Video Game / Star Fox 2

Left to right: Falco, Peppy, Slippy, Fox, Miyu, and Fay, with Andross in the background.

Star Fox 2 is the direct sequel to the original Star Fox for SNES. It is also the only other Star Fox game within that continuity; the following entry in the series, Star Fox 64, would serve as a Continuity Reboot for the franchise that would lighten the tone.

Star Fox 2 directly follows the events of previous game. The planet Corneria is still licking its wounds from the first Lylat War; however, though Emperor Andross was defeated by the Star Fox mercenaries, he survived. Now, with a renewed armada and new, more powerful weapons, he plans to get his revenge by killing everyone on Corneria that wasn't killed in the first Lylat War. As added insurance, he's hired the Wolf Team^note Star Wolf to keep Star Fox out of the way.

Originally completed in 1995, Nintendo proceeded to make the interesting decision of not releasing the game. The reason? The Sega Saturn and PlayStation were already on shelves, their own Nintendo 64 was chugging along in development, and 3D graphics in video games had developed so rapidly that they didn't want to release a title that would feel outdated within mere months. So they tried to pretend it didn't exist. Despite the fact that the game had been heavily advertised already. After the release of Star Fox 64, Nintendo was content to quietly let Star Fox 2 fade into distant memory. The game did not go to complete waste internally, though; one-third of its code was recycled for 64, and some of its gameplay ideas would be revisited by Star Fox Command and Star Fox Zero.

It also didn't quite get as forgotten by the gaming community as the company may have hoped, as Star Fox 2 actually managed to snag an unofficial release in the late 90s thanks to two of the Japanese testing ROMs getting leaked online: a 1993/1994 early-development Alpha, and a 1995 late-development Beta. The latter — originally thought to be virtually complete — was missing some features, but was otherwise entirely playable using an emulator. In 2004, Aeon Genesis (of Cave Story fame) made a Fan Translation patch for the Beta ROM that doubled as a Game Mod to fix up the bugs, and the game soon gained a reputation.

During the creation of the SNES Classic Edition plug-and-play console, the system producer used the game during testing of the device's Super FX emulation and requested it as part of its offerings. Nintendo signed off on the decision, and so the game finally received an official release on September 29, 2017... a whopping 21 years after its original projected release date, usurping a 1998 port of Frogger as the final licensed SNES game ever released by 19 years.^note In Japan, the last game to be released officially for the Super Famicom was Metal Slader Glory: Director's Cut in 2000 Two years later on December 12, 2019, the game was added to the Nintendo Switch Online's SNES library, allowing one to play the game legally on a full-fledged console.

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Star Fox 2 contains examples of:

• Ace Custom: Wolf's personal fighter is an extreme upgrade from the other Wolf Team ships.
• Anyone Can Die: As in the first game, any of the Star Fox pilots can be shot down, and they will stay down for the rest of the playthrough. Unlike the first game, this includes whomever you're currently playing as (your co-pilot becomes your extra life), so even Fox himself is as vulnerable to this as anyone else.
  • Also, everyone on Wolf Team is killed, except Wolf himself.
• Anti-Frustration Features: Events that affect Corneria and the Defense Satellite Platform do not progress if you have arrived at their location before they have fired. This means that as long as you stay alive at each individual location, while you are traveling-towards or are inside the Cannon Battleships, or you are confronting the Virus Injectors on the Defense Satellite, you still have a chance of stopping them before they do major damage to Corneria. Also, if you return to the mothership and choose a planet to warp to, events also do not progress, allowing you to plan your next strategy.
• Artificial Brilliance: Wolf Team will fire charge shots and roll to defect your weapons, and evade you by breaking to show you that they're not like the other enemies or bosses that you're fighting against. Even then, with the regular enemies that you do fight against, if you destroy one of them, the rest will increase their speed to get away from you, sometimes enough for the enemy to flee out of range of your weapons. For the missiles that are locked together, you need to hit the correct weak point to destroy them all-at-once, otherwise your shot will destroy its locking frame, separating them and making the fight more difficult.
