The single most quotable video game of all time. No others even come close. It deserves this also because of just how fun the game is and inventive with its routing it is, discovering the alternate routes is always a treat.
Star Fox walked so Star Fox 64 could run. ...or it might be more apt to say that Star Fox flew so Star Fox 64 could fly at a playable FPS. While this reboot is obviously technically superior to the original, it's a whole host of other details that make this the definitive Star Fox experience; for one, the addition of the charged shot and aiming reticle make the simple act of flying around and shooting things feel much better and less random. The addition of Saturday morning cartoon style voice acting - with just the right mix of scenery-chewing and earnest emotion - adds enough personality to both your wingmen and your enemies to ease you into the role of Fox.
However, it's one change in particular that elevates Star Fox 64 from 'excellently-done game' to 'one of my favorites'. The game's structure is far more organic than the original - rather than a preset 'easy' 'medium' and 'hard' path through the game, SF64 dynamically moves you between the various paths depending on how you do in each mission, creating a multitude of possible routes to the final stage (which itself has two variations). This variable difficulty keeps the player on their toes and rewards aggressive play with progression to the more interesting and higher-dopamine missions of the 'medium' and 'hard' routes, making Star Fox 64 a greatly-replayable score-attack game. If you manage to get to the 'harder' variation of the final sequence, hearing the increasingly-panicked enemy radio chatter as you punch through their final lines of defense makes you feel like an absolute badass, and you know what? You earned it.
Speaking of the missions, they all carry enough of a unique twist to keep the rail-shooter formula from getting stale - from an Independence-Day style level where you need to shoot down a mothership to protect a base, to a mission over a molten planet where the heat continuously drains your shields and the only way to stay alive is to destroy background objects for health pickups, to intense free-flying dogfights, to (shockingly well-done!) land and sea levels in alternate vehicles, there is so much imagination that went into these.
I'm aware that the fanbase is pretty split on the music - quite a few players prefer the soundtrack of the original Star Fox for being more eclectic and unique, but you know what? Koji Kondo's soundtrack is more 'standard' but I love it more, the same way I prefer all of Alan Menken's Disney soundtracks to any of the modern stuff. It just stirs my heartstrings and makes me want to go out there and do stuff.
To sum up: great game, absolutely essential playing as a representative of both the N64 library and of rail shooters in general. Highly recommend!
However, it's one change in particular that elevates Star Fox 64 from 'excellently-done game' to 'one of my favorites'. The game's structure is far more organic than the original - rather than a preset 'easy' 'medium' and 'hard' path through the game, SF64 dynamically moves you between the various paths depending on how you do in each mission, creating a multitude of possible routes to the final stage (which itself has two variations). This variable difficulty keeps the player on their toes and rewards aggressive play with progression to the more interesting and higher-dopamine missions of the 'medium' and 'hard' routes, making Star Fox 64 a greatly-replayable score-attack game. If you manage to get to the 'harder' variation of the final sequence, hearing the increasingly-panicked enemy radio chatter as you punch through their final lines of defense makes you feel like an absolute badass, and you know what? You earned it.
Speaking of the missions, they all carry enough of a unique twist to keep the rail-shooter formula from getting stale - from an Independence-Day style level where you need to shoot down a mothership to protect a base, to a mission over a molten planet where the heat continuously drains your shields and the only way to stay alive is to destroy background objects for health pickups, to intense free-flying dogfights, to (shockingly well-done!) land and sea levels in alternate vehicles, there is so much imagination that went into these.
I'm aware that the fanbase is pretty split on the music - quite a few players prefer the soundtrack of the original Star Fox for being more eclectic and unique, but you know what? Koji Kondo's soundtrack is more 'standard' but I love it more, the same way I prefer all of Alan Menken's Disney soundtracks to any of the modern stuff. It just stirs my heartstrings and makes me want to go out there and do stuff.
To sum up: great game, absolutely essential playing as a representative of both the N64 library and of rail shooters in general. Highly recommend!
PIGMA BALLS
This arcade format for games doesn't really work for me now - I need something to work toward. But as a kid, I was happy playing and replaying Star Fox over and over again just to find all the secrets and beat Andross as many times as I could. I freaking loved Star Fox and 75% of the crew. Not Falco. Falco's a dick.
