Retronauts - 492: Retronauts Episode 492: Star Fox, Part Two

Episode Date: November 7, 2022

Throughout the '90s, Star Fox transitioned from technical showpiece to extremely reliable rail shooter; but in the following decade, Fox McCloud and the gang didn't fare nearly as well. The 2000s saw the Star Fox brand transform into a sandbox for gameplay ideas, with each attempt disappointing players still chasing the high of Star Fox 64. Then, the series went into hibernation for a decade, only to emerge when the Wii U desperately needed a hit. Still, one question remains: are these various tamperings with the Star Fox formula really all that bad? On the finale of this two-part series, join Bob Mackey, Henry Gilbert, Diamond Feit, and Kat Bailey as the crew barrel rolls into the back half of the Star Fox library to explore the lower moments of Nintendo's most tortured IP. Retronauts is a completely fan-funded operation. To support the show, and get two full-length exclusive episodes every month, as well as access to 50+ previous bonus episodes, please visit the official Retronauts Patreon at patreon.com/retronauts.

Retronauts is part of the HyperX Podcast Network. Find us in more great shows at podcast.hyperx.com. This week on Retronauts, Crystal awakens something in all of us. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of Retronauts. I'm your host for this one, Bob Mackie, and we're covering Star Foxx once again on this podcast because we are in the month of Foxtober, the very last day of Foxtober, if you're on Patreon, by the way, and you should be. But yes, this is the second part of our Star Fox retrospective.

Last time we covered the first three games of the series, and this time we're covering a much more rocky and experimental period for the Star Fox series. the 2000s and beyond before I continue who is here with you today in the same room who's normally here with me today Hey it's Henry Gilbert

and in one of the secret endings I'm married to Slippy Ooh I want to see the illustrations of this Who is our other Bay Area Correspondents Hey it's me Ferra Phoenix Stan

Kat Bailey And who do we have in Japan The same crew As we had the first time Who else is here today Shumuluma Diamond Fight Mecala hi mecahai

Mecahine Ho That's what they say That's the language language in Star Fox Adventures. It's a real language, folks. And yes, today we'll be talking about the rest of the Star Fox games. And if you're like, hey, buddy, start part two. Where's part one? Well, part one is behind the paywall, the evil paywall at patreon.com slash retronauts. Sign up for that. You can access all of the other exclusive episodes we've done almost 70 to date. You can also access all of the articles in associated podcasts that Diamond here has written. There's a lot of those, dozens and dozens of those. So if you want to hear the rest of part one, it is at patreon.com slash. But Bob, such an amount of content, surely that costs hundreds of dollars. Why, no, for the low, low cost of $5, you could have the hundreds of hours of us talking about video games. My goodness. I dare you to find a better deal.

Yes. What a savings. Exactly. Have we sold you on this yet? But, yeah, before we continue, I do want to ask everybody, just very briefly, we talked about our experience with the first chunk of the Star Fox games. where were you in the 2000s and perhaps in 2016 when the rest of these games released? Let's start with Cat.

Star Fox Super Fan Cat. I'm sure you'll have nice things to say about some of these games. Oh, yeah. No, I actually, it's funny. I loaded up Star Fox Assault on my Steam deck just the other day and I was playing it. I was like, wow, this first level is basically just Area 6 again. And yet I'm kind of digging it.

I'm having a good time. And I've found something to enjoy about the majority of these games. I think the only outright bad one might be Star Fox Zero. And even that one, I ultimately managed to enjoy. So, yes, it's kind of a sad decline for the Star Fox series over the years. I've played all of them. I reviewed Star Fox Zero and various others. but, well, at least they exist.

Yes, that's the best thing we can say about these games, some of them. Diamond, where were you in various periods of the aughts and 2016 with the Star Fox series? Oh, boy, I was kind of staring from afar with my mouth agape, not really excited about buying any of these games. So I fear, I fear much like Pippi, I'm going to slip into the background gradually and just become less and less involved in the team because, yeah, I've played very few of these games. I've owned none of them. So, yeah, but I have opinions, but yeah, it's very, I'm afraid this is a very little firsthand, like literally hands-on controller time for me. But let's go.

Let's go. I'm hopping. You can be like peppy and occasionally chime in with advice, like, stay alert or whatever. If one of us is falling asleep, you could just chime in with that. Right. Henry, what about you? What about you and Star Fox? in the 21st century.

Man, you know, it's all, I have so many ups and downs through my, like, personal life. Like, because adventures I've experienced as, like, via the IGN forums and talking about it up to its release. I worked at a blockbuster video when the next GameCube game came out up until, you know, one of the, the only time I directly asked Shigero Miyamoto a question as a game journalist. was about one of these games. So, yes, I have... I want to hear about this. I have so many...

