Star Fox 2 fue desarrollado por Nintendo y Argonaut Games y probablemente sería lanzado para la SNES allá sobre el año 1995... si no hubiese sido cancelado por no estar a la altura de lo que ofrecía la competencia respecto a gráficos en 3D por aquel entonces.
Por suerte Nintendo lo rescato y publicó para la Nintendo Classic Mini: SNES en 2017. Mas tarde llego al Nintendo Switch Online: SNES en Switch.
Star Fox 2 se diferencia bastante de la entrega anterior, en vez de tener 3 rutas fijas el juego nos presenta un tablero con unidades enemigas atacando Corneria. Podemos movernos libremente por el tablero, pero las unidades enemigas también lo harán a la vez que nosotros. Cuando toquemos una unidad enemiga, empezará un nivel.
Los niveles son mucho más variados que en el primer juego y en ellos podremos volar libremente en el espacio (en todas las direcciones), explorar la superficie de planetas en busca de bases enemigas y luchar contra el escuadrón Star Wolf.
Está acción en tiempo real del tablero crea una atmosfera mucho más interesante y le da un toque de estrategia que no estaba presente en el juego anterior. Además, en los niveles con tierra tenemos la posibilidad de cambiar en cualquier momento entre el modo vuelo y el modo bípedo, lo cual es muy divertido la verdad.
Star Fox 2 corre gracias al chip Super FX 2 que viene a ser como el chip original, pero al doble de velocidad (21MHz). A pesar de eso el juego ahora se atreve con algunos modelos en 3D con texturas o sprites en vez de solo colores sólidos y los fotogramas acaban cayendo igual que en el juego anterior, especialmente en los niveles sobre el suelo o en interiores.
Star Fox 2 supone una ligera mejora gráfica (desde luego lejos de la Saturn o la PSOne) pero una gran mejora en gameplay respecto al juego anterior. Es un juego para sentarse una hora con él y terminarlo de una tacada y me alegro mucho que no haya quedado en el olvido.

Played this game mostly out of curiosity given it’s a significant piece of history in itself.

That said, the experimental nature of this game is very evident to me. The 3D graphics at the time were mind-blowing, but boy does it control awkwardly. Also not the biggest fan of the timers everywhere from the get go, as it puts too much pressure when trying to learn the game.

What I enjoyed the most was actually seeing how much of this game went on to become Star Fox 64 and Zero later. The Star Wolf sequences, Venom, the All-Range stages, multiple routes and the ship transformation all would eventually come back in much more polished forms. In that sense, I’m really happy this game exists and that Nintendo made it available!

Pros: The graphics are top-notch for SNES, using the SuperFX 2 chip, this is some impressive stuff for the system (shame it took so long to come out, we would've been wowed back in the 90s had it released then). And it's pretty cool, there's brand new team members with Miyu and Fay, you can dogfight a giant dragon in space, a rival mercenary squad of space fighters with Star Wolf, a free-roam map, and the ability to transform the Arwing into a walker. It's cool, and impressive stuff. Most stages involve big open areas that require you to unlock gates, enter bases, defeat bosses, and all with 360 movement with tons of shooty shooty blast blastin'. Either that, or it's dog fights on a timer in space. It works... I'm just...

Cons: Not a fan of the gameplay, my dudes... All-range mode ONLY, everything is on a timer, and the main form of progress is via strategy on a map, where you take turns for movement, to try and defeat each enemy base, destroy each missile, and confront rival teams as you head your way to stop Andross. I didn't gel with it, sorry to say. This isn't my type of Star Fox.

What it means to me: This game releasing at all was mind blowing, and it made the SNES Classic Edition mini all the more worth buying. Later released on Switch's NSO SNES service, there's plenty ways to play it, and so I did, and... well... I enjoyed what I could, and didn't enjoy the parts that weren't meant for me. It's a mixed bag, but I'm glad it saw the light of day anyhow. If anything, I'm glad Miyu and Fay are now official Star Fox team members!!

Damn, can you believe they made two of these!?

I kind of understand Nintendo's logic in not releasing this, even if I don't think it was the right thing to do. The N64 was on the horizon and they probably didn't want to spend more money putting this on carts, shipping it out, and ponying up for marketing on something that would have sold in very low numbers. There's an alternate history where Star Fox 2 is on a ton of YouTube "hidden gems" lists and it costs eleven hundred thousand dollars for a loose cart on Ebay.

It is surprising to me that Nintendo eventually came around and released this game on the SNES Classic, as it is way more in-character for them to not move an inch on something like this. It's nice that Star Fox 2 is legally playable, but I have a Retropie and it doesn't benefit me in the slightest to toss Nintendo 80 or a hundred dollars for the SNES Classic, so I enjoyed Star Fox 2 the traditional way and pirated it, uh I mean I broke into the Nintendo vault and stole a copy of the original ROM, no wait, shit, I mean I uhhh... Coded it from scratch in a way that did not use the original game's framework but perfectly approximated it, thus making it a transformative work and therefor legal. Yes. Yes, that's what I did.

