TVTropes Now available in the app store!
Open

Follow TV Tropes

Star Fox Adventures

Go To

  • Annoying Video Game Helper: Prince Tricky gets hit with this, even more so than any of Fox's teammates, in that you only need him to dig up stuff and to light stuff on fire. He'll talk unnecessarily whenever Fox is running around. When he is low on food, he will constantly complain about how hungry he is (this can at least be remedied by keeping him fed with blue grubtub mushrooms, which are plentiful, and is needed as fuel for Tricky's abilities). And then when you are trying to avoid some enemies, he will helpfully chime in with "BAD GUY!" and "COOOOOOOLLLLL!" And if you try to vent your frustration by hitting him, he'll breathe fire on you.
  • Anti-Climax Boss: General Scales, whose fight against Fox only lasts for a few seconds till the actual Final Boss shows up. Andross himself ends up becoming a thematic anticlimax and That One Boss for many of the wrong reasons.
  • Applicability: Fox McCloud in this game is Only in It for the Money and aggravated by anything that prolongs his stay on Dinosaur Planet, a stark contrast to being an All-Loving Hero in the rest of the franchise. Many take this sudden characterization shift as a mouthpiece for how Rare felt making the game, as Dinosaur Planet was reworked into a Star Fox game to bolster sales, with Fox’s impatience stemming from the rush to get this game completed before the impeding Microsoft buyout.
  • Ass Pull: Andross being revealed as the real villain of the game. Considering it was an eleventh hour addition to the game, there is no foreshadowing or buildup to it, and the game gives no explanation for how he came back after being killed in Star Fox 64.
  • Best Known for the Fanservice: Krystal seems to be the one thing in this game most people talk about.
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The game starts with one: controlling Krystal riding a CloudRunner, the player has to defeat the Galleon, a Living Ship with an giant, animate, fire-breathing dinosaur head at the helm. This is done by shooting blue fireballs at it; it's not obvious if it's Krystal or the CloudRunner shooting them, especially since neither are shown possessing the ability to do after the battle (though CloudRunners are shown to possess a more traditional fire breath). After the battle, Krystal boards the ship, meets a captive baby CloudRunner, retrieves a key from the hold, and is unceremoniously thrown off by General Scales. The only things relevant to the rest of the game are some tutorials and the introduction of General Scales - the ship itself or the CloudRunner chick are never mentioned afterwards. The fact that the fight is completely impossible to lose, despite Krystal appearing to take damage whenever the ship's attacks hit her, only adds to the strangeness of the sequence.
  • Bizarro Episode: Aside from the Genre Shift, the game has a lot of fantasy and mystical elements that are never seen again in the Star Fox series, which are firmly in the realm of Science Fiction.
  • Breather Boss: The Krazoa Test of Strength is significantly less brutal than either the Test of Fear (the previous Krazoa test) or the Lightfoot Test of Strength (which uses the same mechanics) both being noticeably more difficult.
  • Complete Monster:
    • Andross returns. See that page for details.
    • General Scales is the brutal leader of the SharpClaw tribe who wishes to rule Dinosaur Planet. With the aid of Andross, Scales steals the Spell Stones, slaughtering the EarthWalkers sent to stop him. This causes the planet to become dangerously unstable, threatening to affect the entire Lylat system if it explodes. Scales then imprisons the Gatekeepers as well as the EarthWalker Royal Family. Scales forces the SnowHorn Gatekeeper's daughter to open a Gate to DarkIce Mines by threatening to slaughter her tribe, and fulfills his promise not to kill them by enslaving them in said mine. He conquers the SkyRunner Fortress and has his men beat and imprison the CloudRunner Queen. He releases the vicious RedEye Tribe into the Walled City, driving the EarthWalkers out of most of the City. He transforms Dragon Rock into a wasteland and performs experiments on dinosaurs to turn them into dangerous bioweapons. Cruel even to his own tribe, Scales stands out as one of Star Fox Team's cruelest foes.
  • Contested Sequel: It is generally agreed that it isn't quite like Star Fox 64. Whether or not it's good in its own right is another matter.
  • Continuity Lock-Out: The game is a stand alone that never refers to the previous games until Andross suddenly shows with no explanation of who he is.
  • Cult Classic: It's one of the least popular Star Fox titles, but it has its fans.
  • Demonic Spiders: Downplayed with the giant SharpClaw grunts; they boast more health than their regular counterparts, and their tackle can take out an entire icon's worth of health. Thankfully fighting them isn't too different from the norm, especially when using the Ice Blast.