When I rummage back through the depths of my earliest memories, I sometimes graze the edge of a small spacecraft careening through the stars. It barrels around clusters of asteroids on Johnny’s CRT television on a sunny afternoon, powered by a grey oblong rectangle and stored inside of another…smaller rectangle. It sure didn’t look like a GameCube, yet here it was: proof that videogames had existed before me (I can recall a time before I knew what it meant that there had been a year called “1997”).
‘Course, I wouldn’t end up playing Star Fox 64 consciously for another fifteen or sixteen years at least. Though the release of its 2011 remake tapped at that far, hazy corner of my mind, it came during a time when I was becoming deeply entrenched in the Zelda series, and I would stay there a while. Only much later would I find myself inexplicably compelled to try Star Fox 64 at that same private library where Chrono Trigger had become a permanent fixture of my heart, maybe to finally satisfy a quiet curiosity that had been bubbling since the before-times. Star Fox 64 had patiently lingered as the first-ever game on my “backlog;” I thought I’d do us all a favor and simply knock it offa there. Instead, something else happened.
The first time I played Star Fox 64 for real, I sucked hard. I failed to protect Fortuna’s Defense Post from Star Wolf, let Slippy get slapped over to Titania, and exploded on Bolse. The game’s true personality was far more tactile and unforgiving than I’d come to expect from the “barrel roll” game on the Nintendo 64, and I was astonished by the level of respect it showed by tossing me into the deep end. That on its own recalled a brand of mechanical confidence I didn’t expect in the post-SNES era, but the thing that stood out to me most was that it let me fail these objectives and continue regardless, just down a different route than I would’ve taken otherwise. Where had this been all my life?
In the time I’d spent playing and talking about these things, I’d imagined my personal ideal videogame as one with narrative events that would speak not through dialogue, but the language of action game mechanics. I wanted a game whose branching story decisions were made using performance. I’d already found some examples of this (definitely play Papers, Please) and, upon honing what might be my “critical eye,” I found it wasn’t necessarily uncommon for games to use mechanics to demonstrate and heighten their story concepts (though the narrative told through the gameplay was sometimes at odds with the writing), but even the best of them weren’t quite doing exactly what I’d dreamt up. Neither was Star Fox 64, but man if it doesn’t have its moments.
Not every branching path comes with a contextually sensical reason, but they all emerge directly from the player’s activities throughout each stage, using the same verbs as every other interaction. Show off with some fancy flying, and Falco will one-up you by leading the group to a hidden zone. Save his squadron, and Bill might just show up in a later area to offer his assistance. That giant robot won’t be able to swipe Slippy into next week if you manage to blast it apart quickly enough. Further contributing to this cohesion are the mechanical roles each of your team members play during regular gameplay. All three assist during crucial battles and provide necessary banter hinting toward the various hidden exits, but you’ll have to be mindful to protect them if you want their help. Notably, bosses' health bars doesn’t show up at all if Slippy’s been downed, which may seem like a small thing, but you might be surprised at how far that little scrap of information can go in aiding your in-the-moment decision-making. It’s all done so flowingly, so effortlessly here that, in 2019, I was taken aback that I’d barely, if ever encountered a game that managed to achieve such a marriage of characterization and action gameplay that felt as consequential to an overall playthrough. I wouldn’t have guessed I'd have found it coming from Nintendo, and in 1997’s Star Fox 64, of all places.
For some players and future Star Fox developers, the potential of the series’ charismatic cast was the key takeaway, but I can’t say I was hugely invested in the possibility for their development. The crew is more "Jaws" than "Blade Runner," more "Ghostbusters" than "Ghost in the Shell." They're not here to grow and change, they're here to solve a problem. No, it was the potential of the game’s format that inspired my imagination.
