Star Fox 64: An Animal Pilot?

by: Christian Blas
You whisked up and down, forward and backwards through the eminent dangers of space field with robots, rocks, and animalistic villains (such as a wolf and a monkey). Alright, if you haven’t guessed yet what this is, I’ll tell you. This is Star Fox 64, an action simulator released by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64 in 1997.

Left to Right: Peppy Hare, Slippy Toad, Fox McCloud and Falco Lombardi.

The game is not a sequel, but of a remake of the original for SNES, which was a real surprise to me. Another surprise was the added feature of the rumble pack, which we take for granted in game controllers these days.  It was an attachment that plugged into the back of the controller, not built-in, and it enhanced the experience of gamers and developers alike.

The storyline goes like this: You are Fox McCloud, leader of team Starfox, and you must go through the mysterious regions of the Lylat system to destroy the all-powerful Andross and protect your city of Corneria, despite the fact that it is in shambles once you encounter it in the beginning. Just in case you haven’t played Star Fox 64, I will not ruin the whole gaming experience by revealing the ending, because I believe the element of surprise should beautify the experience of a game.  The rest of the story, however, I shall reveal.

See I told you there was a monkey…Andross (above)

As for the gameplay, it is incredible. The fluidity and simplicity of the controls made sure that you were the king of the skies (or space for that matter). You play with three bots as your friends (Falco, Peppy, and Slippy) in campaign mode. They are really not much of a help in cases where you have trouble. In fact, you must help them if they get into trouble! Even if they are a bit brain-dead and go into the dangers you wouldn’t think of getting into, they are a great help when if comes to other stages that involve an ambush or an invasion. The missions that you must go into may seem repetitive but have an overall difference in feel and difficulty. These range from destroying enemy devices to just plain blowing up the enemy boss. If you skip certain missions, there is always another option you can choose in order to advance the story line. This allowed the game to have immense replay value and added branching complexity to the game’s main storyline. What might make others mad about this is if they aren’t able to do the mission properly, the game will commence and keep going to the same path as before. The only way to replay is to restart the entire game and start from the beginning, which was no bother to me at all.

The villains in this game, I must say, really added to the goodness of this slice of heaven. Wolf O’ Donell, Fox’s arch enemy and leader of team Starwolf, is employed by Andross along with others (Leon Powalski, Pigma Dengar, and Andrew Oikonny) to destroy you and the rest of team Starfox. The battles that you encounter with this group are both more enjoyable and more difficult than any other boss you will encounter in the game, bringing to mind the thoughts of dog fights during WWI.

The music was what really latched me to this game the most. When I began playing the game I was so obsessed with the tunes the game churned that I began playing it over and over in my head, especially Area 6 and Starwolf’s Theme. To me, it was very unique that a game would have songs so great that they would be so appealing in other cases besides actual gameplay.

When you played it, you felt that it was like no other game you played before. The dialog that Star Fox 64  produced was that of a regular cheesy 80s-90s action flick with brandishing and terms of domination, but still great overall because it produces its own personality. The multiplayer was so-so and is not as fun as single-player; there is not much to say about this except that I believed there should’ve been more time and effort put into it. The training is a nice addition and it helped in the end with understanding the control scheme. It also allowed for you to improvise combos and gave you a preview of things you might encounter in campaign and multiplayer modes (enemies, power-ups, etc.). The game was like a large-scale movie that had a gripping science fiction tale that wasn’t over until you said it was over or at least turned off the console. But why would you do that?

Image Credits: rotpod.net, boards.ign.com