Five Fun Facts: Star Fox

Star Fox for the Super Nintendo was a graphical breakthrough for its time. No gamer could ever forget its cutting edge 3D graphics made possible by a specialized co processor found within the cartridge.  It blew away what we thought the Super Nintendo could do at the time. It combined this cool technology with the awesome characterization Nintendo is known for. Here are five fun facts you may not know about Star Fox:

1. Miyamoto himself created and photographed the puppets used as cover artwork for Star Fox. Miyamoto was a fan of English puppet dramas, such as Thunderbirds, so he wanted the game cover to feature puppets.

2. The game is a collaboration between Nintendo and a company called Argonaut. Argonaut is the company behind the Super FX chip which enabled advanced effects in many SNES games including Star Fox. The way the two companies met is pretty interesting. Argonaut was developing an unofficial title for the Nintendo Game Boy and in order to do so found a way around Nintendo’s copyright protection system. They went to Nintendo’s booth at CES and showed them, and Nintendo was wowed by their methods of defeating their copyright system as well as their demo itself. The game that demo turned into was released as a 1992 Japan only title for the Game Boy called “X.” It was the first 3D game released for a portable system.

3. There exists a sequel called Star Fox 2 that was fully produced and ready to release but they decided not to use it because it was getting too close to the end of the Super Nintendo’s life cycle. There’s actually an almost completed leaked ROM out there that’s been translated into english, so you can easily play it yourself. A lot of the new tech that Argonaut developed for Star Fox 2 was used in Star Fox 64 without paying Argonaut any royalties.