Star Fox 64 (Nintendo 64, 1997)

This is quite the evolution of the shooter genre. Say what you will about Nintendo, but they're the masters of having first-party franchises that people really care about... even if that isn't as much the case in the modern era. For the N64, all they had to do was bring back beloved SNES franchises, add a 64 to the end of the title, and they had a guaranteed hit. This is one of the more shining examples of this practice; Star Fox 64 is a fine game. And it adds the Charged Homing Shot, which is a game-changer that makes it so much more fun to play.

Originally posted March 2013, now with more of the game added

"Walk" by Pantera plays as our heroes traverse a corridor.

"RE! SPECT! WALK!"

"WHADDAYA SAYYYYY!"

This game has a really good training stage to show you the ropes. I like that it gets all of the tutorials out of the way in this one stage... as it should be. There's no need for games to baby the player in the actual game when they can just put a separate training stage in for people who want practice. I wish more modern games got this.

This is new. "All-range mode" lets you fly anywhere you want within a given area. Rather than consist exclusively of rail levels, this game takes full advantage of the N64 processor to give us the potential for actual 3D aerial dogfights.

Also, this game features LOTS OF STORY!

Here's the "overworld". Much like the SNES Star Fox, there are three particular paths through this game. However, in this one, you can weave between the paths by meeting certain criteria in the stages. It's one of many improvements this game makes, and overall I need to give this one the edge over its predecessor.

The first level starts off with a bang. I really like the way the water reflects everything above it. Visually, this game was ahead of its time. It was also probably the first "must have" on the N64 after Super Mario 64. Unless Mario Kart 64 came out before this? Unsure. I missed the N64 era, unfortunately. Too busy obsessing over Final Fantasy VII in 1997.

There are lots of arches to fly under in the first level, and the last set of arches has a major effect on your path through the game. More on this in a bit.

This was the first N64 game to make use of the Rumble Pak, which changed the course of history and made this game extremely novel to play at the time.

Now that was an innovation that we now take for granted. EVERY controller from the year 2000 on had a built-in rumble feature, and we can thank the N64 for that. I still remember how trippy it was to play this game and have the controller shaking throughout. Amazing that such a simple development would add so much to gaming immersiveness.

There are enemies in this game that sure look a lot like Ground Hunter-Killers from the Terminator series. Unfortunately, I missed getting a screenshot of one of these rare foes...while it was still standing, anyway. Here we see one exploding to bits. Suck it, Skynet!

The first boss from the original Star Fox flies by, clearly battered and defeated, at the end of the first level. This game is almost a remake of the first in a lot of ways, but different enough to be a new game.

The new first boss... is this guy. It's an easy fight, and you have 360 degrees of movement. Back in 1997, this was new and awesome. Other games had done 360 degree battle arenas before on other systems, but none of them looked this good.

Mission No 1 complete! Not that it's anything brag-worthy. If this game has one fault, it's that it is way too easy. Even the hardest path through the game isn't as tough as Path 1 of the original Star Fox. However, collecting all of the various medals in this game IS difficult, and that's where the challenge really comes in.

Rewind a bit. Near the end of the first stage, there are a series of stone arches to fly through. Do this correctly, and things progress very differently. The first time I ever played this game, I did this without even knowing what would happen, so this is triggering some flashbacks for me.

New first boss! This is the Attack Carrier from the original game. Really cool to fight it in this game. For reference, here's the SNES version of the boss:

Yep, the N64 was quite the graphical leap.

Victory sends you onward on a different path than what you face if you don't go under the arches. This is effectively the "hard mode" of the game. In any case, back to my original, easy path, where the second stage is the asteroid belt.

Powering up your lasers is paramount in this game. The initial single green laser is very weak, but gather several powerups and it'll max out as a Double Blue Laser.

Most of the villains in this game are, oddly enough, apes. Between this and Andross bearing a striking resemblance to Cornelius, I can only conclude that this game takes some inspiration from Planet of the Apes. Which might also explain the Corneria name.

In the original Star Fox, this stage had some catchy music and interesting water-based foes. In this game, it's just a battle arena for our heroes to engage in combat with...