Rhythm aside, there may be no genre that provides the developer such control over the timing of each setpiece, challenge, transition, and twist as the rail shooter. It seems obvious in retrospect, but I hadn’t given it a whole lot of thought until playing this game, likely thanks to their limited mechanical vocabulary and reputation for simplicity. Star Fox 64 is a developing interactive adventure story, and a more successful one than Half-Life, I think, for managing to give real consequences to the player’s decisions, and even their failures to successfully make decisions, by actively altering their progression (all while hitting that slick feature-length playtime). Time marches on, your enemies aren’t going to wait until you’re ready to engage them, and (with the exception of the game’s “All-Range” segments) every decisive action has to be performed at the correct moment in the script in order to succeed. “Cinematic” as this can feel, it never betrays the roots of the genre, still lending itself perfectly to the score-based joys of an arcade experience.
It’s hard not to feel that, of Miyamoto’s productions, Star Fox is easily the most Sega. A cast of talking animals, an arcade premise, an oddly technical control scheme which always takes a second longer to settle back into than you might expect, but Sega was already way ahead of me in recognizing what rail shooters were capable of. Star Fox 64 isn’t diminished by the presence of Panzer Dragoon Zwei or Treasure’s Sin and Punishment, though. In fact, it’s a testament to the ingenuity of these developers working within a fairly similar framework (and perhaps the deceptive flexibility of said framework) that none of these games manage to overshadow one another in any way. It just happens that, somehow, Nintendo’s take on the rail shooter remains the most structurally experimental of them all.
‘Course, I wouldn’t end up playing Star Fox 64 consciously for another fifteen or sixteen years at least. Though the release of its 2011 remake tapped at that far, hazy corner of my mind, it came during a time when I was becoming deeply entrenched in the Zelda series, and I would stay there a while. Only much later would I find myself inexplicably compelled to try Star Fox 64 at that same private library where Chrono Trigger had become a permanent fixture of my heart, maybe to finally satisfy a quiet curiosity that had been bubbling since the before-times. Star Fox 64 had patiently lingered as the first-ever game on my “backlog;” I thought I’d do us all a favor and simply knock it offa there. Instead, something else happened.
The first time I played Star Fox 64 for real, I sucked hard. I failed to protect Fortuna’s Defense Post from Star Wolf, let Slippy get slapped over to Titania, and exploded on Bolse. The game’s true personality was far more tactile and unforgiving than I’d come to expect from the “barrel roll” game on the Nintendo 64, and I was astonished by the level of respect it showed by tossing me into the deep end. That on its own recalled a brand of mechanical confidence I didn’t expect in the post-SNES era, but the thing that stood out to me most was that it let me fail these objectives and continue regardless, just down a different route than I would’ve taken otherwise. Where had this been all my life?
In the time I’d spent playing and talking about these things, I’d imagined my personal ideal videogame as one with narrative events that would speak not through dialogue, but the language of action game mechanics. I wanted a game whose branching story decisions were made using performance. I’d already found some examples of this (definitely play Papers, Please) and, upon honing what might be my “critical eye,” I found it wasn’t necessarily uncommon for games to use mechanics to demonstrate and heighten their story concepts (though the narrative told through the gameplay was sometimes at odds with the writing), but even the best of them weren’t quite doing exactly what I’d dreamt up. Neither was Star Fox 64, but man if it doesn’t have its moments.
Not every branching path comes with a contextually sensical reason, but they all emerge directly from the player’s activities throughout each stage, using the same verbs as every other interaction. Show off with some fancy flying, and Falco will one-up you by leading the group to a hidden zone. Save his squadron, and Bill might just show up in a later area to offer his assistance. That giant robot won’t be able to swipe Slippy into next week if you manage to blast it apart quickly enough. Further contributing to this cohesion are the mechanical roles each of your team members play during regular gameplay. All three assist during crucial battles and provide necessary banter hinting toward the various hidden exits, but you’ll have to be mindful to protect them if you want their help. Notably, bosses' health bars doesn’t show up at all if Slippy’s been downed, which may seem like a small thing, but you might be surprised at how far that little scrap of information can go in aiding your in-the-moment decision-making. It’s all done so flowingly, so effortlessly here that, in 2019, I was taken aback that I’d barely, if ever encountered a game that managed to achieve such a marriage of characterization and action gameplay that felt as consequential to an overall playthrough. I wouldn’t have guessed I'd have found it coming from Nintendo, and in 1997’s Star Fox 64, of all places.