  • Disappointing Last Level: The final portion of the game, with General Scales being a Cutscene Boss and Andross showing up out of nowhere for an unexpectedly hard boss fight using a mechanic you haven't had much time to get used to is generally agreed to be a major low point of the game.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • Krystal. She definitely has a pretty solid fandom, and was even one of the more requested characters for the Super Smash Bros. Brawl gamenote , but is a bit character in the actual game. Her Hatedom dying down quite a bit over the years has probably helped.
    • The WarpStone and Shabunga the shopkeeper are remembered rather fondly by fans thanks to extremely quotable, hammy performances.
  • Fan Nickname: Thanks to JonTron, calling the game "Stairfax Temperatures" became a joking nickname in the early 2010s amongst Western gamers.
  • Fan-Preferred Cut Content: Many people wish that this game would have been finished in the original scope and vision of Dinosaur Planet, as there is TONS of interesting content in it that never made it into the final game, along with Krystal having a much more prominent role in the game as a Deuteragonist, a darker atmosphere and tone, a much more complex and in-depth story with plenty of lore and worldbuilding, and a more interesting main villain who is actually foreshadowed.
  • Fridge Brilliance: The "tattoos" Krystal has are white. This means they're probably freeze brands, which — apart from the more familiar hot-iron method of branding — is the only way to "tattoo" an animal that has fur. Freeze brand being particularly fitting given that Krystal is based on an arctic fox.
  • Fridge Horror: The design of Drakor is similar to that of the Sharp Claws, implying that Scales had one of his own species transformed into the monster.
  • Game-Breaker:
    • Not that the game is hard to begin with, but the staff's energy shield removes any kind of tension from certain encounters. The shield envelopes Fox in a dome of light that blocks all damage and it can be used indefinitely since, unlike other abilities, it isn't tied to your magic meter. Don't want to put up with dodging fire on the conveyor belts in the Dark Ice Mines? Use the shield and just ride them out. Don't want to keep running away from the King RedEye? Use the shield and watch as he walks over you harmlessly.
    • The staff powers completely trivialize combat against regular enemies. The Fire Blaster will kill any enemy in four hits, is picked up very early in the game, can be fired rapidly, and doesn't even need to be aimed once you've locked onto an enemy. It's only downside is that it can be blocked and uses up your mana. The Ice Blaster breaks the game even harder, however, as it cannot be blocked, can freeze multiple enemies at once, and frozen enemies die in one hit. It still requires mana, but replenishing mana is never hard, and enemies will sometimes drop mana for you anyways.
  • Goddamn Bats:
    • Bloops, literally. If you get anywhere close to them, they will automatically fly directly above Fox and start lowering and kicking him repeatedly while constantly laughing, guaranteeing to blow up any object he's carrying, and will chase him for quite a distance before they stop. Fox can't lock on to them, so the only way for him to kill them once they start attacking him is to swing at exactly the right time as they lower to kick him. The little bastards are everywhere, and it's possible to get more than one attacking Fox at once.
    • The SharpClaw with shields parry far more often than the usual grunts, with their windows of vulnerability being very sparse. Luckily only a few are encountered before Fox gains access to the Ice Blast power, which bypasses their shields completely.
    • The three burrowing enemies known as Snaplak, Snipluk and Kooshy. They have ridiculously fast spawn times and can ambush you from practically ANY ground covered in snow or sand, meaning you are never safe. Their favourite tactic is to do a fast attack and then dip, often before you even have time to react. Even while hitting them with your staff, they sometimes still manage to slip away mid-combo! After burrowing, they change location to attack you from another direction so you actively have to chase them down instead of simply spawn camping. Snipluk and Kooshy are particularly annoying to deal with since they also have ranged attacks.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: Over the course of the game, you can buy and later deliver Cheat Tokens to unlock cheats or special messages. The very last Token (buyable in the Ocean Force Point Temple once Fox is on the way to put into place the final Spellstone and then proceed to the last part of the game) unlocks the following message upon being delivered in the Warpstone's maze in Thorntail Hollow: "There is sorrow ahead. A close friend does not have much time left. It will be hard to accept but you will grow". In-game, this message is foreshadowing the farewell between Fox and Tricky, though they meet again in Assault and is already this trope with Peppy's Heroic Sacrifice in Assault (he survives), but becomes even more somber when you remember that this game was the last one Rare would develop as part of their eight-year-long partnership with Nintendo, for Microsoft's purchase of the developer was finalized literally the day after the game came out.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: While Star Fox Adventures is often compared to The Legend of Zelda, the later-released The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess has some amusing similarities to it, including:
    • Both games being on the GameCube and the first Teen-rated entries in their respective franchises.