...The Star Wolf Team, the cosmic evil twin version of our heroes with none of their coolness. You know that Wolf himself is evil because he sports an eyepatch.

WHO ARE STAR WOLF, YOU ASK AGAIN? There's...

Wolf O'Donnell - A guy who really despises Fox for some reason and is on an endless quest to prove he's better. Might not actually be that bad of a guy compared to the rest of Star Wolf, just very competitive.

Pigma Dengar - Definitely is a bad guy. Used to be a member of Star Fox (the original one with James McCloud) and betrayed them to join Andross' forces. Didn't keep his rank, unlike Sergeant Slaughter when he became a turncoat and joined the Iraqis. Why did he keep his American rank?? WHY, VINCE??

Leon Powalski - A sadistic gecko that Wolf found in a bar. Anyone else still weirded out that these guys have last names?

Andrew Oikonny - Andross' nephew, an incompetent weirdo who Andross wants very little to do with so he shipped him over to Star Wolf to get him out of the way.

No way pal! I've read Ayn Rand. YOU'RE ON YOUR OWN, PEPPY!

Only two of my ships fly away from the battle, looking the worse for wear. Star Wolf fights are no joke.

It's just as well, though... Falco is the only other member of the crew worth a damn besides Fox, which is probably why he got a shoutout in Bloodhound Gang's "Mope".

 Intermission time. Nintendo Power released a VHS to hype this game (as is tradition). It was nowhere near the hipness of the videos for Donkey Kong Country and Super Mario 64, yet it had all of the campiness. Here it is if you're interested, but it's a lot of G-rated silliness.

For some reason, Mario gets tortured. You'd never see that in a modern hype video. My question is, why are Sony and Sega working together? Clearly Nintendo was hoping that their mostly-young fanbase would have no concept of competition.

Here we see a path divergence. Not sure how I pulled this off. I can choose to either go to Sector X or Solar next. Let's take a look at Sector X.

This level is brimming with loose girders that fly straight for Fox.

The boss here is a huge mech. While I really like the bosses in this game, they seem less inventive - and interesting - than those of the first game. Really liked the Dancing Insector in that game, for instance.

The boss taunts you with "bring it on" gestures. It would have been cooler if it flipped you the bird, but Nintendo is a PG company.

Not sure, but is this supposed to be the surface of a sun? Even if it's a dying red star that gives off little heat, it should still disintegrate any ships that get anywhere near it.

Ah hell, forget science, this is awesome. I think the star is about to go nova. As a second-tier stage, this is quite a bit more difficult than the first-tier stages I've been doing.

The boss here is a giant insect and/or the famed "rock lobster" in question from the song "Rock Lobster" by the B-52s.

Not only do you pilot the standard Arwing in this game... there are also stages where you pilot this ground tank. It's bad-ass, and it can hover! YEEEAH!

The boss of this level is a train. Gotta say, I really like the sky here.

...well, the REAL boss of the level is this mech that, for some reason, is attached to the train with a kite string. No idea why.

Bolse Defense Outpost is the last area between our heroes and Venom. It's another 360 degree area, and it seems kind of patterned after the Death Star surface.

Venom starts out with some pretty unsettling scenery: a massive air battle, with lasers flying everywhere.

The "boss" here is a running stone man. It's an extremely easy fight, to leave room for the real endgame...

...Andross. The nefarious leader of the apes. While he isn't quite on the notoriety level of a Bowser or a Ganon, he's one of Nintendo's better supervillains.

AHH! JESUS CHRIST!

While in the original game you fight a Bishop of Battle inspired polygon face here, in this game you fight a giant Andross face with disembodied hands. This is bizarre. Is this Andross, or just a giant bio-mechanical ship that looks like him? Where's the rest of his body? How does he go to the bathroom?

Andross also attacks with SITH LIGHTNING~!

Defeat him, and he very temporarily changes into this creepy goblin-head form. He'll launch a few attacks, but before long, he explodes. In the highest "difficulty" tier of the game, he'll turn into a disembodied brain at this point for the last phase of the fight.