• Autobots, Rock Out!: Just like its predecessor, this game has a much greater share of rock-themed soundtrack than Star Fox 64 or its sequels.
• Ax-Crazy: Andross didn't take to kindly to being defeated in the last game.
• Background Music Override: Thanks to the game's Real-Time Strategy element, it's possible to encounter a member of Wolf Team while fighting other enemies. If that happens, whatever theme was playing prior will change to Surprise Attack, Wolf Team's theme music.
• Boring, but Practical: Fox and Falco don't have the additional shields Peppy and Slippy have, nor have the speed of Fay and Miyu, but compensate for having smart bombs in their arsenal, allowing for easy base or enemy clear provided the right usage.
• Boss Battle: Every boss except for Andross can be divided into three neat categories, one of which has two subcategories:
  • Space battle: Represented by a shiny star moving towards your direction, these bosses are fought in a wide open battlefield with the Arwing. This is the type of fight with two subcategories:
    • Hunters: At some point in the game, Andross will send out one (two on Expert) of his four Hunters to defeat you. They spawn on the map after a cutscene and will start to chase you until a battle is initiated. On Normal, only the Mirage Dragon can appear, but all four are fair game on higher difficulties.
    • Wolf Team: Algy (Hard and Expert only), Pigma, and Leon are all stationed at a base. After a certain amount of time, they will start to chase you, and if you try to attack a base with a Wolf Team member still there, you will have to fight him before you can access the planet. They can also barge in on a fight against regular enemies in space. Wolf is special in that he forces you to fight him after Astropolis becomes available.
  • Land battle: Sometimes when storming a base or carrier, you will have to fight a boss along the way. They may or may not be accompanied by normal enemies.
  • Core battle: At the end of a carrier, planet base, and Astropolis, there will be a core that must be destroyed. The exact nature of the core varies depending on the level, with carriers tending to have multi-target cores and bases having single target cores. The Astropolis core is a multi-target core that houses Andross's control cube, and hitting that enough starts the final battle.
• Bowdlerise: In both of the original SNES Starfox games, the main antagonist is named "Andolf" (pronounced "Andorf" due to the Japanese accent). With the western releases, his name was changed to "Andross" because "Andolf" was deemed by western censors to be too similar to "Adolf".
• Bullying a Dragon: Everyone in Wolf Team does this and then dies, but Algy stands out on it:
  Algy: "My name is Algy and I own you, come on!"
• Boss Bonanza: After clearing Lylat of enemies, you fight Wolf before reaching Astropolis, where you have to fight a core and Andross at the end.
• Company Cross References: In the June 1995 prototype build, there was a "Golden Mario" insignia that was used in the records screen to denote a exceptionally high score. In the final build, this was apparently felt to be too blatant of a cameo insert and was replaced by a "Big Star" insignia.
• Continuing is Painful: At the start of the game, you choose two pilots to control and can switch between them on the map screen to mitigate damage. "Continuing" means when a pilot got shot down, the remaining pilot must continue alone. It also means you will not get an extra 10,000 points add to your final score if you beat the game afterward.
• Continuity Nod: A lot of the bosses are based on those from the first game, some simply in concept and some more obviously:
  • All of the cores are reminiscent of the Atomic Cores, with one variant even requiring wall-turrets to be destroyed.
  • The Queen Dragoon is based on the Dancing Insector.
  • Hunter Fantron is nominally and visually based on Phantron, but fights more like Plasma Hydra. The Kick Gunner fights more like Phantron, specifically its second form.
  • King Dodora is an obvious reference to Monarch Dodora.
  • The Heavy Chariot has a similar concept and strategy to the Galactic Rider, but its main attack is more reminiscent of the Great Commander's second fight.