    • A plot twist that involves the respective overarching Big Bad of the series revealed to be The Man Behind the Man, posing as a god to manipulate the apparent main villain to help him return.
    • Both Link and Fox are imprisoned at one point and can only escape by using an alternate physical form (Link taking advantage of his then-new wolf form, Fox turning into a SharpClaw thanks to an invention by Slippy).
    • Both games have two sets of Plot Coupons: Krazoa Spirits and Spellstones in Adventures, Fused Shadows and Mirror of Twilight fragments in Twilight Princess. The Spellstones and the fragments of the Mirror of Twilight are also alike in that they have to be retrieved for their placement in their respective original locations, because their removal has led to very harmful effects.
    • Both Fox and Link bid a bitter farewell to their respective sidekicks, Tricky and Midna, after their adventures conclude.
    • The protagonists of both series being playable in all Super Smash Bros. games while the newly-introduced female leads of both games (Midna and Krystal) having non-playable appearances in the form of Assist Trophies.
    • Neither game was originally conceived as they are in their released form. The developers at Rare intended to release Dinosaur Planet as a new IP before Shigeru Miyamoto gave them the idea of rebranding the game as Star Fox Adventures. Nintendo themselves originally planned to create a direct sequel to the Wind Waker until, due to the latter's low sales and the awkwardness of animating Toon Link trying to ride a horse, Aonuma asked Miyamoto for the game to take a different, more realistic direction and eventually turn it into Twilight Princess.
    • Finally, both games are regarded exactly the opposite way by their respective series' fanbases: Twilight Princess is sometimes criticized for being too formulaic for a Zelda game, while Star Fox Adventures is criticized for being too much of a departure from the rest of the Star Fox series.
    • Unlike Zelda, which typically uses the A/B buttons for combat, "Star Fox Adventures" instead uses the right control stick (C stick) for such; amusingly, 19 years later, the HD port of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword would end up using the same control scheme.
    • Sonic Unleashed also has a similar plot to Adventures with parts of the planet being broken up into pieces floating around it, and needing plot coupons (Spellstones and Krazoa Spirits in Adventures and Chaos Emeralds in Unleashed) to put them back in place.
  • It Was His Sled: Andross is the villain. This twist is what usually comes to mind whenever someone brings up the rushed development.
  • Memetic Mutation: "*random incoherent babbling* GENERAL SCALES"... Explanation
  • Mis-blamed: Most people blame Shigeru Miyamoto for the game being rushed and simplified compared to Dinosaur Planet. While Miyamoto did suggest that Rare turn it into a Star Fox game, when Rare asked if they should remove elements such as Krystal in order to facilitate this, Nintendo told them not to. The reason the game was rushed and so much content was removed regardless was because Microsoft was in the process of buying out Rare during production, forcing them to have to scrap more than a third of the game if they wanted to wrap up development before the deal was finalized and complicated the game's release.
  • Narm: The Dinosaur Planet's native language. So developed that the dev team actually had a guide in the manual over what vowels and consonants replaced each other... Yet, apparently, there are no words in their language for any proper nouns such as the characters' names, since they're always spoken in perfect English whenever they're addressed. In particular, General Scale's infamous introduction line where he speaks ominously in dino language, only to speak his name in perfect English in an overly dramatic fashion is often brought up as a prime offender of this trope.
  • Narm Charm:
    • "Nobodeh ever brings me gifts anymore!"
    • "You pay THIS much!"
    • Fox's rapid expression changes, when he gets an item.
    • Everything the Lightfoot dinosaurs say.
      "Mah baybehs are sooooooo naughteh! Huh! They like to play underground."
      "Look out for my three babies! I think they're in the foh-rest!"
    • Andross' death scene. His facial spasms are incredibly ridiculous but they are easily overshadowed by the ensuing explosion with Fox and Falco surviving it.
  • Nightmare Fuel: Has its own page.
  • Overshadowed by Controversy: The game is most remembered as being the original Rare action-adventure game that Nintendo turned into a Star Fox title. Even as more details about the game's development became clear over the years, from the different IP it cycled through to the circumstances behind the rushed nature of the final product, its very nature as a being mainline entry in a Rail Shooter franchise, yet having far more in common with The Legend of Zelda, overshadows everything else about it. Including general fan sentiment over whether or not the game is even good on its own merits.