For some players and future Star Fox developers, the potential of the series’ charismatic cast was the key takeaway, but I can’t say I was hugely invested in the possibility for their development. The crew is more "Jaws" than "Blade Runner," more "Ghostbusters" than "Ghost in the Shell." They're not here to grow and change, they're here to solve a problem. No, it was the potential of the game’s format that inspired my imagination.
Rhythm aside, there may be no genre that provides the developer such control over the timing of each setpiece, challenge, transition, and twist as the rail shooter. It seems obvious in retrospect, but I hadn’t given it a whole lot of thought until playing this game, likely thanks to their limited mechanical vocabulary and reputation for simplicity. Star Fox 64 is a developing interactive adventure story, and a more successful one than Half-Life, I think, for managing to give real consequences to the player’s decisions, and even their failures to successfully make decisions, by actively altering their progression (all while hitting that slick feature-length playtime). Time marches on, your enemies aren’t going to wait until you’re ready to engage them, and (with the exception of the game’s “All-Range” segments) every decisive action has to be performed at the correct moment in the script in order to succeed. “Cinematic” as this can feel, it never betrays the roots of the genre, still lending itself perfectly to the score-based joys of an arcade experience.
It’s hard not to feel that, of Miyamoto’s productions, Star Fox is easily the most Sega. A cast of talking animals, an arcade premise, an oddly technical control scheme which always takes a second longer to settle back into than you might expect, but Sega was already way ahead of me in recognizing what rail shooters were capable of. Star Fox 64 isn’t diminished by the presence of Panzer Dragoon Zwei or Treasure’s Sin and Punishment, though. In fact, it’s a testament to the ingenuity of these developers working within a fairly similar framework (and perhaps the deceptive flexibility of said framework) that none of these games manage to overshadow one another in any way. It just happens that, somehow, Nintendo’s take on the rail shooter remains the most structurally experimental of them all.
why does everyone constantly remind fox of his dead dad
It's a dogpile of dog fights! This game was actually pretty challenging, to say the least and it seems there is a good bit of replayability here which is a nice addition. One of those games I have seen and been around my whole life and never actually sat down to play until now. I do also have the original Star Fox and Starfox 2 thanks to my SNES mini. Will definitely check them out if they were as fun as this one was! Great dialogue to lmao especially Andross' little nephew haha that little reject!!
almost certainly where i first heard of einstein
a game I replay every single year in December ever since the 2000s, it simply never gets old, infinitely replayable
this isn't my first time beating the game but man this game holds up so well that it hurts
arcade-styled console games really go off man
arcade-styled console games really go off man
I first played this game in 1997 when it first released. I periodically go back to it because it’s such fantastic game. The dialogue is corny but memorable. The level design is great and full of tiny little secrets that change the course of the game. The characters are likeable and the action never stops. The music gets me so into this game. I honestly love it. It’s a true classic. One of my favorite games of all time!
Star Fox 64 was literally the 2nd game I ever played (right after Mario 64) and I don't think I had seen 90% of these levels until today. Luckily, almost all of those levels turned out to be great so I don't have to ruin my baby-brained perception of this game.
pretty fun game but i wish i could murder slippy and peppy irl
It is a crime that more games like this aren't made. Also, this game got me into star wars
why did they name him Fox that's like if someone's parents named their kid Human McCloud
I remember being so excited for this game, wearing the tape out on the promotional VHS and trying to draw Star Fox and Falco with magazine articles as a reference, but like really buff, just super muscular and ripped, then thinking "this is weird," and hiding them under my mattress. This is the game that introduced RUMBLE™ Technology, for chrissake, it makes you feel like you're in the game! Star Fox 64 was a big deal, both for gaming and myself.
It's also one of the games I played a lot with my grandpa, so I'm very nostalgic for it and incapable of hating almost anything about it. Just adding that as an asterisk. Not that I need to, really, because I think most people agree that Star Fox 64 is the best entry in the series. That's actually a little sad if you think about it. Like, this came out in 1997 and they haven't been able to top it. Not that it would be terribly hard to, Ex-Zodiac is being developed by one person and I'd actually say I find it more enjoyable, but Nintendo is over here shitting these up by adding forced gyro controls. It's like they're trying to compromise their own efforts.