  • The Space Blade mixes elements of the Blade Barrier and Rock Crusher.
• Cool Shades: General Pepper has these, as he did in the first game.
• Critical Annoyance: You'll have General Pepper often screaming at you when Corneria's under assault. Which is constantly if you're struggle on Expert difficulty.
• Cutting Off the Branches: It's wholly possible for any number of the team's members to die in the previous game. That said, all of them are alive and well here.
• Darker and Edgier: While the first game wasn't exactly bright and happy, this game trumps it by virtue of Andross trying to utterly destroy Corneria instead of conquer it - and that can happen if you play poorly enough. In addition, rather than playing as Fox and having three companions, you choose two pilots to fight Andross - both of whom may very well die. Wolf Team, rather than being treated as specific evil counterparts to the Star Fox's pilots, fight separately and - except for Wolf - all of them are killed in battle.
• Do a Barrel Roll: It wouldn't be Star Fox without the ability to roll to deflect enemy attacks.
• Downer Ending: If Corneria reaches 100% damage, you get a Non-Standard Game Over that shows its destruction in great detail.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: Within the same installment. Thanks to the Star Fox franchise changing it's art style in the 22 years between the time this game was initially designed and finally released, the character's appearances in their own official promotional artwork◊ look almost nothing at all like their actual in-game designs◊, which are far more animal-like and less cartoony in style.
• Easter Egg: Like the first game, there's a secret music track that plays if you wait about ten minutes at the "THE END" screen. This is the last game to have such an Easter egg.
• Easy-Mode Mockery: The "Normal" difficulty (the easiest mode in the game) lacks a lot of the content found in Hard and Expert. Despite this, it's a relatively minor example, as the game does not punish you for playing the Normal difficulty in any way except that you can't get a higher rank than the C rank.
  • Only two bases are established, and they cannot spawn on Macbeth or Fortuna, making it impossible to go there. This also means there are only three Wolf Team fights; Algy will not show up.
  • There are no backup carriers; the first two are all that spawn.
  • Missiles and Cores only exist in their two most basic forms sans the final Core in Astropolis.
  • Viruses do not exist, so the defense satellite system cannot be taken over or visited.
  • The Mirage Dragon is the only Hunter that Andross can send out.
  • The only non-Core boss fought with the Walker is outside Meteor's base.
  • Andross only has one fighting form; after destroying the eyes, his core is immediately revealed.
• Evolving Title Screen: After collecting all mysterious medals across all difficulty levels, Fox replaces Andross' face in the title screen background.
• Fragile Speedster: Fay and Miyu's Type-B Arwings are the fastest, and take the shortest time to fire a charged shots but they have the least amount of health. This is made up for by their default special weapon being an Invincibility Powerup. The final beta build of the game even have them equipped with Twin Blasters by default, which in the final game can be unlocked for everyone in repeat playthroughs.
• Game-Over Man: As in the first game, Andross serves as this.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: In an awkward inversion of Plotline Death, even if you lose a pilot and continue with the partner ship you selected, the game's ending cutscene will still show the Arwing you lost returning to the Great Fox, completely undamaged. This happens in spite of the fact that downed pilots are treated as dead.
• Giant Hands of Doom: Andross starts using these on Hard and Expert for the first time ever.
• Girly Bruiser: Fay. Wears a giant bow on her head while enthusiastically destroying battleships and military bases single-handed.
• Glass Cannon: The Mirage Dragon, the only one of Andross's Hunters to appear on all three difficulties. Its attacks are tricky to doge and very powerful, but it has very little health. With the right upgrades, you can take it out in a second in real time.
• Global Airship: The Star Fox team has a mobile space carrier that can transport their entire team to any planet in the Lylat system at warp speed. It's the predecessor to Great Fox.
• Guide Dang It!: Good luck finding all Mysterious Medals, considering some are located off the map's boundaries and the only indication of where they are is the unique sound it makes. Bonus development documents included in the official online manual reveal the locations of the medals, if you can read Japanese.
