Star Fox General Thread

The first 50 minutes of the N64 version of Dinosaur Planet. The copyright on the first screen says 2000. The swapstone clearly says the male protagonist is Sabre, and when you switch characters the text reads, "Sabre's Adventure..." but then you start playing as Fox, and he introduces himself as "Fox McCloud, Royal Knight of the Lylat System," which makes me think this build was partway through the Sabre—>Fox transition.

Edited by WillKeaton on Feb 20th 2021 at 4:32:02 AM

Watching the cutscenes, you can really tell how much of them were recreated for Adventures, barring that game's bits with the translator subplot.

Found a playlist with videos covering more gameplay.

The build is from December 2000 by the way.

I'm amazed to find out that N64 build is almost finished O_o So while it has Fox instead of Sabre, we can see the final boss fight and thus have pretty good idea of "What if this game had been released as it was originally planned". That makes me happy

I wouldn't say it's almost finished. I've seen footage of it in action, and there are huge swaths of empty areas, with no enemies or puzzles, and you need to exploit glitches to bypass areas that are not done. It's definitely father along than one might think, but it still has quite a ways to go. This site has a bunch of dinosaur planet, including a 13 page summary of the plot, and you can see there's a lot they planned to do that they hadn't gotten around to putting in the game at this point. Mind you, this was the original plan for Dinosaur Planet, before they were told to change it to a Star Fox game.

Edited by WillKeaton on Mar 1st 2021 at 10:35:37 AM

I mean if its playable from beginning to end, it is "almost finished" even if it is missing huge chunks, has lot of bugs and annoying untuned gameplay segments Point is that it allows imagining the complete picture of what it could have been like

That's the thing though, it's not playable from beginning to end. Once you're about an hour-and-a-half to two hours in, it becomes completely impossible to progress, and crashes constantly. People are trying to use things like gamesharks to modify the code to find ways around the impassible areas. Now, important scenes from later on are in this build. The scene at the end of Cloudrunner Fortress with the jetbike chase is still in the build, as is that scene where you are tied up and a bunch of Lightfoot approach you in a circle and you have to fend them off. It's still early days, and hopefully we'll be able to find out all the stuff that is in this build.

This video covers a little of Dinosaur Planet's history, then goes into a side-by-side comparison with the final Gamecube version of Star Fox Adventures, at least up until the point where the Dinosaur Planet build becomes unplayable.

Here's something that was discovered in the kiosk version of Star Fox Adventures. The parts of Dragon Rock in Dinosaur Planet that didn't make it into Star Fox Adventures except for the original boss were actually updated for the final game, but seemingly cut at the last minute:

Edited by CookingCat on May 29th 2021 at 3:03:20 AM

Some cutscenes from later in the game:

Fox speaks with a "mutant."

Fox runs into the King Earthwalker.

Drakor appears after Fox destroy the Kamerian Heart.

A lot of talking about the Krazoa, the Quan Ata Lauchu, and eight planets relevant to the story: Sauria, the Dinsoaur Planet; Nibiru, home to the Nephilim, a Land of Giants; Earth; Eridal, the Kamerians' world; Corneria; Melqua; Aleminach, the Krazoa world; Selaf, home to he Anuaki. Some of these are references to other stuff, but a couple I've not heard of before.

Edited by WillKeaton on Jul 4th 2021 at 5:11:19 AM

the dialogue is sooo cringeworthy but then again it was more or less very early and likely placeholder

It's worth noting those "mutants" are actually called FireCrawlers in Star Fox Adventures and are enemies encountered in Moon Mountain Pass and Dragon Rock, but the gatekeeper seen there was cut and replaced with a generic ThornTail.

The most recent episode of Rick and Morty had a Star Fox shout-out in it.

I also came across a Game Boy Advance game called Star X, which both plays and looks a lot like the original Star Fox, as they both have the same "I can count the number of polygons" art style.

Edited by WillKeaton on Jul 4th 2021 at 5:11:44 AM

Saw the vid, love the reference.