Star Fox 64 is about as straight-forward as a sequel can get. Much like Ocarina of Time, it is in a lot of ways something you're already familiar with just in 3D, and that's all it ever needed to be. The controls feel great and are well tailored to the Nintendo 64 controller, and there's some good mission variety thanks to the inclusion of the Landmaster and the Blue-Marine. There's also a few dog fights against Star Wolf, although these levels are probably my least favorite in the game. The arenas just feel a bit too small and the members of Star Wolf are squirrely. Star Fox is at its best when it's on-rails, I'll play Rogue Squadron if I want something more liberating. Thankfully, there's a very small amount of those levels, and for the most part Star Fox 64 curates its pacing carefully, keeping you locked to mostly linear paths with optional objectives and hidden branches opening up new routes through the overworld (much like Shadow the Hedgehog), offering a tremendous amount of replayability and encouraging experimentation.
I can just close my eyes and think about this game and be taken back to the mid-90s. Mario getting his head placed in the vice, refusing to give up trade secrets, Joe Pesci yelling "You make me pop your fuckin' eye outta your head to protect that piece of shit Miyamoto!?" It all comes rushing back to me as vivid as the day I lived it. Thank you, Star Fox.
It's also one of the games I played a lot with my grandpa, so I'm very nostalgic for it and incapable of hating almost anything about it. Just adding that as an asterisk. Not that I need to, really, because I think most people agree that Star Fox 64 is the best entry in the series. That's actually a little sad if you think about it. Like, this came out in 1997 and they haven't been able to top it. Not that it would be terribly hard to, Ex-Zodiac is being developed by one person and I'd actually say I find it more enjoyable, but Nintendo is over here shitting these up by adding forced gyro controls. It's like they're trying to compromise their own efforts.
Star Fox 64 is about as straight-forward as a sequel can get. Much like Ocarina of Time, it is in a lot of ways something you're already familiar with just in 3D, and that's all it ever needed to be. The controls feel great and are well tailored to the Nintendo 64 controller, and there's some good mission variety thanks to the inclusion of the Landmaster and the Blue-Marine. There's also a few dog fights against Star Wolf, although these levels are probably my least favorite in the game. The arenas just feel a bit too small and the members of Star Wolf are squirrely. Star Fox is at its best when it's on-rails, I'll play Rogue Squadron if I want something more liberating. Thankfully, there's a very small amount of those levels, and for the most part Star Fox 64 curates its pacing carefully, keeping you locked to mostly linear paths with optional objectives and hidden branches opening up new routes through the overworld (much like Shadow the Hedgehog), offering a tremendous amount of replayability and encouraging experimentation.
I can just close my eyes and think about this game and be taken back to the mid-90s. Mario getting his head placed in the vice, refusing to give up trade secrets, Joe Pesci yelling "You make me pop your fuckin' eye outta your head to protect that piece of shit Miyamoto!?" It all comes rushing back to me as vivid as the day I lived it. Thank you, Star Fox.
the game that made me understand why people play for high scores. easy to learn, hard to master. infinitely replayable. quotable to death.
YA IM FUCKING BLASTING SHIT NO IM NOT A FURRY!!!
I have almost every single boss's dialogue memorized
When it comes to childhood video game memories I don't have many games to call out. They either weren't played enough or I played them way too much. Star Fox 64 is a latter example. This singular entry is enough to validate anyone who calls themselves a Star Fox fan, it's a game that deserves its love. It's the only game in the entire series that got absolutely everything right and this is not a hot take. Every single thing that you ask for from a 1997 console rail shooter is right here in this N64 cartridge (besides 60fps but who knows, a PC port may be upon us in the near future!)
There's a lot to divulge from this game when discussing what makes it so fucking good to the point that it's almost overwhelming to know where to start. I could start with Corneria, and how as an opening stage it provides the most amount of visual variety, approachability and interaction-based secrets in the game, making it an extremely replayable stage despite not necessarily being the best it has to offer. Or how the branching paths allow you to create your own journey or headcanon as you fight towards Andross, choosing whether it's your fate to defeat a fake Andross, or to become a true hero and face your father's ghost in one final fiery escape; an experience that can be influenced by enjoyment, immersion or picking the stages you're the best at racking up points on. Or the more obvious choices like the fantastic soundtrack and iconic voice lines. Or the fact that the charged shot becomes one of the highest skill oriented tools in any score based game when you realise if it makes indirect contact with a target that it grants you an extra point.