  • Scrappy Mechanic:
    • Haggling with the Shopkeeper. Given there's not really much of a mechanic to it aside from "try your luck and see if he'll sell you that 50 scarab item for 47 instead", the fact that 1) he generally refuses any offers more than 2 scarabs less than his designated price, which leads to 2) haggling hardly saves you anything at all in the long run unless you're particularly tight for scarabs and NEED him to come down on the price of one item so you can afford one more in one sitting, and haggling really just isn't much use at all, especially since if he refuses your offer three times in a row, he basically tells you to get lost. Given it's not too hard to find extra scarabs, and you could just make some more by playing the Shopkeeper's minigame, haggling probably won't ever really see much use in a game unless you just wanna stick it to him. Sometimes you MIGHT get lucky, but it's pretty rare. It is also flat-out impossible to negotiate a price without having enough scarabs to meet the default price tag, as Shabunga will flat-out refuse to sell you the item otherwise.
    • The day and night cycle, while common to adventure games, holds no positive merit here. The only thing that will happen at night is that the music will change and friendly NPCs will go to sleep. Luckily, examples that are important for advancing the story won't go to sleep until the player no longer needs to interact with them, and the day and night cycle can be reset by entering and exiting a magic cave or resetting the game.
  • Special Effects Failure:
    • The game has some very broken effects: heat distortion, water reflections, and floor reflections are incorrectly programmed, marring the graphics of an otherwise graphically-impressive game. Reflections of the characters models are also shown upside down above the head.
    • Fox and Krystal share some animations, which may be out of character with one another.
    • When talking to an Earthwalker as Krystal, she will crouch down with her legs spread apart.
  • That One Boss:
    • Drakor is going to give a bad time to those who aren't used to Button Mashing, especially since he and Fox are moving very fast through the battlefield during the fight.
    • The Final Boss, Andross can be this even to those familiar with the game's original space shooter roots. Silver rings that restore health are in short supply and only fill up one health point apiece (compared to the boss' attacks which can take out many more health points per hit) and never appear during the Krazoa Mask sections. The enemy's attacks tend to get in the way of its weak points, requiring intense precision for the player to avoid taking damage. The final section of the boss involves dodging Andross' translucent head while firing upon his brain after he inhales a bomb, all the while Andross attempts to tackle Fox's Arwing which can deal a lot of damage. The end result is essentially Fox fighting his way uphill to avoid relentless attacks and defeat the boss before the boss defeats him.
  • That One Level:
    • The Lightfoot Test of Strength, which only the most button-mashing-happy will have some chance of beating the first time off.
    • The Krazoa Test of Fear will make even the most patient gamers toss their controllers in a fit of rage, as it is an Unexpected Gameplay Change to a focus based minigame where the player must keep a line inside a bar as it swings from side to side wildly with little input as to where it's going to swing. It lasts a full minute, the game turns up the graphics and sound effects to the absolute best the Gamecube can provide, and the camera is intentionally disorienting. If you fail you have to go all the way back to the start. Not to the start of the Test itself, but instead all the way back to the beginning of the area and have to go through all the, admittedly easy if tedious, puzzles all over again. To say it grinds on the nerves is an understatement.
    • The mission to protect a Thorntail's egg nest from incoming reptilian thieves, until you learn that the easy way to beat it is to use your Groundquake (which miraculously doesn't crush the very eggs you're supposed to protect).
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
    • Krystal was originally meant to be the Deuteragonist, but was reduced to being a Damsel in Distress. Even more egregious is that she had an elaborate backstory in the original Dinosaur Planet and her own sidekick, Princess Kyte. Even in the current draft, the story about her figuring out what happened to her homeworld, Cerinia, is never brought up again past the intro.
    • General Scales could have been a threatening villain, but ends up being The Unfought. Worst yet is how he still had a chance to do something different than Andross, but ends up getting shafted rather quickly and anti-climatically.
    • The whole Star Fox crew sans Fox. Falco is missing for most of the game, while Peppy and Slippy are relegated to Mission Control, never stepping foot on the planet proper.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
    • Krystal's entire reason for coming to Sauria, finding out what happened to her homeworld as well as her parent's deaths, is brought up only in the introduction sequence of the game and then never brought up again. What makes this even more of a missed opportunity is the fact that Krystal seems to recognize Andross as she is pushed into the crystal, but nothing comes of this later either. None of the later games bothered addressing this plotline either.