• Heal Thyself: The Space Relief item, one that comes stock on Peppy and Slippy's Type-C Arwings, summons a couple of drones that repair your ship's shields to full.
• Homing Projectile: The Homing Charged Shot power-up, which you need to unlock in this game. All later games give you this from the start. Star Wolf also starts with these.
• Inconsistent Spelling: Hunter Fantron, a boss that can be fought on Hard or Expert, is a clear reference to Phantron, the Venom Guardian of the first game's Path One. This is likely a typo, since the Phantron name is a direct reference to the original's illusionary abilities.
• It's Up to You:
  • The other four squad members of Star Fox won't do anything up until the final level which is simply to distract the enemies that are defending Astropolis. And the only time your wingmate does anything useful is when they have to replace your first character upon their death.
  • Additionally, don't expect much help from Corneria. Their defensive satellite system can be helpful to take out missiles and small enemy ships far away from you, but it has a slow fire rate and can be taken over and turned against you, forcing you to intervene and stop the virus controlling it.
• Jack of All Stats: Fox and Falco's Type-A Arwings. Their stats are roughly the same as they were in the first game, exactly in-between the heavier flying tanks and fast but fragile ships flown by the other pilots.
• Karma Houdini: Even if you manage to save Corneria from destruction, the Andross fought in this game is a remote-controlled computer, thus the real one gets no actual comeuppance for his actions in this continuity.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: In the Non-Standard Game Over cutscene, a female voice is heard calling Star Fox for help. She is cut off when the city she's in violently explodes.
• Kill Sat: Corneria's satellite defense system. It can be turned against you.
• Lensman Arms Race: Both Corneria's and Andross' militaries are throwing more and bigger weapons at each other than before.
  • The Arwing variants seen here are more powerful and have more functions than the original models did: Unlike the original Arwings, they come with charged shots, a walker mode, and the ability to carry various different powerups into battle with them instead of being limited to Nova Bombs.
  • The Wolf Team's fighters were designed by Andross specifically to counter the Arwings. Staying ahead of the curve, they come with homing charged shots that make dogfighting against them a nightmare.
  • Corneria has an orbiting defense satellite that fires projectiles at faster than light velocities, which can destroy entire armadas in a single strike. The only thing in the game that moves as fast as these munitions is a ship using a warp drive.
  • The "Cannon Betrayer" battleships all carry gigantic laser cannons that can severely devastate a planet's surface with a single shot.
  • The various Hunters in the game are Andross' continued science experiments. Many of them are upgraded versions of the bosses fought in the first game.
• Load-Bearing Boss: When defeated, without Andross' mind controlling Astropolis, it quickly falls apart, and is pulled into the gravity of Solar. (The Lylat System's sun)
• New Game Plus: The access to the homing charged shot only needs to be unlocked once on each difficulty. (You still needs to collect the item to enable it in every playthrough, however.) In addition, beating the game with a high enough score unlocks twin blasters for that set of two pilots on all future playthroughs.
• Nintendo Hard: The released game is far more difficult than the leaked beta version. This is mainly because the homing charge shot - instead of being available at the start - needs to be unlocked on each difficulty. The decision to give this players from the beginning in all future titles likely saved many controllers from being thrown through TV sets.
  • The Expert difficulty does live up to its name. If you did not take out the first three planet bases fast enough, when Andross take over the remaining three planets and order them to fire missile instantly. The planet bases that wasn't taken out beforehand will also fire a missile! Making it possible for Andross to launch out six missiles toward Corneria! Good luck juggling between that along with the remaining Cannon Betrayers, the virus, the enemy squards without causing damage to Corneria.
• Non-Standard Game Over: In addition to the normal game over screen after losing both of the pilots selected at the beginning of the game, there is a non-standard one after Corneria takes too much damage. While it was disabled in the beta, it was enabled in the fan translation and final release.