That's a preview for later, guys. But yeah, I have so many personal memories connected to this, despite not having the best time with most of them and not beating any of them, unfortunately. But I was very engaged with all these as a hardcore Nintendo fan who only wanted the best for Star Fox. Yeah, me too.

I played all of them, although I only played the Wii one within the past weekend. And by the way, yes, you can buy it on Amazon new for less than retail still as of this recording. So go out and get it if you want to. I kind of enjoyed it a little bit. But yeah, I Star Fox fan in the 90s, of course. I get adventures. And I am a fan of the rare games, but it let me down.

And I think games from that era that let me down, I took a lot more personally because I was making $5 an hour. So it took me 10 hours of work to play a new game. And I just think about that now And I'm happy games cost a lot less Yes, yeah Or it costs the same as that Inflation, it hasn't adjusted For inflation too much

Yeah, and there's lots of steam sales But yeah, I played All those $70 games They're trying to sell us now Just wait until Christmas But yeah, I didn't like adventures that much I really bounced off of Star Fox command When it came out

I played it for like 20 minutes It was back in the envelope Back to Gamefly Played Assault, didn't care for it that much And yeah, I just had a bad haste in my mouth for all these games, but upon revisiting them as a much more calm 40-year-old man, I was in the

tumultuous time period of my 20s, I can find a lot more to like in these games, and yeah, the Wii one is very weird, we'll talk about it, but I find it very charming, and it's like they use every part of the Wii U. It's like they actually use the entire

system, and I really like that. So going to this, I was a bit afraid like how many of these games are just going to turn me off and just make me regret right even signing up for this, but no, I found something to like in all of these, and I didn't think I'd be saying that on this podcast. move on in chronological order to the next game in the series. Star Fox Adventures are released in the fall

of 2002 in both Japan and the USA and I loaded this up in my emulator because it costs a lot of money to buy the disc and I tweeted about it like here I go, it's come to this and I thought people would just be like yeah fuck this game it sucks but all of the tweets

I got were just like oh I remember this game I'm going to replay it again. People really like this game. There's a new wave of nostalgia for it and I can respect that. And like I said in the intro, I do like rare games from this period. Like I like Banjo Cazooey.

I like Banjo-Tooey. I can mess with Donkey Kong 64. But even as an enjoyer of those games at the time, I didn't really like this. And it was part of a very weird and experimental era for Nintendo in which every game they released pissed everybody off. Because like Star Fox, not flying in Our Wing anymore.

Well, it kind of is, but it's more like Zelda. Mario has got a hose. Zelda is a cartoon. girl. And Samis, well, she's a first person shooter now. And everything they were doing is making the hardcore gamers very, very mad. And this was another example of it. And maybe that's why I didn't like it. Maybe because 2002 was an awful time to be alive. That can change a lot of opinions. But yeah, those are my initial thoughts about this game. But upon revisiting it, I can respect it a bit more. You know, I remember I was really paying close

attention to it up to release. I remember first hearing about it as the game it was on another system. And I was really excited for it. And by the time it came out, I think I did let all the jokes about it being a collectathon and rare's worst things prevent me from playing it. Yeah. Well, you do collect a million like gloobble globs and sneeble snobs and all of the other very British things in this game. Diamond or Cat, any like 2002 era experience? with this. I mean, I was a, I reserve this game. I was a day one Star Fox Adventures buyer. I just ran it it, man. I think it makes a terrible first impression.

I really feel like, you know, even if you don't, even if you were not online at the time, even if you weren't, you know, exposed to anyone else's opinions, if you put that in your system and you start playing it, I feel like it gets off to a really rough start with all the, oh my God, I mean, the gibberish, the nonstop gibberish and the characters you don't actually know yet, and the game, the people are talking, but they're not speaking English, they're speaking in made-up language, but the game itself, like text-wise, is this so much text for every you know everything you pick up it's like oh you know you picked up a nut this nut heals your health and like two more sentences after this and i just feel you know it maybe

gets better but wow like the first my first glance at it i was like this is infuriating i don't i don't want to go anymore yeah it really kind of highlighted the the secret decline of rare into the game cube era because everybody thought that rare was Nintendo was doomed rare was uh rare was going to leave and then that was going to be it but actually they repurposed dinosaur planet or whatever and turned it into star fox adventures my own memories of this game was that it was actually gorgeous it was one of the most technically amazing game cube games of its era and nobody could ever shut up about the realistic fur oh my god but as for me i was kind of resentful of it because i was like why isn't he in arwing and they had a few rwing sequence just as they make good for the fans but Fox isn't in the R-wing enough and I just wanted the