    • The rivalry between the Earthwalkers and Cloudrunners could have made for an interesting subplot after the Queen Cloudrunner mentions it in her introduction, it's almost never touched on again. Making this worse is the fact a Cloudrunner companion, Kyte, was intended to be in the game originally but was cut when Dinosaur Planet became Star Fox Adventures. Her inclusion could have shed more light on this subplot as well, possibly having to get along with Tricky, the other companion and Earthwalker Prince.
    • Despite an implied history behind the lore, with Scales noted to have been fighting the tribes for years by the Queen Earthwalker, the game gives little backstory about the history and events on Sauria prior to Star Fox's intervention. Most of the information given is rather shallow and concise, although the Star Fox series has never really been big on worldbuilding.
  • Underused Game Mechanic:
    • The Arwing sections feel tacked-on just to give the game more of a connection to the prior Star Fox games. Unfortunately, the final boss is fought entirely in the Arwing. In particular, the laser upgrade (which can upgrade the Arwing's cannons twice as they would in previous Star Fox games) feels redundant in the stages between Sauria's landmasses, as the enemy drones Fox encounters can be eliminated in one hit, yet the one place where the laser upgrade would be useful, the final boss, none exist.
    • Fox can execute various combos with Krystal's staff when fighting enemies, depending on which direction the player tilts the Control Stick when doing so, or by executing a dodge before an attack...all of which feel rather redundant and pointless with how banal combat encounters are. Most SharpClaw enemies can be eliminated with two combos of any choice, hence speed is preferred over style. Traditional staff combat is tossed aside the moment Fox obtains the Ice Blast ability, which further expedites these monotonous encounters.
    • Outside the CloudRunner Fortress arc and some token door unlocks, the SharpClaw disguise is mostly unused, with items specifically requiring the use of this disguise being uncommon and redundant past that point. It can be used to bypass encounters with SharpClaw enemies as well as fooling the Venus Foxtraps (but not Brain Squids or the RedEye), but the Ice Blast power is unlocked sooner and can eliminate these threats more reliably.
    • Moon Seeds are never used outside of Moon Mountain Pass and for an optional section in the Volcano Force Point Temple. Moon Seeds by themselves cannot be purchased at Shabunga's store.
    • The CloudRunner Flute sees use outside CloudRunner Fortress once, during an optional easter egg in ThornTail Hollow: A baby CloudRunner can be seen on the mountain. Use the flute here and it will provide Fox with a Bafomdad, though at this point Fox has already collected plenty of them.
  • Viewer Gender Confusion: It's not uncommon to hear fans refer to the Shopkeeper as a "she". The character is actually male, but he has a voice that makes him sound like an old woman (which is actually provided by a man).
  • Vindicated by History: This game became this in the years following its release. Although it received positive reviews back in 2002, it was criticized by many Star Fox fans as being a Zelda clone, and then there were — and still are — fans who believe the game would have worked better as the initially unrelated Dinosaur Planet instead of receiving a facelift to fit within the pre-existing framework of the Star Fox series (with a common criticism being that the few gameplay holdovers from previous titles were awkwardly shoehorned in), and its general imperfections still remaining. Since then, the game has been much more positively received by fans, especially with the divisiveness of Star Fox Zero, and its additions to the lore and Worldbuilding were appreciated, with Krystal even going on to become a full-fledged member of the Star Fox team in the next game (which featured a return trip to Sauria complete with some nice little nods and call-backs to Adventures).
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: Rare pushed the boundaries big-time in their final first-party Nintendo game, and it shows:
    • Environments have tons of detail, with great polygon counts and textures, yet the game still runs at a mostly consistent 60 fps.
    • Fox and other fuzzy characters actually have fur! The GameCube isn't powerful enough to actually render individual hairs, so the developers figured out a brilliant workaround based on a much more efficient technique called shell texturing. note  This technique, especially when viewed on a CRT monitor, results in a very convincing fur effect that Rare would continue to utilize on other games that generation, like Conker: Live & Reloaded.
    • Some GameCube games, such as Super Mario Sunshine, used pre-rendered, compressed video for their voice-acted cutscenes. In this game, everything is rendered in-engine. The most impressive part of this, though, is the incredibly detailed facial animation system used for the characters, most notably on Fox. As a result, this game, out of the entire franchise, does the best job of selling Fox as a real, relatable character.
    • The game uses a rather unique technique for rendering its water that communicates dampness in a way that many titles arguably still struggled with a decade later.

Top