All aircraft report! Let's Play Star Fox!

The thing I've noticed about these games is that Fox is seriously the only half-decent pilot in the entire Lylat system.

Every planet is hopelessly threatened by Andross, and you were just able to obliterate his entire fleet without taking more then a single hit. The rest of Star Fox is also pretty terrible since they can't go two seconds without crying for help, and usually only take down one or two enemies.

They DO do a pretty good job of shooting folks down ... they all just happen to be behind (you are the leader, after all). Let your wingmates die and just watch your score plummet. If you are on the hard course and need those continues, you better try to keep their annoying asses alive!

I always wondered if they had something great in store for me if I got two super shields. Anybody ever done this?

Well, in Star Fox 64 there's Bill and Kat, and they can fight as well as Slippy/Falco/Peppy. And there's the Cornerian Fleet in the Katina level. And there's Star Wolf, too. So there's one good pilot, nine decent ones, a few dozen semi-decent ones, and legion upon legion of hapless fools.

So that's...better, I guess?

My point stands a little more in Assault, where one single Aparoid destroyed the entire Cornerian military, then you fight that same Aparoid and kill it pretty easily.

And then you go ahead and kill all the rest of the Aparoids almost as easily.

Yes, but Assault sucks for multiple reasons, so I like to pretend that it never existed. Why the fuck is Fox lecturing me about "not having a soul" what the fuck

Last we left off, we had just finished smashing Andross's space armada into oblivion, taking out the current biggest threat to Corneria's existence. With it taken care off, we only have one place to pass through before we can reach Venom.



Namely, the Battle Base Meteor. Originally it was an artificial asteroid created by a Cornerian entrepeneur to be a great amusement park before Andross came and forced everyone out. Now acting as his base (presumably to help launch the armada we just took out), it's in our best interests to take out the forces here so they don't end up chasing after us while we fly into Venom.



Being a planetoid, Meteor's horizon is going to be far closer than that of your average planet so we'l be flying a bit closer than normal so that things like these walkers here don't end up crashing into us.



Slippy, can't you take care of yourself? Man.

First obstacle we come across is a sea of pillars, which we've got to fly through carefully to avoid being smashed. There are a few power-ups lying in wait for those with good reflexes, however...



Oh, and beware the odd rock, since these things like to pop out of nowhere.



Not much to say at this point. The odd walker pops out of nowhere to run at you, so stay on your toes.



Slippy, if you don't want me hitting you by accident, then get out of my way. I can't shoot things if you're in the way!

Ah, these guys. They shoot plasa balls at you as you fly by, so either shoot them down or barrel roll out of the way to save your hide.



Slippy tries to take out a few enemies, but I end up shooting them down first. Get in my way, will you?



An automated door lies in our path, which we have to avoid through timed boosts in speed, which ends up leading us to...

Spider-Shaped Machine
-DANCING INSECTOR-

I'm assuming this used to be a carnival ride before Andross got to it? Regardless, this guy's the last man standing on Meteor and we might as well take him out before we take our leave of this place.

I love the name, though - it has that old-timey sci-fi/horror feel to it. Beware the Dancing Insector.



The Dancing Insector shifts between two forms of attack the entire battle, either trying to spin into you with legs extended or standing up-right and pelting you with plasma balls. Both are easily avoided with careful observation and timing, however.



During the second spin and after, the legs become vulnerable suddenly, letting you shoot them at your leisure until they all fly off. Still, make sure you keep an eye on him while doing so if you don't plan on being nailed by his shots.



Once the final leg flies off, the main body becomes vulnerable and it's all down-hill from there. Bask in the ensuing explosion, and then it's off to our next target - Venom.

Another 100%, another credit. Now that meteor's fallen, there's nothing standing in our way to victory except Venom itself and with our team as fully-powered as it is, I doubt Andross's last line of defense will prove a challenge.

Next time: Venom Airspace and the Phantom Menace!

Even though the graphics for this game don't go beyond "Ew, triangles," I can appreciate what Nintendo was trying to do. There's a lot of imagination at work here.

The level design is still the best in the series, I think. Okay, so N64 was technically cooler in a lot of ways, but for straight-up combat the original was the best, I think. If they re-released this game with N64+ graphics and challenges on WiiWare it would kick so much ass.

I was tempted to add in somewhere that the level designs in the Easy route are all nearly perfect for an on-rails shooter like this, but it seems like you (sort of) beat me to it. I'm really fond of the meteor level for some reason and I don't think I've ever understood why - there's just some weird alchemy that happens there.

Am I the only one that thinks this game is gorgeous? It appeals to me in the same way well-done pixel art does.

In motion, perhaps. In screenshots not so much.