Falco begrudgingly admits that Fox did well. Falco is like the Vegeta of the Star Fox world. His praise doesn't come easy!

Miyamoto-san!

He is Nintendo's wisened sage, who comes in at the end of a game's development to peer at it and silently give either a thumbs up or thumbs down.

If Miyamoto-san gives a thumbs-down... development on the game is scrapped, and they have to start all over again. For example, Metroid Prime 4. Also occasionally Miyamoto-san will give his assistance to the mortals by sketching something on a notepad and leaving it for the design team, like a picture of Mario with a tennis racket.

"My God! I think Miyamoto-san wants us to make a tennis game!"

"We'll get right on it, Miyamoto-san!"

Our heroes do more running, as the sun sets behind them. Why are they in such a hurry? Because they'll miss the victory party. Why their planet would have a victory party without the squad that rescued it is beyond me.

The ending has our heroes walking in on the assembly back at the base. I mean, they did absolutely everything, so I hope the rest of Corneria's fleet all bow when they walk in.

"Walk" by Pantera plays as our heroes walk out of the meeting in slow motion.

What does Nintendo's president have to say about one of 1997's better N64 games?

"ARE YOU TALKIN TO MAYYYY!"

2025 UPDATE: Now to go check out some of the harder levels, where you have to go off the beaten path and meet various objectives. For this I'll be playing the 3DS version, which is a great port.

So yeah, back to level 1, fly through the stone arches, fight the first boss from the first game again. One thing I didn't know, so it took a few tries, is that you also have to rescue Falco earlier in the level. He's got 3 enemies chasing him, and you have to take out all 3 quickly. THEN don't miss any stone arches. I actually hit the side of the last arch and wasn't sure if it counted, but it did.

The map makes it look like there are 3 specific paths (like the original) but nope. You can meander all between these levels, so no playthrough is necessarily going to be the same. In theory. In practice, playing the game normally will usually just move you along the lower path, and accessing other levels requires doing often-arcane things (like the aforementioned flying through archways).

Sector Y is a fun level, with an incredible nebula for a backdrop. The boss here is a bunch of knight-like mechs that soar around, making heavy use of the all-range movement. Good thing we've got homing lasers in this one.

Good time to mention that one of the boss themes (which plays for this fight) is insanely good and feels like a gladiator fight in space.

This leads to one final mech-knight on a large ship that uses a shield the way the knight boss in Star Fox 2 did. However, it's stationary, so this is a pretty easy fight.

Aquas is a planet new to this game (though it has a lot in common with Fortuna). This is the resource world for Corneria and it's pretty much all underwater, which means...

...new ship. There was the Arwing, then there was the Landmaster, now there's the... Seamaster?

This is one of the coolest levels in the game, but it gets difficult fast when the lights go out and you're essentially flying (swimming) blind.

The boss here is this freakish eyeball-beast that looks like a 3D version of the Misery Mire boss from A Link to the Past.

Titania continues the trend of being the Venus of the system, with a runaway greenhouse effect, a poisonous-looking atmosphere, and lots of industry chugging away extracting materials.

Things get really serious at this point (as if they weren't serious enough in Aquas), with the game pretty much demanding that you go back to the easier levels. You get absolutely swarmed here.

The end of the line for this run was the boss here, some sort of massive oil rig with cannons all over it. This fight has the same issue Great Commander did in the first game, where it doesn't function the same as most of the other fights.

You have to use Nova Bombs to defeat this thing (by defeating the cannons at the same time) and while the boss cranks out Nova Bombs for you to collect, it's so tedious to get the necessary "killing hits" that I ended up just going in circles until I eventually died by attrition. Much like Great Commander, I didn't know Star Fox 64 had fights this badly thought-out.

Finally, there's Macbeth, which is awesome as usual, basically a complete war-zone with Andross' forces engaging Cornerian forces all over the land and air.

Boss here is this massive insect-like mech that buzzes over the landscape.

That's pretty much it for noteworthy things in this game that I missed on the first pass. Still a great game, probably the best of the trilogy by a good margin. All-range mode and the charged laser (now functioning correctly) both add SO MUCH to the gameplay.