One of the first games to use the Super FX chip, Star Fox is a classic, with amazing music, sound, and game-play
The Super FX chip was developed by Argonaut and Nintendo, originally named MARIO chip 1, standing for Mathematical, Argonaut, Rotation, and I&O. This chip brought polygon rendering capabilities to the Super Nintendo, and was extremely revolutionary at the time. But enough history for today. Star Fox is a scrolling space shooter, and is a pretty fantastic game!
The Good
- Amazing and revolutionary graphics
- Great pumped up music
- Fun and addicting game-play
- Outstanding and memorable characters
- Multiple paths and endings
- Lots of levels
- Great replay-ability
The Bad
- Graphics haven't aged so well
- Can have slow down at times
The Graphics --- 9.5/10
The graphics are extremely revolutionary. Seeing the polygons, scrolling, rotating, and scaling environments are astounding to say the least. Everything is pretty smooth (for the time) and everything looks pretty good. Now, the graphics don't look nearly as good now as they did back then, because of today's polygonal gaming. The Super FX chip handled polygons by the hundreds, while modern game consoles handle polygons by the millions! This is polygonal gaming in its infancy, but considering the console, and the time, the graphics really are revolutionary. The Super Nintendo was doing things other systems needed add on's to do.
The Music --- 8/10
The music is awesome in this game. It always gets me pumped up to play, and is very catchy and memorable.
The Sound --- 8/10
The sound effects are awesome and really get you in the mood while you play. Blowing up enemies sounds so satisfying, and everything just sounds great.
The Controls --- 7.5/10
The controls are very responsive, simple, and easy to just pick up and play. Your given multiple control options, which is very nice and improves the game vastly, giving players a good variety to fit your preferences.
The Game-Play --- 8.5/10
This is one of the most fun experiences on the Super Nintendo, and is one of my favorite space shooters. Its addicting, there's lots of branching pathways and levels, each different pathway more difficult than the last, challenging, but not frustrating difficulty, and amazing atmosphere.
One gripe i have with this game, is that there aren't check points in the levels (as far as a know). This makes it kind of tedious to go through an entire level, just because you died on the end boss, but it does give you a greater incentive not to die, so its more of a personal point than a game flaw.
Another small gripe, is that it can be sometimes difficult to aim in the 3'rd person view. In first person, you have a targeting system, but in 3'rd person, your left with no targeting, just shooting where your ship is. Most of the time, this isn't a problem, but it can get annoying sometimes. Again, this is more of a personal point rather than a game flaw, because with a targeting system in 3'rd person comes the possibility of cluttering the screen.
This isn't the first Star Fox game that I've played. My first Star Fox experience came from Star Fox 64 (possibly my favorite). Then I played Star Fox assault, another one of my favorites. A friend of mine, who was also into Star Fox lent me this game, and I took it home and played the crap out of it. Some time after giving it back, i decided to re-purchase the game and add it to my Super Nintendo collection, and it was a great choice. Seeing graphics like this on such an old console amazed me as a kid, and still impresses me to this day.
This game is one of the most revolutionary games, and is a personal favorite. While the Star Fox series would go on to bigger, better games, this humble title that started it all will always be one of my favorites, as the Star Fox series is one of my all time favorite video game series. I would definitely recommend this amazing experience to any gamer, especially beginners in the space shooter genre.
8/10
Fantastic!!!