Star Fox 2 - the Whole Story

[badinsults]

I've spent about two months researching the unreleased game, Star Fox 2, and now my article is ready (http://www.snescentral.com/article.php?id=0077)! I found out the origins of the two prototype roms out there, and I hope to dispel some of the misinformation that has come to pass about the game.

[Thrillo]

Fascinating article, many thanks for creating it!

I can't believe it's been 8 years since the beta was released; I wonder if Nintendo's reluctance to release it on Wii is due to copyright/licensing issues with Argonaut.

[Kiddo]

Just read the article. Thanks for clarifying some things.

I recall hearing a rumor of some sort that some hackers were continuing to hack with the game a bit (Perhaps to try to restore the Multiplayer mode?), but that was years ago and it seems nothing has come of it. :(
Do you happen to know anything on that?

[Leo_A]

Fascinating article, many thanks for creating it!

I can't believe it's been 8 years since the beta was released; I wonder if Nintendo's reluctance to release it on Wii is due to copyright/licensing issues with Argonaut.

We haven't seen any Super FX titles on the Virtual Console, so that's also another likely contributing factor.

[Berserker]

Excellent work. Thanks for sharing this, Evan!

I think this case in particular really highlights the deeper value of emulation, as well as rom hacking. Here you can safely say that, without them, we would have been completely deprived of a real gem.

[squirrelnut]

Amazing, good work!

[badinsults]

Fascinating article, many thanks for creating it!

I can't believe it's been 8 years since the beta was released; I wonder if Nintendo's reluctance to release it on Wii is due to copyright/licensing issues with Argonaut.

Star Fox 2 was a first party title, Argonaut really was just hired to help with the development.

I can't imagine that emulation issues cause the game to not be on the Virtual Console, as most SNES emulators do a good job emulating the Super FX chip. I am pretty sure that Nintendo owns the patents on the Super FX chip as well, so that shouldn't be an issue either (the patents probably run out in a year or two anyways).

As for hacking it to bring back the multiplayer mode, while it is true that the multiplayer code might still be in the final beta, reactivating it might prove difficult. According to the Aeon Genesis hackers, it was enough of a struggle just to remove the debug code and insert the translation.

[Mayhem]

Great article there... makes me hunger to get a repro a bit more... would like a nice CIB English version... or perhaps a CIB Japanese style SFC release.

[ProgrammingAce]

I remember back before the turn of the millennium when the alpha couldn't be emulated for crap. I recall having two different roms of the alpha back then, one played better then the other (and may have had different things in it). Could there have been another source of an alpha rom, did someone try to hack some bug fixes into the real alpha, or am i remembering wrong?

At the time, i was under the impression they were two different builds. Up until i read this article, i thought those two builds were the alpha and beta. I didn't realize there was another release in 2002. I haven't used an SNES emulator since before 2002, so i know it's not that rom. I'm not misremembering the date because the laptop i was playing the roms on was stolen in 2001...

[Rob2600]

Nice article. Like James the Angry Video Game Nerd said, the SNES Star Fox games had better graphics and playability than Cybermorph on the "64-bit" Atari Jaguar.

[savageone]

Reminds me I've had the idea of getting a SF2 repro cart on the back burner for way too long. Why do they have to cost so much? :( Really great write up though, found the majority of it very interesting.

[Gentlegamer]

"Although several aspects of Star Fox 2 made it into Star Fox 64, this game has a much different feel and seems more intense."

Does it also have the arcade feel? ;)

[badinsults]

I wouldn't say it has an arcade feel, more of a "race against the clock" feel. If you spend too much time on a stage or fighting a Star Wolf fighter, Corneria can get bombarded by the enemy. Until you get the battleships destroyed, you really can't let off the pace.

[fahlim003]

Good read, Evan. Well done. Nice cover all bases type article without a single section overwhelming the rest. Does justice to a broader scope of the whole story, meaning, if I was new to the story myself I think upon reading your article I'd feel confident with sharing that information abroad.

Star Fox 2 is awesome.

[ShinobiMan]

I'm very happy you brought this game to my attention. I had NO idea the game was completed and released as a ROM in 2004. How I went so many years without playing this lost treasure I'll never know. I waited eagerly for this game to be released back in 1995, and was sorely disappointed when it was canceled.

As for the game itself, it's a lot of fun, and unique too! I think the developers were very ambitious changing the gameplay like they did. The game is way to easy on Normal, but Expert is proving to be quite a challenge!

[Voliko]

Great article, very informative.

[joshnickerson]

Great article, many kudos to you good sir.



Does it also have the arcade feel? ;)

It doesn't even COMPARE!

[Aussie2B]

Very interesting article, and kudos on the extensive research to put a piece like this together.

Seems like a lot of interesting details about the games of the 1995 Winter CES are surfacing as of late, what with this article and also the video footage of the canceled Virtual Boy games. Funny how a lackluster CES back then now makes for the most fascinating and mysterious CES to those interested in video game history these days. Honestly, I'd love to see an article going into all of the canned games of this CES. So many quality yet ill-fated games.