Overall, I like the way Star Fox 2 is structured much more than the first game. The real-time strategy element of maneuvering your ships across planets, taking out approaching enemies, their spawn points, and bases while defending Corneria makes Star Fox 2 feel like such a natural progression from the original while also giving it a very unique identity. The framerate is still bad - which is understandable given what this is - but it is perhaps speaking to the strengths of Star Fox 2's features that I never found myself pulled out of the game by any of its technical shortcomings. I also really like the designs for newcomers Miyu and Fay, and I'd like it if they start showing up as regular members of the crew. Course, that would mean getting new Star Fox games and uhh, ha ha ha haaa.... aaaa...

Star Fox 64 is still my favorite game in the series, as I suspect it is for most people, but Star Fox 2 is an easy runner-up. Granted, I've only played three Star Fox games (no, Star Fox Adventures doesn't count.)

Star Fox 2 is one of the best abandonware games I’ve played. It feels like it successfully evolved the series from the snes into a sleeker more immersive experience with excellent world base systems that act as smaller missions between the more static larger targets. Sort of think like a strategy game but with rpg battles that are really just Shmup segments. I haven’t actually finished at time of writing but I feel pretty strongly about this one. Also the lynx and dog are mega cute <3 plus the star wolf crew 🤘

I wish there was only one Star Fox for the SNES, and it had the top-notch planet, enemy, and boss design of the first, with the fun variety and non-linearity of the second. And then, I wish that the reason they failed to make the sequel work was because every level was the same rail-shooter with the same dishwater-bland levels in space where you turn your ship into a walker and blow up the core of the base over and over again just to get to venom to fight a lamer version of the same Big Andross-Face, and then I wouldn’t have bothered playing it when Star Fox 64 already exists because there would be enough people on this websight saying not to because it sucks

One of the rare cases where playing the Leaked Beta is significantly more fun than playing the actual finished game.

Unlike the finished game which locks the charged shot behind pretty much 100% completion, the Beta lets you use it by default. The charged shot in Star Fox 2 (at least the Beta, I ain't 100%ing this lol) was busted. Totally busted. It deals absurd damage, like half of Leon's health bar or some shit, and actually has surprisingly good lock-on properties. It's very easy to just lock onto a target, release the A button, and let the charged shot do all the work in all-range combat, even with polygon graphics and a janky framerate. Miyu and Fae were also insane, they started with double lasers and while they had the lowest health, that really didn't matter. 12 hits is still plenty of room for error (in the Beta, I'm pretty sure all enemies deal 1 damage at most) and there's multi-use bomb items that can heal you back to full. By no means is any of this well-balanced and would probably need to be ironed out for a final release.

But when the gameplay is only somewhat less janky than the original Star Fox, I will gladly take every advantage I can get. Yeah the charged shot is overpowered as hell...but you know what? It's pretty fun to use! But in the final game, you're instead relying on your lasers, and not only are they a lot weaker (especially without a double power-up) but they're harder to aim too. Just like that, the game becomes way more balanced but way less fun and playable 25 years later.

Hell, playing the Beta on ZSNES is a great idea, because inaccurate Super FX emulation actually means that the framerate is somewhat smooth.

First a frog was piloting and now there's a chameleon too?! Everything is allowed these days, next you are going to tell me that a pig piloted as we-- OH GODDAMMIT, PIGMA!

If the original Star Fox left a mark in gaming history for what it was, Star Fox 2 did the same for what it wasn't, or rather for what it couldn't be. A lot of factors, like N64 nearing its release and the incredibly high costs, resulted in the game just... never releasing. It was stated by several developers that the game was indeed fully finished, but never saw the light of day, and was left to wither inside the cold and agonizing walls of the Nintendo archives... or so we thought!

In 2017 it was finally officially released, being included in the SNES Mini as the special 21th game, and it was treated as an HUGE event both by fans and Nintendo itself, one that would be repeated some years later when it released on the NSO, and how not to? The game that never could was finally given the chance to spread its (ar)wings and fly into glory, and after playing it, man, I really got to say that...

...it sure is Star Fox again!... kinda...

Ok, I wanna preface by saying that, taking into account this was set to release 3 years after the original, it really shows it sequel status right off the bat. The game beings with a much more impressive cinematic and in general has more spectacular sequences, the pixel art on the characters is honestly amazing, and above else, the fact it breaks free from the pre-fixated routes and now basically lets you explore the whole Lylat system, selecting the objective you please and having some possible random battles against missiles and the enemy Star Wolf gang in space is a direction I didn't know I needed, but it feels like the natural progression for the series and it has so much potential... and that’s the problem: it has potential, but lets most of it untapped.

