StarFox-Online Articles

You've probably noticed a new logo on the top-left of the site.

I decided to do a more custom logo, but still keep it Star Fox. Simplicity is all the rage in logo design today, so I went with a minimalist logo and a sans-serif font. Though I am not jumping on the all-lowercase bandwagon. "SF-O" is kind of how we are referred to, so I use that. Plus, I like small caps anyway.

The single-color means it can be easily made to fit any situation.

Full Logo:

"SF-O Style":

I'm a huge fan of the work of film composer John Williams. When I stumbled upon an arrangement of the SNES ending theme by YouTube User Graham Plowman claiming to be in his style, I was skeptical.

But, I gave it a listen anyway. And I am glad I did. While he didn't 100% nail Williams' style, he got pretty damn close in several places.

But that isn't all. It is very well orchestrated, and definitely belongs in the list of the top 5 Star Fox orchestrations. The only one I can think of off the top of my head that I liked more is the Symphonic Legends arrangement.

But enough talk, here's the music:

Fox's design in SSB4 has not changed all that much from Brawl, but it is more detailed:

Interestingly, the 3DS version appears cell-shaded:

Overall, I feel that there are good things coming to the Wii U after today's Nintendo direct. There could be more GREAT things, but given what happened to Nintendo's Wii U launch plans, I give them a bit of a pass for not having a huge lineup of big-gun franchises ready.

Remember, Nintendo layed-out their Wii U launch strategy at last year's E3: get out of the way and let 3rd-parties launch the system. It was a strategy intended to break the "only Nintendo can sell well on Nintendo consoles" mantra. It backfired badly and left the system in trouble with 3rd-party support seriously lacking and no big 1st-party titles.

Knowing this, I am not hugely disappointed that we aren't seeing more games this year. If we were, they would be rushed games not worth playing and stains on their respective franchises.

One thing we've been waiting for a couple of years to hear about is Retro's game. It was announced during the direct today, but it was not announced as Retro's game. Iwata's use of the word "we" while describing it made me think it was an EAD title, but IGN began poking around and Nintendo confirmed that Retro was indeed the developer of Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze.

The title looks great, and I imagine it will live up to Retro's work on DKCR, which was an excellent game itself.

The rumor milll favored Star Fox as the title, but, sadly, the series seems to be still sitting in the vault, not even a mention of this year being the 20th anniversary of the franchise. There are still a couple-more directs today, but I am not hopeful.

A basic recap of the ND:

-> New "Fairy" type Pokemon for X and Y

-> Super Mario 3D World, a rather conservative 3D mario game with NSMB-esque multiplayer.

-> Mario Kart 8 is looking really nice, and even includes some F-Zero-esque elements.

-> DKCTF as above

-> Trailers shown for upcoming 3rd-party games, though none were really new or surprising

-> Bayonetta 2 full trailer and some gameplay

-> New Wind Waker HD trailer

-> Wonderful 101 Gameplay

-> Smash Bros. reveal for Wii U and 3DS. Megaman Megaton.

I've been reading around trying to get a scope of the rumor mill in the immidiate run-up to E3.

I haven't seen anything concrete, but I have seen Star Fox mentioned in the press and in the blogosphere a whole lot more than I have in a long time. I probably haven't seen this much pre-E3 Star Fox speculation since the run-up to E3 2006, which was a month prior to the release of Star Fox Command (Star Fox 64 3D kind of came out of nowhere at E3 2010).

That said, it isn't specific. It is worth noting that back in 2006 we knew SFC was coming, having been announced at GDC in 2005. What we have now is a general rumbling that a Star Fox game is going to be announced for the Wii U.

The question is this: Do these people know something or are we seeing an echo-chamber effect here where enough people are speculating that everyone is picking up on it. I guess we'll find out in about 23 hours from the time of this posting.

I'm trying not to read too much into this, as that can lead to disappointment easilly, but the number of people running with it is intriguing.

SFOCast Theater is a radio drama project aimed at creating radio dramas based on the Star Fox Comics.

This radio drama is based on the serial comic by Ashura Benimaru Itoh that ran in Nintendo Power to promote Star Fox for the SNES. Note that this is not just a reading of the comic. Some dialog lines have been added or changed, and some minor changes were made to the story to fill a couple of plot holes.

http://f.starfox-online.net/podcast/theater/sfocastth_ep1.mp3

Credits and download link are on the Radio Drama's page:

http://www.starfox-online.net/page/Media/nintendo_power_comic_itoh_.html

Act II: Fixing a Hole is in production.

Updates to Google's Chromium OS mention four Chromium OS devices are in the works that bear the following codenames: Fox, Falco, Slippy, and Peppy.

Also, there are other Nintendo-related codenames as well, including Mario, Link, and Daisy.

The Fox and Slippy devices are reported by Engadget as using Intel Haswell-based CPUs.

Src:

https://gerrit.chromium.org/gerrit/#/c/50550/

https://gerrit.chromium.org/gerrit/#/c/50550/4/buildbot/cbuildbot_config.py

http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/16/chrome-star-fox-inspired-x86-devices/

From the Blasphemy Department comes news that a savvy ROM hacker has managed to get Star Fox SNES somewhat running on the Sega Genesis (AKA Mega Drive).

Surprisingly, without the Super FX, the machine can somewhat handle it. The proof of concept runs at a pretty lousy framerate, but I do not know if that is because of hardware limitations or that the code just isn't optimized for the system.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNGWykZ0ju0

I'm not versed enough in the tech behind the consoles, so I am not sure if this is actual Star Fox code running on the genesis or if it is something this guy made using ripped assets, as much of his thread focuses on that subject.

If you want to take a shot at understanding it: http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php/topic,14298.0.html

Too bad many of the links in that thread are broken. There sounds like there is some neat info these guys have dug up.

On Feb. 21, 1993 a game was released on the Super Famicom in Japan. It was the first 3D Nintendo game, and the first game the utilize the Super FX chip.

Of course, I'm talking about Star Fox. Today is the day that marks 20 years of Arwing action.

20 years. It didn't seem like all that long ago. But, it really has been that long.

North America

Purchase and register a 3DS XL and Luigi's Mansion 2 or Pokemon Mystery Dungeon and you can get Star Fox 64 3D for free!

If for some reson SF643D doesn't strike your fancy, the promotion alternatively allows you to get Super Mario 3D Land, Freaky Forms, Art Academy, or Professor Layton.

The promotion runs from March 21 through April 30.

Note that you must register the system and game you purchase with Club Nintendo.