Star Fox

Long before Star Fox disappointed again and again with genre shifts and half-baked game design, before Star Fox 64 solidified its position as a recurring Nintendo franchise, and before even Donkey Kong Country stunned the world with pre-rendered CGI, the original Star Fox captivated the gaming populace with polygonal graphics. The gameplay was great too, mind, but as this was the first Nintendo game to primarily utilize polygons, the tease we previously witnessed with Zelda: A Link to the Past's opening Triforce had been realized as a living dream. We had taken our first step into the future, so to speak, and the proof lied in the 3D Arwing gracefully operating by our very own hands.

Of course, as always with the passage of time, what was once cutting-edge is now primitive, and so Star Fox must now rely on its actual gameplay to preserve its legacy. Not that I particularly mind the presentation losing its luster -- Star Fox apparently has a dreadful framerate, and let it be known here and now that is, without fail, always something beneath my notice -- but as the following generation of Nintendo 64 and PlayStation games are mocked for their graphical degradation, how could a 3D SNES game hope to survive? Quite well, actually. Not that it has a patch on Star Fox 64 or anything, but it remains a close second if only for its laser-focused mission: being a competent space shoot'-em-up. With how all the post-Star Fox 64 games reinvent the wheel to not-so-great success (arguably, anyway -- I have a soft spot for Assault), this is a blessing. In addition to being a revolutionary landmark title thanks to its graphics, you get a simple, no-strings-attached rail shooter.

Let us make this clear, Star Fox is not necessarily about high scores -- yes, we are appropriately rewarded with extra continues and lives for obtaining 100% shooting scores, but as evidenced by the scores wiping itself clean with every playthrough, that's not Star Fox's main concern. It merely presents levels, constructs them with elaborate design, progression, and challenge, and asks you to complete them. With three routes emphasizing difficulty, Star Fox's replayability isn't limited to endurance, but out of an earnest desire to complete it. On top of being rewarded for playing well. and with how much the difficulty ramps up for first-timers, practice upon practice is inevitable.

Much of it is designed around imposing the players with 3D, often to successful levels of engagement. Look no further than the opening planet, Corneria, and how all three versions utilize toppling pillars -- on the easy route, they're lined up in anticipation, surrounding the Arwing, before falling down like dominoes, their collapse inching ever closer as you frantically boost your way through; on medium, a barrage of enemy fire prelude their arrival, injecting further adrenaline into our escape; on hard, their lining up in a straight path renders their collapse towards whichever direction we choose, then catching us off guard by cleverly hiding behind buildings. The experimental player will recognize said pillars can be shot down, but the hard path's trickiness ensures this won't always be a viable option, depending entirely on our dodging ability.

Other levels engage for similar reasons: you have Space Armada, which has Star Fox infiltrating battleships and dodging the incoming debris in his path, driving home a chaotic semblance of space war. Meanwhile, both Sector Z and Sector X utilize pillar storms for the player the navigate: the former a veritable pressure-inducing maze as we carefully glide through narrow passages, the latter a surge of towers seeking to strike you down. Even still, it's careful not to forget crafting unique environments in themselves rather than constantly striving to wow us with 3D; be it Fortuna's emphasis on nature or Titania's erratic weather shifts, there's enough presence in world-building that surely had the imaginations of 1993 gamers soar.

Of course, we cannot dismiss the fun of blowing stuff up -- what's interesting is that a while reticle's present within the occasional shift to first-person, there's a lack of one for the standard third-person view. Why this is the case I cannot claim to know, yet somehow aiming is strangely intuitive in this early, unfamiliar 3D space-scape, one populated by wingmates creating the illusion of a squadron banding together...even if the only thing they do is get chased by bogies and slowly chase after weak enemies. Still, we can't expect their activity to intrude upon our avatar that is Fox McCloud, so I can hardly blame Nintendo for suspending our disbelief; if anything, I derive pleasure in how I unintentionally shoot down targets they were apparently hounding (shoulda shot faster, ya dingus!).

If it can surprise us even today, then one thing is clear: the graphics still somehow hold up in their own mystifying manner. With the 90's leap to 3D being what it was, the general simplicity consists of an abstract look prone for us to fill in the blanks -- an inclination that would hold true even in the earlier days of N64 and PlayStation. We could elaborate on any one of the planets, but we simply must mention the ambiguous trek that is Out of This World, a secret level designed as an a psychedelic experience with its host of paper airplanes and slot machines under the careful watch of sentient celestial bodies. It being the game's solitary thematic source of patented Nintendo light-heartedness renders it one of the most surreal experiences in the company's history; if anything, calling it "light-hearted" may be doing it a disservice, considering it can be perceived as something of a "dark" ending.

