Press Z or R Twice! (Star Fox 64)

Videos 17 and 18 seem to be set to Private.

My bad, I thought I switched them back already. They're good to go now.

Holy crap, I forgot that Peppy actually says "shoot the core." Perfection.

This is dead. I know I said I was going to make one more video, but I decided against it. I hope at least some of you enjoyed my sarcastic ramblings, but...uh, I'm kind of sorry about this whole thing. It was sloppy and incredibly disorganized. I know I could've done better, but I didn't. I hope some of you got some fun out of this, but I feel like I completely dropped the ball on this one. I apologize.

No, it was a lot of fun, reminded me of the old days playing this over and over. Good job.

Man, I thought it was good times. You don't need to apologize. Everyone who didn't watch it does.
Yeah, I went there.

The training area/me ranting about the future of the Star Fox franchise. I couldn't get everything I wanted to say in a short enough rant to fit in the training video. So...screw it. I'll just type it up instead!

The original Star Fox is a great game. It was a technical marvel and a great combination of quick, arcade-like gameplay and some killer music. Star Fox 64 was more of the same, with the added innovation of force feedback. At one point, Star Fox was one of Nintendo's premiere franchises. While Zelda, Mario, and Metroid were better known worldwide, Star Fox was a source of technical growth for Nintendo and created two of the best games of the 16-bit and 32/64-bit eras.

But what has happened since? Star Fox's problems first began with the next game in the franchise, Star Fox Adventures. UK developer Rare was making a family friendly Ocarina of Time wanna-be called Dinosaur Planet for the N64. Somewhere along the line, Nintendo perennial Miyamoto decided that it would be a swell idea to change the main character of DP, Sabre, into Fox McCloud. The entire game (which was nearly finished) was moved over to the Gamecube and redone as a Gamecube debut for the Star Fox brand. Rare had to shoehorn Fox/the entire Star Fox mythos onto the game midway through development. The game certainly wasn't terrible. It was something of a mix between OoT and Banjo Kazooie (there was a lot of collecting McGuffins).

It was fine...but it wasn't Star Fox. There were no adrenaline fueled asteroid field runs. No exploding military bases or huge boss fights in space. There was a tacked-on Andross fight, but that was about it. The game was gorgeous to look at and still is one of the best looking Gamecubes out there, despite coming out early in the GC's life cycle. It wasn't the Star Fox game we all wanted, but at least it was good.

Thankfully, Nintendo decided to get back to their roots with the next title, the newly announced Star Fox Armada. For some reason, Nintendo again decided to pimp out development to another company. This time, Namco got the nod and gave the Ace Combat 4 team the rights to work on the franchise. Should be great, right?

Wrong. The end result, 2005's Star Fox Assault, is one of the most absolutely horrible games to ever exist. The starts off strong with a wonderful, Area 6-esque "break through the massive fleet" style level. This is followed by a trip to the nearby planet's surface. Despite some awkward, Saturday-morning-cartoon-esque dialogue, things were looking up.

And then the aliens came. At this point, the game begins to spin wildly out of control. "Aparoids" begin to infest everything and before you know it, we're on a Greatest Hits tour of the Lylat system trying to de-alienize everything. Most of the levels see Fox out of the Arwing again and using a blaster to take down enemy ships. The on-foot controls are absolutely horrendous and while the concept of being able to switch between on-foot/Landmaster/Arwing at any time sounds great on paper, it's wretched in action. Tedious and boring "stand on the wing of an Arwing and shoot stuff" levels certainly don't help matters either. An odd melodramatic sub-plot begins to appear, and before you know it, Pigma is alive/an alien virus and Fox is giving post-final boss soliloquies about the nature of the soul.

I have to give the game props for having some beautiful/fully orchestrated renditions of Star Fox/Star Fox 64's music and for bringing the Star Fox Theme from the original back. The Meteo and opening levels were admittedly a blast too. But that's because they were the only true Star Fox levels in the game. The rest of the game had me jumping out of my Arwing and fighting spaceships with sniper rifles (and the controls) in a Phantasy Star Online-looking Corneria City.

They tried. They really did. I'm sure it seemed like a good idea to mix more "open" gameplay with Star Fox's tried and true formula. And, in a way, it sort of did work. But it's not Star Fox. It's something else, and something not as good.

Star Fox Command was definitely a step in the right direction. Featuring new ship types and a new Star Fox 2-esque strategy game, it looked like this could be the series' return to form. There's just one problem; all of the levels are All-Range levels. All-Range levels are fine, but as I noted earlier in the LP, they tend to get old very quick. Spinning in circles and shooting wildly can only be fun for so long, and by the time I got to the game's ninth ending, I was burnt out.

It was fine, but once again, it wasn't a real Star Fox game. It was damn close, but it wasn't Star Fox.

Nintendo: stop it. You know what's good about SF/SF64? You fly in linear areas and shoot wave after wave of bad guys. Stop trying to screw with that. It's simple, but it works. Stop trying to turn Fox into Link. He's not Link. Stop trying to make Star Fox be a game that isn't Star Fox. You need to play to the series' strength and just keep making action packed flying levels. Stop trying to make Star Fox into something that it's not. Don't make me draw lines on the map to stop missiles just because hey, there's a stylus now. Don't make me have to jump out of my Arwing so I can go into some cave to disarm a bomb or some crap. And for the love of God, don't make me talk to that dinosaur again.

I just want to get in a spaceship and shoot lasers at things. Is that too much to ask? Apparently it is, yes.

Anyway, thanks for reading/watching along everyone. I've said just about everything there is to say. See you all in Hyrule in a few weeks.

Edit:

Ah, I just think I could've done it better. I'm a perfectionist and, by my standards, I did some things I shouldn't have done. But I did them anyway, you know? It's alright because some of you dug it and in the end, learning how to tame the video format is going to make my OoT LP even better. It hasn't been a waste. I just could've done better, is all.

I thought this was great from start to finish. I'd laugh out loud quite often watching them.

I recently remembered that I never partook of this LP, so after getting over the realization that it went down a whole year ago, I watched the entire thing a few days ago. I just want to say I really enjoyed Alix's brusque insight on one of my favorite games.

I'm still really disappointed in myself and I feel like I could have done much better. Like you said, it is rather brusque, which is what I'm the most disappointed about. But whatever; I can't undo it. I'm glad you enjoyed it, despite all the awful decisions I made/technical difficulties I encountered.