I don't think anyone that hasn't played for hours upon hours realises just how addicting the charged shot is to use and optimise and it showcases just how insane people can get at this game. An average score on Corneria for a casual player varies from 100-150, a more experienced player will reach 200-230 and a world record contender will hit 330. The difference between someone who's good and someone who's REALLY good is huge and it's pure skill. This isn't just about memorising patterns, that's the bare minimum requirement. Becoming good enough to get 300 points on Corneria takes some absolutely unreal level of precision, timing and movement that comes from the result of hundreds to thousands of hours of practice. And think about it, you have 6 more stages to reach that level of mastery at yet.
I don't want to run off the more casual players with my charged shot diatribe, so I'll note more generic points that I find more relevant than given credit. The voice lines, I know everyone recognises how iconic they are. I can't really explain why they ended up being so iconic and at such a high frequency, anyone that played this game a lot knew every line after a certain point before they were even said, myself included. Something about the dialogue is just super charming. It's not bad voice acting for 1997 and the caricaturised character models help sell this cheesy but high stakes sci-fi story of saving the world. The bad guys, they're all bad fucking news. You could tell when you were fighting a boss that they were bad and you were the heroes. It plays into this classic purism where everything is black and white, something that video games have long since tried to steer away from in favour of creating more realistic narratives. Does Star Fox 64 have a well written story? Hell no. But it is a GOOD story and it's sold by your little guys flying through space, interacting every so often. Peppy yelling that it's a trap, Slippy getting cocky before his ass is bitch slapped down to Titania and Falco's no nonsense tone that always makes you feel obligated to take things seriously when he's around -- All of these little moments are what make this game so iconic. Everyone remembers these moments not just because they're fun interactions, but because you're getting these interactions while playing a dope ass game.
Star Fox 64 needs to be played by anyone who finds the characters cool but hears bad things about the franchise. I'll be the first one to tell you - Star Fox as a whole franchise sucks. But I'd say this applies to something like Shinobi as well, yet Shinobi III is one of the best 16-bit games there is. Franchises can be dealt a bad hand by continuously unlucky circumstances. Shigeru Miyamoto has no idea what makes this series special, it's why every game in the past 2 decades they put out every so often is disappointing. What makes this series special, is Star Fox 64. This game has by far aged the best of every game in the franchise and perhaps when the PC port eventually comes out more people will realise how good it really is. It was never replicated or bested, nor in its own franchise nor by indie projects heavily inspired by it. It's in a league of its own as the definitive space rail shooter.
There's a lot to divulge from this game when discussing what makes it so fucking good to the point that it's almost overwhelming to know where to start. I could start with Corneria, and how as an opening stage it provides the most amount of visual variety, approachability and interaction-based secrets in the game, making it an extremely replayable stage despite not necessarily being the best it has to offer. Or how the branching paths allow you to create your own journey or headcanon as you fight towards Andross, choosing whether it's your fate to defeat a fake Andross, or to become a true hero and face your father's ghost in one final fiery escape; an experience that can be influenced by enjoyment, immersion or picking the stages you're the best at racking up points on. Or the more obvious choices like the fantastic soundtrack and iconic voice lines. Or the fact that the charged shot becomes one of the highest skill oriented tools in any score based game when you realise if it makes indirect contact with a target that it grants you an extra point.
I don't think anyone that hasn't played for hours upon hours realises just how addicting the charged shot is to use and optimise and it showcases just how insane people can get at this game. An average score on Corneria for a casual player varies from 100-150, a more experienced player will reach 200-230 and a world record contender will hit 330. The difference between someone who's good and someone who's REALLY good is huge and it's pure skill. This isn't just about memorising patterns, that's the bare minimum requirement. Becoming good enough to get 300 points on Corneria takes some absolutely unreal level of precision, timing and movement that comes from the result of hundreds to thousands of hours of practice. And think about it, you have 6 more stages to reach that level of mastery at yet.