• Oddball in the Series: The distinct quality that makes Star Fox 2 stand out is that it has a completely non-linear design which is a radical contrast to the other games in the series which are linear by tradition.
• Orchestral Bombing: Star Fox and Star Fox 2 both have a very differently styled orchestra soundtrack than Star Fox 64 or its sequels, with a heavier emphasis on Fanfare. Even though Hajime Hirasawa, the original Star Fox composer, left Nintendo after Star Fox, the composers for this game, Kozue Ishikawa and Yumiko Kanki, deliberately styled their music after his work.
• Outrun the Fireball: Happens when the player defeats Andross; the Arwing starts to make its way out of Astropolis' core, with explosions going off in the background. It's temporarily knocked askew by a particularly strong explosion shockwave, before an Advancing Wall of Doom fireball rushes towards the Arwing. Thankfully, the player character and the Arwing makes it out in one piece, right before Astropolis goes plunging into the sun.
• Protection Mission: Part of the game involves protecting Corneria from missiles, squadrons of fighters and flotillas of battleships.
• Protectorate: Corneria.
• Quirky Miniboss Squad: The Wolf Team, who were hired and armed specifically to counter Star Fox. Unlike most versions of this trope, they're are taken quite seriously - while later games portray Star Wolf as direct counterparts to the Star Fox pilots, in this game, they are morally corrupt killers for hire with entirely unique personalities. They're also stronger than the heroes: unlike Arwings, the Wolf Team's weakest fighters come standard with homing charge lasers and have tougher shields than the standard Arwing. With the way this game handles death, that makes each one of them a potential Hero Killer.
• Race Lift: In this game, the fourth member of Wolf Team is a pygmy marmoset named "Algy". When the game was cancelled and the concepts were transferred to Star Fox 64, Algy was changed into a snow monkey named Andrew Oikonny. The original fan-translation renames Algy to Andrew for that reason.
• Real-Time with Pause: This is the main aspect of the game. You are allowed to survey the Lylat system before you move (either from the start of the game, after you have completed a location, or return to the mothership), to determine where you should go, and what the best plan of defense or offense is. However, once you begin to move, events begin to progress without stopping, even in levels (unless you press the Start button to pause, of course), meaning you may have to make a choice to abandon your current objective to check on something else. Even more, two rarities can happen: The first is that even if a missile does reach Corneria, you can follow it into the upper atmosphere and destroy it just before it strikes the planet. More dynamically, two events can meld together on-the-fly; Namely, while you are destroying planetary missiles or fighting robotic enemies, a Wolf Team member can enter the area, upping the stakes against you.
• Rock & Roll: Macbeth's music.
• Secret Level: Collecting all Mysterious Medals (also known as Pepper Coins) in each difficulty level (13 on Normal, 19 on Hard and 20 on Expert) unlocks the Secret Base on that difficulty. It's an area full of power-ups and a healing area. And it also has the homing charge shot power-up, which was available in the leaked beta from the start, but not in the final game.
• Sequential Boss: Ignoring the Walker form, the final battle with Andross increases in length on higher difficulties. While he only has one form before his core is revealed on Normal, Hard gives him a second, and Expert not only gives his second form a second phase, but adds a new third form.
• Shout-Out:
  • To Mobile Suit Gundam - The unnamed carrier from Star Fox 2 both looks and functions like the White Base and the Cannon Betrayers◊ from the same game very closely resemble Zeon's Rewloola-class battleships.
  • To Star Trek - In Star Fox 2, the homing shots fired by Star Wolf pilots look and function exactly like Photon Torpedoes.
  • The Tal Kong boss on Expert that throws logs along the ground is a clear reference to Donkey Kong.
• Skill Gate Characters: Peppy and Slippy are really good for newcomers with their massive total health and default healing power-ups. Sadly, their speed and charge time are the worst in the game, and since getting levels done quickly is important for both scoring points and simply beating the game, they tend to struggle on higher difficulties.