I would take the blocky triangles if only there was some kind of draw distance, and maybe an aiming box. A couple of small tweaks and I'd probably take a remake/sequel in the same art style as a download game.

If only.

Yeah, there's just something about the aesthetic of flat-shaded polygonal games that appeals to me.

I think it works because they aren't people. Early polygon games with living things (people, animals, monsters) look really, really ugly to me now, but representative things, like planes and tanks, don't really bother me at all. And the flat colors seem to be aging better than the stretched jpegs used on the N64.

I forgot about that bit in Wario Ware. It's funny because that's pretty much what I would want: Something upscaled with improved draw distance, smoother scrolling, no slowdown. Give me 10 levels of that with a classic controller on Wii Ware and I'd be a pretty happy guy.

You should check out this thread on SelectButton.

Yeah, but most of those have textures. Ugh. Flat-shaded polygons look so much better than the primitive shading/texturing stuff of 3D.

A guy in that thread has an image from my Ghost Babel article in his signature. @w@;;

Welcome back. Last we left off, we had just crushed the Battle Base Meteor singlehandedly on our way to the Venom homeworld. With the end in sight, we make our way to the planet proper in the hopes of ending the war.



Venom, ironically enough, used to be a healthy, beautiful planet, full of wildlife and greenery before Andross polluted it and enslaved the populace. The damage done to it is probably too severe to reverse, but we can worry about that after we take out the head-honcho and free its inhabitants.



However, before we can make it down to Venom we have to make it past the fleet guarding the upper atmosphere - after all, as ill-defended as route 1 was, Andross isn't so cocky to leave his homebase unguarded.



A major part of Andross's defenses at this point of entry are an ever-streaming wave of missiles sent from the ground below. They're easy to take out - one shot from the blasters is enough to take them out - however, it's easy to get distracted by the other enemies and get hit by accident, so make sure to keep an eye out for them.



Though to be honest, aside from the missiles this stage is pretty serene, so it's not too big of a deal. In fact, there's... not much else to show except the boss.

Special Close Orbit Robot
-PHANTRON-

Tiny ship, small life bar... doesn't look like much, does it?



You might want to reconsider that then, since Phantron makes up for its size by being difficult to hit. You shouldn't have too many problems so long as you keep a bead on it, however.



Near the end of the battle, Phantron pulls some clever trickery and fools us with a pair of fakes to hide amongst. There's no real way to tell which one is real aside from firing at each one, but unlike before you can still keep hammering at the real one once you find it so it evens out.

In a rare display of self-preservation, Phantron flees to Venon surface for repairs, leaving us free to dive right in and take the fight to the big cheese himself.



Pull up! I said pull up!

...*phew*, that was kinda close.



Here we are at last, Venom's surface. Unlike the airspace above, this stage is packed with booby-traps of all shapes and sizes and is trickier to navigate, and has its fair shair of other dangers as well.

First up are the moving walls, which will move in the arrow indicated on its sides. Not too big of a problem for our heroes, since they can control the direction it turns.



Afterwards, we run afoul of some block towers that rise out of the ground that are significantly more grating to deal with.



By the way, I did mention that our fellow fliers will be harrassed several times in this mission, did I?



I'm not sure how this trap is supposed to work, to be honest - the rows are wide enough that you can fly between them, and even then they don't reach high enough to hit you near the top of the screen.



Oh, and the plasma ball-shooting towers are back from Meteor by the way.

Ah, the carrot sticks (as I called them when I was six or so years old). You can shoot them down or dodge them, but watch out as they fly forward to give chase.



More geometric mayhem - the lack of ships in favour of traps is an... interesting choice on Andross's part.



This one's particularly insidious - the blocks will collapse on you if you fly under them, so you have to plan a careful route through them or risk losing a huge chunk of life.

Special Close Orbit Robot
-PHANTRON... AGAIN-

Phantron's back for a rematch, and he opts for the triangle attack right from the get-go. It still doesn't work, though.



However, this time Phantron's got something new planned for us. ..



Behold, Phantron's new form. He's much more difficult to fight this time around - there's only a small part of him vulnerable on his face, and he's firing missiles, beams and other miscellaneous weaponry while you try to do so.

He also tries to jump on you from time to time.



He pulls the triangle attack on you once again, but now that he's all souped up and harder to hit its a much bigger threat. And even still, if you manage to push through it he'll respond with a roundhouse kick to the cockpit and it hurts.



Of course, while Phantron's good we're still better. Even going into the fight with a sliver of health we still come out on top.

Here it is... the moment we've all been waiting for.



Down the hatch!



Andross pages us as we enter the base, complimenting us on our tenacity, before trying to psych us out.



Is that so? Let's see it, then.