A feat accomplished by the music recalling Johann Strauss and Japanese children's songs, contributing to the impossible quest in deciding the best SNES soundtrack. Hajime Hirasawa's one-and-done mark on Nintendo history makes for one of the greatest soundtracks within their whole legacy, bringing an orchestral rock that elevates this Saturday Morning Cartoon into a genuine space opera. It is the one element that has undeniably aged like fine wine, never failing to to pump us up and/or rocket us into yesterday's reverie.

And what better song to start off than the opening theme in Corneria, a rocking tune that immediately captures us with what I consider the SNES's finest use of guitars. Blending heroics with impending danger, I am reminded of Mega Man X's Ruined Highway and Zelda: A Link to the Past's Rain Scene/Hyrule Castle in it instantly imbues us with an infectious drive that's impossible to resist; you simply must blaze ahead and partake in the action set-piece laid before you. I'd say it's far superior to most of the other planet themes, but I find myself also fond of Titania, a jammer that perfectly accompanies the stage's initial ice theme but fluctuates into uncertainty.

Guitars are hardly the only trick Star Fox has up its sleeve, however, as witnessed whenever when that beautiful orchestra conveys the awe of space. Space Armada is perhaps the most well-known of the space themes, an adrenaline-pumping ensemble accompanying our ravaging Andross's swaths of fleetgsfleets. Meanwhile, Sector Y goes for something else entirely: an elegant waltz ever-stretching across the cosmos, echoing the majesty of the space fauna we encounter by the nebula's depths. It's very rare the overall Star Fox series delves into the non-action -- only Aquas and the latent tragedy of Zoness from Star Fox 64 spring to mind (unless we stop pretending Star Fox Adventures doesn't exist, which I gladly won't), and while that game's weak instrumentation was thankfully absent from those two, Sector Y easily trumps not merely in its symphonic qualities but for being the only one swallowed up by the stars, true to the series' name.

Indeed, it's no stretch to say these orchestral takes are the real star, as further evidenced by the numerous iterations of the main theme: the Controls being a nostalgic music box, the Map Screen a magnificent panorama, the Credits -- the theme's full version -- channeling a Star Wars epic, and the Stage Clear results wonderfully capping off our intergalactic exploits. Picking one as my absolute favorite is impossible -- even with Controls and Map Screen tapping into my fondness of wistful meditation, all are unbelievably cathartic and actively props up what is to the young mind a grand tale of space warfare.

Not that Star Fox isn't firmly rooted within the confines of a juvenile television serial: I am not about to take too seriously a world initially expressed through puppetry, nor would I expect the same from your teammates' gibberish ("Dedebebebebebebe!") or their rare bouts of dialogue ("C-c-lear out, astro-geeks!!"); really, even the otherwise impressively-brief voice-overs are far too dry to take seriously. And yet, it would be foolish to expect anything else from Star Fox -- such examples of B-level dialogue would ingrain themselves into  the series' identity, and it's not as if the highly worshiped Star Wars was free from it either.

I can only spot one notable design flaw: the bosses of Path 3. In what I perceive as an effort to highlight spectacle, the game's boss encounters tend to zoom in the camera to signal evasive maneuvers or deliberate attacks, and this is never not more common with the likes of Fortuna's Monarch Dodora, Macbeth's Spinning Core, and the orbital version of Venom's Great Commander. It is also absurdly unintuitive and insanely frustrating to overcome, with the limited sense of scope smothering our senses on proper dodging skills, leaving us easy prey for incoming attacks; needless to say, it's blatantly cheap, only artificially raising the difficulty because it can. It's simply not worth the camera tricks, no matter how much the Great Commander sweeps us into thrilling deceptions of 3D combat.

Unfortunately, it's enough to knock down what I would otherwise consider a masterwork. I choose not to judge Star Fox too harshly for this, however -- that it continues to enthrall even with its set-to-erode aesthetic speaks to the strength of its design. Already, that is a far more commendable compliment than I can give for most of its successors, and that alone is enough for me to consider Star Fox as nothing more than a miracle.

Screenshots courtesy of The Video Game Museum.