lovely colors on screen, and distinct and visually appealing enemies to fight.
The game play is very basic, but fun. You steer the ship around the screen while shooting your lasers and bombs you pick up along the way. You can destroy objects or make riskier path choices to get upgrades, but the game is generally very linear. There are a few distinctions that separate Star Fox from it's rail shooter brethren such as Star Wars Arcade. You can now increase your throttle and hit the break to shoot Fox past enemies, or to keep from flying into them. This is mostly useful during boss battles as the bosses fly towards you, necessitating more mobility than would typically be seen among rail shooters. I also really enjoy that if you damage your ship in the right areas, you can knock off wings, reducing the mobility and firepower of your ship.
The levels are plenty long enough, and the game will take around 45 minutes to complete, but this is a nice touch. As the game doesn't have a save feature, 45 minutes is about as long as you'd like in the game. If it were longer, you'd like a save feature, but you don't feel cheated by the game's length, particularly as there are three difficulties to play through. Each difficulty doesn't just change the toggles on number of lives, bombs, firepower, shields, etc., it actually gives you a completely different set of stages to play through! This great increases the replay value of the game, and gives the game far more than it's 45 minutes of fun in the sun.
The game is generally excellent, but it isn't without its weaknesses. Some aspects of the game haven't aged terribly well, including the shooting mechanic. Rather than having a separate mechanism for shooting your lasers, they just shoot directly in front of you, making it very challenging to shoot and evade damage at the same time. This can cause the boss battles to drag on for some time, as the windows in which to deal damage are small. They largely designed the game around this function, however, so it's not a huge deal.
The technical challenge of creating this game on the SNES shows, too. There are times with fairly large amounts of slowdown, but it's not quite to Mega Man 3 levels. Most of the slowdown times are during complex and detailed cutscenes, so it at least doesn't affect gameplay much.
Star Fox is a fine effort and a joy to play, and laid the groundwork for 3D console gaming in a way that I think a lot of people reserve for Super Mario 64 and Tomb Raider. It's like Space Harrier (on the Genesis), only fun! I'd highly recommend you take this one for a spin. I'll give it a 9.2/10.
Next up in my console series of What I'm Playing is another SNES game that's been in the backlog for a while. If you can't guess this one, you need to turn in your gaming card.
-TRO
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