• Smart Bomb: As in other games, this is a consumable weapon. It comes stock on Fox and Falco's Type-A Arwings, but they have to be found from enemy drops or an item station for other pilots.
• Sole Survivor: Out of the whole Wolf Team, only Wolf himself survives encountering Star Fox in battle. By running away.
• Songs in the Key of Panic: The music speeds up when Corneria starts taking too much damage.
• Sphere of Power: The Super Shield item takes the form of a large sphere that surrounds the ship. It's separate from the ship's normal shielding and functions as an Invincibility Power-Up.
• Spin to Deflect Stuff: Do a Barrel Roll, of course!
• The Sixth Ranger: Miyu and Fay. Fara Phoenix (or "Lady") was planned to be in this game and appeared in some earlier alpha versions, but was dropped from the final version. Fay has a very similar backstory to Fara.
• Stone Wall: Peppy's and Slippy's Type-C Arwings, combined with the negatives of Mighty Glacier. They have the highest amount of shield points, and a special multiple uses self-repair item. The drawback is their low speed, slow blaster charge rate, and poor boost.
• Transforming Mecha: Your ship can rotate its wings down and use them as legs when you're on the ground. In Star Fox 64, the transformation aspect was removed, and the walking mech was replaced with the Landmaster, which is a separate vehicle entirely. In fact, the Arwing even has underwater capabilities (a capability that wasn't re-done until Command) when in mecha form if you have to attack a missile base on Fortuna, making your ship an Arwing, Landmaster and Blue-Marine all at the same time. The transformation mechanic was not seen again until Star Fox Zero.
• The Unfought: According to both the Mission File Printout and Star Fox's tie-in comic, the giant face that Fox faced on Venom in Star Fox 1 was actually a remote-controlled computer designed to allow Andross to oversee Venom's army without actually being there himself. This is also implied by his trophy description in Super Smash Bros. Melee. He is still unfought in Star Fox 2, as the only thing that appears is just another control computer. It's worth noting that the control unit is the cube inside the face, and not the face itself, which is more like a robotic guardian.
• Unlockable Content: On the final version of the game:
  • To unlock Expert Mode, you must beat Hard with a B rank and no damage to Corneria.
  • The Secret Base level, as pointed out in the Secret Level entry.
  • The entire game on the SNES Classic isn't available at first; you must first beat Corneria in the first game to unlock it.
• Variable Mix: All over the place, the music would change if you were inside or outside a missile base/battleship, if you were underwater, if Corneria was taking excessive amounts of damage, etc.
• Vehicular Turnabout: Andross's Battlestation, Astropolis, will send out the "Brain Spoiler" Virus Injectors to take control of your Kill Sat, requiring you to visit it yourself when it becomes hijacked and remove the threat.
• Wave-Motion Gun: The "Cannon Betrayer" battleships carry these. Let them get too close to Corneria and they fire off a beam that does tremendous damage to the planet.
• Weapon of Mass Destruction: The missile bases manufacture and launch Inter-Planetary Ballistic Missiles (IPBMs) which are self-propelled, precision-guided munition systems that are capable of reaching escape velocity and traveling millions of kilometers to a targeted area that's in the same planetary system that it was launched from (in this case, Corneria).
• We Cannot Go On Without You: When you lose both of your pilots, Star Fox becomes too weak to stop Andross.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: Expert has a similar start to Hard, with three bases and two active carriers out of four totals, but with the suspicious absence of Wolf Team. After a certain time has passed, Andross proceeds to occupy the other three planets, and has every planets currenly occupied by Andross instantly fire missiles. Wolf Team also shows up at the same time.

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General Pepper: Good work, Star Fox!
Fox McCloud: It was a team effort!
Fay: What a mission!
Slippy Toad: Adios, Andross!
Falco Lombardi: Let's head back to Corneria.

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