I don't want to run off the more casual players with my charged shot diatribe, so I'll note more generic points that I find more relevant than given credit. The voice lines, I know everyone recognises how iconic they are. I can't really explain why they ended up being so iconic and at such a high frequency, anyone that played this game a lot knew every line after a certain point before they were even said, myself included. Something about the dialogue is just super charming. It's not bad voice acting for 1997 and the caricaturised character models help sell this cheesy but high stakes sci-fi story of saving the world. The bad guys, they're all bad fucking news. You could tell when you were fighting a boss that they were bad and you were the heroes. It plays into this classic purism where everything is black and white, something that video games have long since tried to steer away from in favour of creating more realistic narratives. Does Star Fox 64 have a well written story? Hell no. But it is a GOOD story and it's sold by your little guys flying through space, interacting every so often. Peppy yelling that it's a trap, Slippy getting cocky before his ass is bitch slapped down to Titania and Falco's no nonsense tone that always makes you feel obligated to take things seriously when he's around -- All of these little moments are what make this game so iconic. Everyone remembers these moments not just because they're fun interactions, but because you're getting these interactions while playing a dope ass game.
Star Fox 64 needs to be played by anyone who finds the characters cool but hears bad things about the franchise. I'll be the first one to tell you - Star Fox as a whole franchise sucks. But I'd say this applies to something like Shinobi as well, yet Shinobi III is one of the best 16-bit games there is. Franchises can be dealt a bad hand by continuously unlucky circumstances. Shigeru Miyamoto has no idea what makes this series special, it's why every game in the past 2 decades they put out every so often is disappointing. What makes this series special, is Star Fox 64. This game has by far aged the best of every game in the franchise and perhaps when the PC port eventually comes out more people will realise how good it really is. It was never replicated or bested, nor in its own franchise nor by indie projects heavily inspired by it. It's in a league of its own as the definitive space rail shooter.
Jogo perfeito. Definidor absoluto de seu gênero. O melhor da saga e também o culpado pelo meu vicio em jogos de navinha.
Not quite as good as Panzer Dragoon Zwei but it's getting there.
I've always had a passing enjoyment of this game. It's definitely one of the more polished games on the console. The multiple routes give it replayability and the general structure is really well done. Star Fox are really simple characters but immediately identifiable, and they bring a character to it that other rail shooters fail to match. The game is easily learned and retains the same control scheme for every gameplay switch up. The music and sound effects are awesome, and the voices are truly iconic.
I love most of the levels in this game, but there are some pretty big duds, like Aquaris. I think all range mode is fun but it's pretty flawed in its implementation. Trying to turn around or doing a 180 turn is really clunky. The true final boss really sucks, and if it wasn't for the bit after it, the game would've ended poorly.
My N64 wasn't working for a few weeks, so I was extatic when it worked again with another expansion pak. So I decided to just play around with Star Fox 64. All of a sudden I was doing really good. I got a perfect path through to the true ending only losing Slippy at the very end. It felt like all those times I occasionally played the game were finally starting to show fruit and I finally conquered Andross. It was a really cool moment as I was expecting to just turn the game on and play a couple levels. I think this game captures that feeling of mastery really well while focusing on the strengths of Nintendos development style.
I've always had a passing enjoyment of this game. It's definitely one of the more polished games on the console. The multiple routes give it replayability and the general structure is really well done. Star Fox are really simple characters but immediately identifiable, and they bring a character to it that other rail shooters fail to match. The game is easily learned and retains the same control scheme for every gameplay switch up. The music and sound effects are awesome, and the voices are truly iconic.
I love most of the levels in this game, but there are some pretty big duds, like Aquaris. I think all range mode is fun but it's pretty flawed in its implementation. Trying to turn around or doing a 180 turn is really clunky. The true final boss really sucks, and if it wasn't for the bit after it, the game would've ended poorly.
My N64 wasn't working for a few weeks, so I was extatic when it worked again with another expansion pak. So I decided to just play around with Star Fox 64. All of a sudden I was doing really good. I got a perfect path through to the true ending only losing Slippy at the very end. It felt like all those times I occasionally played the game were finally starting to show fruit and I finally conquered Andross. It was a really cool moment as I was expecting to just turn the game on and play a couple levels. I think this game captures that feeling of mastery really well while focusing on the strengths of Nintendos development style.
