StarFox review - Super Nintendo

General Pepper of the Corneria outpost wore a grave expression as he watched the bright corona of one of the planet's two suns appear behind Corneria's largest moon. The faint glimmer of light signalled the end of a long eclipse which had left the base without communications for some days.

Before Coreria's moon passed over the sun there had been some urgent high-level briefings concerning the recent expansion of the Venom Empire into areas which brought it within attacking distance of Corneria, the last defence before Earth itself. What angered the General was the lack of political will to prevent Venom's endless supplying of materials towards the 'front line' of the two powers, when it was clearly evident that big trouble was brewing. That's one of the reasons he had requested the Star Fox team for a tour of duty - there were a crack squadron of animal hybrids, equipped with the best fighters in the Fleet. Hopefully the tour would pass without incident…

Klaxons suddenly screamed through the silence. As the base's equipment again was able to see into space it had detected an awesome sight. Venom had used the cover of the eclipse to launch an attack on Corneria! The call to defence was wailing out! Even as the commander was making his way to Operations, Star Fox was donning flight suits and pounding the corridors to the hangars.

Fox himself barely paused for through as he tapped the preliminary data codes that made his cockpit's HUD displays spring up into life. Another combat flight with the three wings he trusted more than any other beings alive. “Have a good one, Fox!”. He smiled - it was Peppy's voice crackling across the channel, the more dangerous rabbit in the galaxy, he thought. “Good luck!” he yelled back, the G-forces catching his body as the formation sped out into the new Cornerian sunlight. “Good luck”.

What the Mean Machines staff thought

This is the most astonishing console game I have ever seen! Using unbelievably fast super-smooth and ultra-realistic polygon 3D graphics, Starfox is a game that you'd normally expect to see running on a mega-fast souped-up PC! But here it is running on Super NES - and it's amazing.

Not just because of the stunning visuals: the sound is superbly atmosphere and it plays brilliantly too. Level one is fairly straightforward and shouldn't take any more than a couple of days to compete, but the higher levels are really tough and require plenty of skill to master. Because the whole game is so impressive, you really want to keep on playing to see what's next - and there are certainly some fabulous things later on, with some great effects and mightily impressive baddies to test your mettle. Starfox is a truly superlative title and is a showpiece of what the Super NES is capable of. And considering this is the first game to use the Super FX Chip, I can't wait to see what's next - mind-blowing racing, flying, space combat and even virtual reality-style adventure games could all be created! Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!

Retrospective comments

Starfox (or StarWing in Europe!) has to be one of my favourite titles for the old SNES. From the 'scramble' intro section at the start of the game, whizzing through collapsing buildings, flying through empirical starships to the finale blasting a psychedelic monkey head this game screams class all over.

The introduction of the Super FX chip into this game cartridge really pushed the power of the SNES. If you haven't played this game you owe it to yourself to do so now.

The franchise has sort of fallen into disrepute since it's initial outing here. Many will agree the N64 incarnation Lylat Wars was faithful to the original and built on it in many ways. The Gamecube got Starfox Adventures (outsourced to RARE) which was an on-foot based adventure game, whilst not a bad game in it's own rights many felt let down. Starfox Armada (developed by Namco for Nintendo) was promised to be a return to form, however this was not to be, on-foot sections dominated and flying in the Arwing was dull and uninspiring. Q-Games brought us Starfox command on the DS recently, this really wasn't a bad game although it was not on-rails so you could only fly about a limited arena, time limits were imposed and a turn-based strategy game is added into the mix.

Who knows where the series will go from here? It seems Nintendo won't let this franchise die. Will the Wii bring back the Starfox game the original fans want?