Now I’m wondering if the Rick and Morty fanbase will try to get Nintendo to revive Star Fox the way they got the Mc Donald’s Szechuan Sauce back thanks to Rick mentioning it in the third season.

I'm still impressed that you can piece out the original plot from betas since I kinda thought it would be lost forever. Though yeah no way we can see what the final finished product in its original form would have been like

By the way, the music you hear in Dragon Rock in Star Fox Adventures is actually Walled City's music, as you can hear in Dinosaur Planet. This is the actual Dragon Rock music, which went unused in the final game:

Edited by CookingCat on Jul 29th 2021 at 10:25:37 AM

I came across a new game coming out called Ex-Zodiac that's a send up of the original Star Fox with a very similar art style to the one that the original SNES game had. From what I can see, this looks really well-made.

I've been thinking about Andross, and how in most games he's a giant floating head in a void. Like, how does he command an empire like that? Does he do everything over the phone? Then this notion popped into my head that Andross has a bunch of robot duplicates across his empire, and using his big brain and some tech, he can take control of them one at a time and control them like they were his real body. So you've got a robot Andross on the bridge of a command ship that's giving orders, but then there's also a robot Andross in a lab somewhere working on a new bio-weapon, and Andross can switch between them at will. Or maybe it's even possible that he can control them all at once, assuming his big brain can handle that level of multitasking.

Edited by WillKeaton on Jul 21st 2022 at 10:27:28 AM

I strongly suspect the writers never thought that far ahead when creating the plot, especially since Miyamoto and Nintendo in general at the time mostly put greater emphasis on the gameplay over story details.

Only Andross has the brains to rule over the galaxy.

But seriously, brain Andross is creepy in a way I can't explain.

Presumably Andross didn't start as a giant face/brain. He probably was a normal monkey who made himself an empire and once that was set up he modified himself to become a giant face/brain that could still communicate with the rest of his empire.

I just gave Ex-Zodiac's Early Access version a go - the devs made it WAY easier than the demo released earlier this year... definitely worth the $9 dollars I spent.

Yeah, it's definitely attempting to recreate the feel of the original SNES Star Fox, down to gameplay, the 16-bit graphics, characters speaking gibberish over the radio - everything, really. And it does some things better too - that battle-bike section on planet Xenon is easily the highlight of the demo, not to mention also being the hardest level to complete.

Speaking of difficultly, the devs clearly tweaked things to be a bit different; the first boss was originally a toughie who used more than one of his weapon systems simultaneously, but now he's a total pushover. Certain missions, such as the one with you flying through the asteroid field of a cracked planet, can be made trivial simply by constantly keeping a lock-on and firing the moment you register a lock: you're guaranteed to kill a ton of enemies that way before they even get close enough to fire.

Also, for any of you who've tried the game, what's the point of the cyberspace bonus missions? They don't seem to unlock anything so far despite unlocking security clearances, and they're definitely tougher than the normal missions.

Edited by SgtRicko on Jul 21st 2022 at 10:45:31 AM

Considering he's got a nephew who's just an ordinary monkey guy, I think it's safe to assume Andross was normal once too.

I can't imagine he was born as a spaceship-sized floating head or brain.

Or a giant spinning cube, or whatever he was in the original Star Fox underneath that low-poly face.

And a demon face, one time.

See, Andross, is not just an emperor, he's also a scientist, and I don't know what kind of science he does in that empty void. I assume he got smarter from turning into a giant brain. Maybe, gained telepathic abilities of some kind? Incidentally, our page on Emperor Scientist has this to say: "Emperor Andross from the Star Fox games, who invented all kinds of crazy warships and bio-weapons to conquer the Lylat system, and incidentally turned himself into a giant brain for some reason."

A Rom Hack of SNES Star Fox has appeared which is basically a brand new game. Don't know how long it'll last before Nintendo tries to yank it, but figured it was worth highlighting.