I played Star Fox (SNES) for the first time.
Hi, Star Fox community. I just finished playing the original Star Fox through SNES Classics on my Switch. Since I don’t have the NSO Expansion Pack, I can’t play Star Fox 64, so I thought I’d try out the groundbreaking first game on SNES.
With the new Switch 2 game coming out in June, I decided to finally dabble in this series by playing one of the classic entries. It took about 5 runs over 3.5 hours to beat Level 1, but I had a good time with this game.
My Curiosity
Normally, I’m an RPG guy since my favorite Nintendo series are Xenoblade Chronicles and Fire Emblem, but Star Fox is something I always kept my eye on for years due to its weird yet fascinating development history. Plus, I watch plenty of content creators who like Star Fox.
Despite Star Fox 64 selling 4 million units—which is more than the highest-selling Metroid, Pikmin, or Xenoblade game—the series never found any consistent success after that one game. Usually, people talk about Star Fox among “dead” franchises like F-Zero or Kid Icarus, but none of those series had a game as commercially successful as Star Fox 64.
A joke I’ve seen is that Star Fox is the video game equivalent of “peaked in high school.” The series peaked in 1997 with 4 million units sold only to fail to recapture that glory in the ensuing decades.
Of the 4 games to sell at least 1 million units—Star Fox 64 (4 mil), Star Fox (SNES) (2.99 mil), Star Fox Adventures (1.82 mil), & Star Fox 64 3D (1.07 mil)—3 of the 4 are some version of the Lylat Wars, and Adventures sold 1.82 million because it came directly after Star Fox 64. It’s crazy how much *64* overshadows everything.
My Experience
Star Fox on SNES is such a technical marvel for attempting early 3D graphics. It does run into frame rate issues on Venom, but it’s more than understandable since it was a revolutionary attempt at 3D on 2D hardware. It’s funny how the basic polygons are what gave the Arwing its iconic design that has stuck for 30+ years.
While it took several runs to get to the end, I can see the arcade appeal of the series—playing through levels multiple times to become more efficient. I normally dislike shooters (both first-person and third-person), but rail shooters are very different from typical shooters since I don’t have to worry about 3D movement or any precise aiming inputs you’d normally see in a Call of Duty.
My only experience with rail shooters has been through minigames in the Yakuza series: the spearfishing minigame in Yakuza 6, Space Harrier at the in-game SEGA arcades, and the House of the Dead parody arcade game called Kamuro of the Dead.
As a complete newbie to rail shooters that aren’t minigames in Yakuza, I played Level 1. In my 1st run, I died at Stage 2 (Asteroid). In my 2nd run, I died at Stage 4 (Meteor). I was so close to defeating Andross on my 3rd run until I got a Game Over after using up my 2 credits (continues).
To my shame, I didn’t realize until the 4th run that you had to tap the shoulder buttons twice to do the iconic barrel roll, which lets you survive enemy lasers. When I simply pressed L or R in earlier runs, it only let me do sharp turns, so that was how I thought the game wanted me to dodge attacks. Basically, I got to Andross on the 8th life (out of 9) by pure dodging with no barrel rolls. Honestly, I’m proud of myself for making it that far considering the circumstances.
Unfortunately, I did worse in my 4th run and died to the boss before Andross, but my 5th run was the god run where I only died twice. That 5th run was also when I finally learned about 1-Ups. After accidentally getting an extra life without knowing how, I looked online for the game’s manual and learned about the 3 floating triangular objects you need to shoot to spawn a 1-Up.
I’m glad the game is as short as it needs to be since it’s pretty hard for newcomers. Considering the new game will have cutscenes between stages, I’m extremely glad it will have unlimited continues in Normal. Accessibility options are always a good thing to reach a wider audience.
Finally, I want to praise the music by Hajime Hirasawa. It’s unfortunate he never composed another game after this one, but his Corneria theme is amazing. I love the synth-driven aesthetic of this OST as it gives the game a futuristic action atmosphere.
My Hopes
While I may not have played Star Fox 64 quite yet, I can tell just through Star Fox (SNES) that this series has a neat appeal. Furry sci-fi is a cool aesthetic, and there’s so much potential for these games to have a gripping narrative in addition to the rail shooter gameplay.
While Star Fox 64 may get all the attention, Star Fox (SNES) is still incredibly influential to this day. The new game on Switch 2 not only uses a similar logo to the SNES game but also redesigned the characters to resemble the puppets from the SNES cover art. As a Fire Emblem fan, I do hope the new *Star Fox* on Switch 2 becomes the breakout game for your franchise like how Awakening was for mine.
No Fire Emblem game ever sold a million units until Awakening sold 2.37 million, which not only saved the franchise from death but also increased its popularity to much higher levels than previously possible. Now, the best-selling game is Three Houses at 4.12 million units as of December 2022 (so probably much more now), and it has a mobile gacha game in Heroes that has earned over 1 billion USD in revenue.
With Fox appearing in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie and having a new game coming out, I’m rooting for you all to see your beloved franchise enjoy the success that should’ve come 20 to 30 years ago. If the first movie was the launching pad for a Donkey Kong revival, then perhaps the second movie will be the launching pad for a Star Fox revival.
I love that the new game will have cinematic cutscenes. I’m used to that in Xenoblade and Fire Emblem, so it’s about time Star Fox got that treatment. Plus, we need a sequel to see Krystal in 4K.