Star Fox 2

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Star Fox 2 is an unreleased video game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System that was a part of the Star Fox series and a sequel to Star Fox.

Gameplay

The game's premise is simple, yet drastically different compared to both Star Fox and Star Fox 64: Instead of following a linear path (with branching routes for Star Fox 64), the player will have to navigate their ships around the Lylat System to defend Corneria, intercept incoming missiles and other enemy offensives, attack bases on neighboring planets, fight bosses and battleships, and ultimately defeat the evil Andross in a climactic battle at what appears to be an early version of Solar (rather than Venom, which is one of the planets with bases).

On the map screen, the area will have a number of occupied planets, two battleships (at one time; there will be backups on higher level), and a constant stream of enemies and bosses to engage. The exact number of enemy bases and bosses depends on the difficulty level; on higher difficulties, freed bases and destroyed battleships may also be replaced by enemy counteroffensives. As mentioned, players do not follow a path, but instead can navigate around, and decide what targets to destroy first.

There are three types of custom Arwing available, based on the pilot you choose:

• General-Purpose Fighter - Balanced fighter; have eight lifepoints, and come stocked with Nova Bomb. Charging time is in the middle
• Assault Fighter - Slow, but durable; have ten lifepoints. Have long charging time for super laser. Come stocked with a hull (lifepoint) repairer.
• Interceptor - Fast and light; have six lifepoints. Have the shortest charging time for super laser. Come stocked with time-limited energy shield and twin laser.

Also, a player can pick up different special ability, changing the ability.

The player must intercept Fighter Squadrons, Cannon Betrayer-Class Battleships, IPBM (Inter-Planetary Ballistic Missile) Groups, and other attacks sent to destroy Corneria in an All-Range space battle; if too many of them get through, they will damage the planet and eventually destroy it. Fighter Squadrons, IPBMs, and similar small-scale opponents are fought in free-flying 3D space combat. Cannon Betrayer-Class Battleships are attacked by piloting an Arwing inside the enemy ship and getting past a number of obstacles to destroy the central power core; the Cannon Betrayers will attack Corneria with a massive 'Planet Beam' if the player does not engage them soon enough. To attack enemy bases, the player must first hit series of targets on the surface to open up an external gate, then descend further into the planet and destroy the base's core. In both scenarios, the Arwing can engage into a walker mode which still has the weapon capabilities of the flying mode. Finally, when the player seems to be doing too well, Andross will send out Star Wolf mercenaries and other bosses, who hunt the player down and challenge them to a one-on-one duel. Once they appear on the map, they may interfere with the player's mission (such as intercepting fighter wings and missiles), making it a lot harder.

The player does have one advantage in the form of a planetary defense satellite, which will destroy some incoming missiles and fighter squadrons on its own with a slow-charging, long-range beam. On higher difficulty levels, however, the planetary defense satellite can be seized by enemy 'Brain Spoiler-Viruses', turning it into a significant threat to Corneria.

Due to the non-linear navigation around the Lylat system, as well as the overall enemy attack always continues in real-time, regardless of what the player is doing at the moment (for example, missiles may be launched and travelling through space while player was attacking an enemy base); the player has to tactically decide how to attack. The player may have to return to the map occasionally to strike down incoming ships and missiles, and as such should not progress too far ahead of the system, lest the attacks manage to hit Corneria and destroy the planet. In this sense, it is a lot closer to a real-time strategy game.

One revolutionary ability in Star Fox 2 that never surfaced in later titles was the ability to use the select button to switch on the fly into a walking robot. This, of course, could only be attempted on land, in water, or inside a spaceship. The robot had the benefit of a more precise control scheme for use in indoor areas.

Characters

Star Fox 2 was intended to add two new characters to the stable of anthropomorphized animals. Miyu was a lynx with a leopard-skin coat. Fay was a white-furred dog. Both characters piloted the new "Interceptor" model of spacecraft.

Screenshots & videos

The game was extensively covered by the various gaming magazines of the time, both at its one E3 appearance as well as in the many screenshots provided by Nintendo to generate interest in the sequel [link].

Since the leaking of the unfinished beta code, some individuals have managed to take and compile a large variety of screengrabs [link]. These are clearly taken using an emulator.

Though it's likely that a promotion video was put together at the time, no copies of it have ever been made public. The lack of media coverage about the compiled beta may be due to a fear of legal action from either NCL or NOA.

Cancelled release

Star Fox 2's release was most likely cancelled because:

• Nintendo did not want to drive customers' attention away from the yet-to-be-released Nintendo 64.
• Nintendo may have already planned a Nintendo 64 Star Fox title and did not want to release two separate games.
• The game was to be released at a time too near to when next-generation consoles (at the time) PlayStation and Sega Saturn were coming out.

Although the game's release was cancelled for the SNES, some of the gameplay and ideas were salvaged and transferred to Star Fox 64.

"We borrowed several ideas. All-Range mode, Multi Player mode, and the Star Wolf scenaria [sic] all came from Star Fox 2. I'd say 60% of SF64 comes from the original game, 30% from SF2, and 10% is entirely new." — Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo Power [link] (January 1997)

It is interesting to note that the reasons and situations for the cancelled release are extremely similar to what the also unreleased NES game EarthBound Zero had.

Emulatable ROMs of two albeit very buggy early alpha versions and one (still slightly buggy from both the ROM and poor SuperFX emulation) near-final version can be found on the Internet. The latter also has a fan-made translation patch that fixes most bugs and removes debugging functions.

Rumors

While the game was ultimately cancelled for Super Nintendo, fans still voice their opinion for a release on some other format. When Star Fox Assault was first announced, it had the title Star Fox 2, indicating that it would be or was intended to be a remake of Star Fox 2. However, this is not the case in the final version. The new Star Fox Command for Nintendo DS looks to have many gameplay aspects first seen in Star Fox 2, especially including the different characters, the apparent ability to switch between Arwings, and the character's attributes. It is too early to tell if it will be a true remake to Star Fox 2. Another hope for a release of some sort would be through the Nintendo Wii's download services, as the final prototype was close to completion and would require little editing for release.

Reference

• [Translation patch from AGTP].

External link

• [Star Fox 2 information at SNES Central]

 

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