My name is Fox. Fox McCloud
My father is dead
My father is dead
A great score attack game. So much of the dialogue is burned into my brain. I still frequently say "Whaaaaaat?!" like General Pepper seeing the invoice because I'm annoying.
Short, sweet, and to the point. This on-rails game is very fun, though getting to all of the routes and secrets can be quite a challenge. With that said the controls are tight and for an early N64 game, it still looks great to this day. This is still a console staple that I can recommend to anyone looking for some old-school, on-rails fun!
To this very day, I cannot play this game unless it's on an emulator and I manually adjust the controls so down is up and up is down, because unlike SNES Star Fox this game does not allow inverted controls. Well, excuse fucking me if I push down on the d-pad and expect the thing I'm controlling to go DOWN. I've had friends be like "remind me to never fly on a plane if you're the pilot," to which I reply "fine, done and done. I know I'm never going to be a pilot anyway, and you know what, I know you're never going to make it in the NFL but you don't see me arbitrarily bringing that up in front of you every week, now do you?"
It is insane to me that Nintendo hasn't been able to replicate the magic of SF64 after trying so many times to 'innovate' the series. You don't have to reinvent the wheel, just give us some new spins on this formula, it's a downright classic all these years later!
There will never be a new Star Fox game that doesn't call back to this one, will there?
This review contains spoilers
The first time I sat down to play this game, I had about 15 minutes time. I watched the retro intro and had some fun seeing the characters that I already knew so much about as an avid Nintendo fan. I played the first couple of levels, got used to the inverted horizontal controls, did my first barrel roll, somersault etc. And I had a lot of fun!
Once my 15 minutes were up, I went to save, only to find there is no save option. Huh.
I googled it and learned that you have to complete the game in a single sitting. Usually this would probably annoy me, but the style of game that Star Fox 64 is (or Lylat Wars where I'm from) is definitely the kind of game that allows a playthrough in one sitting.
So I set aside some time the next day, and had a punt at going through it, and boy it was fun! I had a great time from start to finish, only dying maybe once.
The levels were clearly designed so specifically and with so much in mind that it allowed for replayability and was so cinematic, despite the limitations of a game a couple years older than myself.
Then I learnt that I actually got the bad ending, and that the good ending is a whole lot harder. So I looked up simply what I needed to do to achieve this path, and set aside some time a couple days later to do it.
This route felt like a whole new game! Unfortunately the stage Aquas was a reminder of the time were every developer would (and still do) put a water section in their game, thinking it would be good.
The fight with Star Wolf was intense and took me a few tries, and the battle with Andross took even more.
However playing the final escape sequence with James leading me out was emotional and somehow intense?
A great game that has mostly held up the test of time, and I can see myself revisiting some day.
Also i wish falco would just stfu oh my gooood
Once my 15 minutes were up, I went to save, only to find there is no save option. Huh.
I googled it and learned that you have to complete the game in a single sitting. Usually this would probably annoy me, but the style of game that Star Fox 64 is (or Lylat Wars where I'm from) is definitely the kind of game that allows a playthrough in one sitting.
So I set aside some time the next day, and had a punt at going through it, and boy it was fun! I had a great time from start to finish, only dying maybe once.
The levels were clearly designed so specifically and with so much in mind that it allowed for replayability and was so cinematic, despite the limitations of a game a couple years older than myself.
Then I learnt that I actually got the bad ending, and that the good ending is a whole lot harder. So I looked up simply what I needed to do to achieve this path, and set aside some time a couple days later to do it.
This route felt like a whole new game! Unfortunately the stage Aquas was a reminder of the time were every developer would (and still do) put a water section in their game, thinking it would be good.
The fight with Star Wolf was intense and took me a few tries, and the battle with Andross took even more.
However playing the final escape sequence with James leading me out was emotional and somehow intense?
A great game that has mostly held up the test of time, and I can see myself revisiting some day.
Also i wish falco would just stfu oh my gooood
Quite possibly the N64 game that has aged the most graceful. Iconic phrases, levels and characters that ooze charm and coolness (Seriously James McCloud in shades at the end of the game is the hardest shit ever.) Endless replay value.