Star Fox 2 is flashier and it has bigger ideas, yes, but, just as the progression itself, its surprisingly directionless. Most of the magic and originality the previous iteration had is not only lost and doesn’t have the same kind of impact, but it also completely set aside most of the personality and identity that made it so unique. The almost abstract feeling is scrapped in favor of the redundancy of the asteroid filled space and the boring, samey giant space ships and planetary bases; they repeat over and over, adding enemies yes, but instead of going for original and interesting designs, they just stick to normal space-craft or one similar to animals which, not gonna lie, the enemy robot scorpion is rad as hell, but still. At first, with the whole preventing Corneria from getting to damaged by enemy weapons thing, it really feels like a war is taking place in the system, but five minutes in, it loses all the impact it had and becomes routine, and not a cruel and harsh routine, just a boring one. There are efforts here and there that clearly show they wanted to sell this idea of a conflict at a bigger scale, but it get dragged down by how it all the repetition and the loss of identity of the planets (you don’t get to spend much time on the planets themselves, but in the little while you do, they have little to none identity, like, in this one Venom looks exactly like Corneria did in the original game, which…huh?), and I don’t know about you fellas, but when a game that lasts less than an hour feels repetitive, something might be wrong over here.

I belive that the biggest example of what was lost from game to game is Andross: in the first game his presence is minimal, yet is always present at the same time, he’s incredibly menacing and his fight leaves a huge impact… while in 2 he appears just as the game starts, he says the word ‘’awesome’’ and his final fight is not as impressive or spectacular, in fact is even easier and more tedious… just goes to show that the Ape cube can’t save it all…

And I mean the gameplay is… fine? Is more Star Fox, and the introduction of the combat on ground with the new ship (which I’ve called Duckwing and I believe that’s the best name I’ve come up with in my entire life), how surprisingly hectic and fun it is considering it has tank controls and being able to change the form of the ship anytime you want is a really cool mechanic that makes encounters interesting. Combine that with the better (not by much) framerate and it honestly the combat alone could carry the game!... Too bad the space battles suCK AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

I don’t know who was the madman that thought that making all space counters in first person was a good idea, but that, combined with the already mentioned repetition, even in the Star Wolf encounters, and that they make most of the bulk of the game and we are left with the recipe for a good ol’ snore. It isn’t fun, it doesn’t tell anything, it basically pads the experience and its even frustrating… and I don’t know why it had to be like this.

Taking into account its flaws and its short duration I… it’s honestly hard to believe that this game was truly finished. I couldn’t call it bad since there’s still a bunch of cool stuff, but that’s all it feels like, just cool ideas, and instead of them improving on the core idea of the first game, they just left some incredibly good stuff behind, and it honestly just feels like Star Fox because it has the name of the series and Slippy is it, and while I’m glad it exists and it’s ideas went on to inspire other entries in the series, as it stands on its own is… a cool history piece, something which already was, and could have gone beyond that, but just didn’t…

…But the worst thing about is once again tHE COMPANIONS MOTHERFUCKER I KNOW THAT X IS FOR USING THE BOOST STOP OBSTRUCTING MY VISION WITH THE TEXT BOX SHUUUT UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-

For my 50th review I started to think about the perfect game to review for this occasion. I looked through all the games I had played and couldn’t really find anything that caught my eye. That is until, my eyes dotted to this one.

Star Fox 2.

The game was created straight after the original star fox. But after Nintendo were starting to support the N64…it seemed silly to continue to support the snes, especially spending money for a chip which is pretty expensive and will probably barely sell. So the game, even though being finished, was shelved never to be seen again. That is until…they created the mini snes. That is when we finally got to play star fox 2 at long last. Now I didn’t get to play it until it was brought to the switch and after I finished the original star fox but oh man…was this an improvement.

The gameplay is pretty much like the previous game but a tiny bit different. We now get to choose our main pilot and our partner. We also get to try and defend a planet and slowly work our way up to confronting andross head on. For me gameplay doesn’t really get that repetitive and if anything I enjoy it far more than the original star fox. It’s a lot less linear and pushes itself as a more non-linear experience that I can’t help but enjoy.

So…for a game that was never released till now I can kind of understand why. It wouldn’t make sense for Nintendo to waste money on something they weren’t gonna support anymore. It is still a shame that the game didn’t appear for so long and had to wait for a little mini console for it to be even considered for a release. In the end, it’s still a really enjoyable game that I advise people give a try straight after star fox.

Decent sequel, great gameplay, cool music, simple story, good choice for my 50th review

I disagree with the “I can see why it was cancelled” takes; I think Star Fox 2 could have stood on its own as a game for aging systems as most people were already engaged in the 32-bit era. There’s a lot of DNA with the likes of Star Fox 64 and Star Fox Command. It takes about an hour or less to beat even if you don’t know what you’re doing, but the replay value comes from improving your end rank as well as playing on higher difficulty. Game magazines of the time probably would have shit on this, but if you were a loyal SNES owner of the time, this would have been a definite favorite.