Topic: You're Star Foxing Wrong: A Game Design Rant

[John Rairdin]

John delves into the Star Fox franchise and explores the idea of genres.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/video/41959/youre-star-foxing-wrong-a-game-design-rant

If I asked you to define the genre of the Star Fox series what would you say? Is it some sort of rail line, flight sim, shooter? Let's dive into the franchise to explore what it is actually supposed to be.

[Soren]

Are there really people who think Star Fox is a flight sim? Or is it just a way to covertly skew the argument in your favor by giving more credit to ground based world exploration? Because to me Star Fox has always been an on-rails shooter, regardless of whether you're doing the shooting in space, land or underwater. And that's kind of what I want. I didn't need to have any characters step out of their Arwings to enjoy the story or their over-the-top personalities in SF64. I don't think I need that now. Or ever.

[ThePerm]

Star Fox Adventures main problem was it was a collectathon. It's a good game, but its not really a focused Starfox

game. Its Dinosaur Planet with the Star Fox theme.



I don't think most people care whether the game is a rail plane shooter, or an off rails plane shooter.

The thing people compare it to the most is the Star Wars flight series. To really compare Star Fox's evolution you

have to also compare series that have the same sort of space flight theme.

Space invaders is not an on rail shooter, but it is the non scrolling version of galxian/galaga

galaga

asteroids

defender

gradius

Starfox is pretty much 3d Gradius

star wars arcade 83 (this one is important to note because like Star Fox its an early vector game)

1942

Super Star Soldier

super star wars (a game with a variety of things to do)

cybermorph - I used to have this game, and its pretty comparable to Starfox in many ways because its in the same

genre and the same time period of sf1 and sf64

N64 Rogue Squadron

Gamecube Rogue Leader

Star Wars Battlefron ps4/xboxone (a newer game with a bunch to do)

[Evan_B]

Wait, so we're basing a franchise around a game that was never released?

The Mario Kart-->Mario franchise idea doesn't really hold water to me. Mario Kart is a Kart racing game with Mario in it. Just like Star Fox Adventures is an Adventure game with Star Fox in it. And up until that game came out, we had played two rail shooters. SORRY, CABAL SHOOTERS. So I'd say the franchise was pretty much set in stone. While it's interesting to say that Command was based on Star Fox 2 and that Assault has elements of Star Fox 2, they're still not considered great Star Fox games because the gameplay style for Star Fox was set in stone with the first Star Fox. When Zelda II came around and focused more on platforming, people wanted Zelda 1 instead. If the next Splatoon was an open-world game where you squidded around a big city, people would be put off because it's not like the previous entries.

All I learned from this video is that you want Star Fox 2. Which, mind you, I think is a great idea, because Star Fox 2 sounds like a game that's actually good. But it's too late to say Star Fox 2 defines the franchise because it was never released in the first place.

[nhaines]

And up until that game came out, we had played two rail shooters. SORRY, CABAL SHOOTERS.

I'm going to pretend that was not a typo, because that's the kind of world I want to live in.

[Graynold]

The DS one was my favorite

[SonofMrPeanut]

Abridged Version of this Video:

Those elements people keep reacting poorly to in the Star Fox franchise?  They're the result of ideas implemented in Star Fox 2.  This is more or less Nintendo's mental space when it comes to the series, at least when they've got a good handle on the hardware to explore said ideas.

Fans reacted best to the on-rails and all-range in-ship content.  Yes, they want "that in HD."  It's the minority of what the series has offered, but it's what they responded best to in the first place.  What makes 64 work so well is a focus on that on-rails/all-range gameplay with a couple deviations fans have dubbed "gimmick levels."  If Zero hopes to succeed with that segment of the customer base, the balance of content type in 64 is the aspect they should most be aiming to emulate.

BTW, great.  Now I want Mother 3 AND Star Fox 2 to get the Earthbound Beginnings treatment.

[SonofMrPeanut]

Related video was just posted by RFC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Orj9RZYB2g

[Bman87301]

With all due respect, this entire debate is based completely on a false premise. Who says people consider Star Fox to be an on-rail flight sim? You and only you just to try to justify your premise which doesn't stand up otherwise. Not being on-rails has nothing to do with why Star Fox Adventures is a black sheep. It's a combination of the fact that it blatantly wasn't meant to be a Star Fox game-- all the characters not only feel out of place, but their here actions don't even make sense (in the SF64 ending, they turned downed Pepper's offer to join the Cornerian Army, so why the hell were they waiting around for Pepper to send them on missions? Not to mention Falco's completely out of character move of joining the army)-- and the fact  that the game is based primarily on foot. Piloting a vehicle is what makes a SF game an SF game, the moment you try adding on-foot elements, it fails.

[Ian Sane]

When it first came out Star Fox came across to me as Nintendo's take on something like Space Harrier.  Panzer Dragoon would be the same sort of genre.  Rogue Leader would be the newest game that I've played (and that's ancient now) that felt like a natural progression of the Star Fox gameplay.  It went full 3D and had mission objectives and issuing commands to your squadron and generally just seemed to flesh out the concept while still feeling like the same concept.  Rebel Strike then did the same sin as Star Fox by removing the character from their vehicle and fucked it all up.

What I would want to see now is something like Rogue Leader with Star Fox characters and maybe some on-rails levels thrown in and the option for online co-op in the missions (and at least two player splitscreen; give me some local multi-player love too).  Do all that with big HD graphics and it sounds good to me.

[ThePerm]

I was one of those people really looking forward to Dinosaur Planet. I watched that RFC video, and it's odd because I believe that person reviewing this is a much younger person. They can only view the game through the lens of revised history. The biggest problem with SFA was it like Donkey Kong 64 was a collectathon. There were a few other things like camera issues. Complaining about cut scenes and story is a little silly because its essentially a ported n64 games. During this time period developers hadn't really made much in the way of good cut scenes. When you compare it to other Rare games than it is right on point. Rare has the dark humor of setting you up to face a villain and then it not working out much that way. Also, to say the game if it had a little more time spent on it would be better is silly, the game was in development a really long time.

[Ian Sane]

I was super hyped for Dinosaur Planet.  It's was going to be Rare's take on Zelda!! YEAH!!!

The game went through a bit of a development hell what with switching from the N64 to the Cube and then being forced to shoehorn Star Fox in there.  "Hey you don't get to fight General Scales!"  Well, no, but would that have happened if Rare didn't feel the need to plug Andross in there?  And the company was being sold to MS all around the same time.  My feeling is that the whole development process was poisoned by outside factors and we'll never know how good it could have been if it had been created in the normal conditions of Rare's N64 output which was almost all great.  It bothers me a lot that Nintendo fanboys crap on Rare and defend their sale and point to SFA as "proof" that Rare sucked, even though their prior game Conker was awesome and Perfect Dark before that was amazing as well.  Dk64 was hubris and I never gave those Mickey Mouse Racing games a go but other than that Rare's pre-Gamecube time at Nintendo was fantastic and everyone seemed to agree until Nintendo sold them.  They turned to **** thereafter but I feel it was the Nintendo/Rare team that was special.  Rare was not nearly as good prior to DKC either.

You ever watch really bad movies with lots of studio interference and there is this weird disconnect between great scenes and terrible ones?  It comes across like someone took an unfinished but potentially good movie and mixed it's scenes out of order with new scenes that don't fit at all.  That's SFA.  It felt like a patchwork game with no soul.