I just wanted the shooter that's what I wanted secretly maybe it was the direction that Star Fox needed to go all along which is to turn it into an RPG of sorts in which you are exploring on the ground but also you're flying around in the R-wing

and you're going from planet to planet but I don't think Star Fox ever kind of quite got there. So for me, Star Fox Adventures is the look ahead, I suppose, to a world that Star Fox never quite reached. Yeah, I mean, you mentioned it, Kat. You mentioned Dinosaur Planet. I think we all talked a little bit about it, but it was a bit unfair to Star Fox that

the IP was just sort of grafted onto this existing game concept because, like a lot of late N64 games, it moved to the GameCube. other ones like Eternal Darkness and Resident Evil Zero. Nintendo just like yank the cord on the N64 after 2001. There's just like one 2002 release and it's a very weird port of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater

3. But by the time the GameCube launched there were no new N64 games. So we're just like yeah we're cutting bait we're moving on and other projects can jump ship to this one. I was really excited for those first previews of dinosaur planet I was reading

you know for literal like years before the release of Star Fox Adventure. Like, I was, I was looking forward to this game because, you know, I wanted to see rare so many times they had, you know, oh, you did Mario Cartwell, we'll do Diddy Kong Racing? Oh, you guys did, you know, Mario 64 will do banjo. So I wanted to see what their approach to Ocarina of Time would be. And then it didn't end up being that.

I mean, it was, but it was also wasn't. But I guess I can see from Miyamoto and Nintendo standpoint that they're like, you know, Rare's biggest successes for us, some of them were handing them Donkey Kong and then they made a game with Donkey Kong. So let's hand them another furry character and see what they can do with that guy. Yeah, they really trusted Rare. And at this point, if you weren't around or maybe if you forgot, they were making the other big games on the N64 that Nintendo didn't have time to make. I mean, there's a huge golf between, like, Mario 64 and Zelda 64, and Rare is filling those gaps with things like Diddy Kong and Banjo, Kazui, and things like that. I mean, the N64 would have been fucked without Rare there.

Like, I mean, it would have been, it would have had five great games on it. The best games ever, but nothing in between those five games. And the story of this game is so, yeah, Rare saves Nintendo during the fall of 97 because there's Golden Eye, which we mentioned on the last episode. And there's also Diddy Kong Racing, which I think might be a better game than Mario Carts, even though the characters are worse. But without those two titles,

they would just have had a miserable failure of a Christmas of that year. Because Ocarina of Time just got delayed and delayed and delayed. It was not going to make it out for 97, so they needed something to fill the gaps. So Diddy Kong Racing, huge success. That team splits in two.

One half of that team goes off to make Jet Force Gemini. The other half goes out to make Dinosaur Planet. And the original version of Dinosaur Planet was going to star Timber the Tiger, which was one of the characters of Diddy Kong Racing that was formerly the star of what Diddy Kong used to be before Diddy Kong was imposed on that game. And Timber the Tiger was like their own Diddy Kong in that he wore a hat with the logo of the studio on it. So Diddy Kong has a Nintendo hat.

Timber the Tiger has a rare hat on. And that's what happened there. The game went through many forms, but luckily in early development, Ocarine of Time released during the development of Dinosaurs. planet so it gave them major inspiration and eventually timber the tiger was replaced by saber named after saber bull from an old rare game and he was given a female companion named crystal for his open world adventure so that's kind of the basics of how dinosaur planet uh was initially thought up before it was a star fox game and i love dinosaurs meeting sci-fi like that's always a fun

combo i i play with dino writers toys as a child so it's it's all you get give me some dinosaurs and some missile launchers, that's a good time. But it's also imposing like a weird Native American like theme to the game where it's like, here's the sexy native babe that, frankly, too sexy for Star Fox. Crystal is kind of a Navee, actually, I'd say, for the world of Avatar. I think so. And then Rare would make that cameo game with another like sexy indigenous character. That's true, yeah.

That's very like exoticized. Is there also a fighter in killer instinct that's a bit like that? perhaps. I think, I guess, no, Jade's more orientalistic, I don't know

like that one. Killer instinct. There's this character called Sabre Wolf. Yes. That's right. He does come back for killer instinct.

Very British to them. Yes. A lot of things in this game, frankly, too British. Star Fox won just British enough, but they're getting too British here.

We'll talk more about that soon. So dinosaurs, so this is not stated explicitly, but I feel like in the same way that Banjo Kazui was trying to outdo Mario, like friendly competition. I feel like this game

was trying to do to outdo Ocarina of Time because their initial concept was, okay, it's like Aquarine of Time, but there are two characters in the world is seamless. There are no loading times. Unlike an Ocary of Time, you go into a cave entrance, you've got to

load the cave or the dungeon or the house. They were still able to make this work on the GameCube, but that was their initial strategy for the N64. Like, it's a seamless open world when that idea was still like enchanting to all of us. Well, I mean, they just, they tried showing that off, or they did show it off on

Donkey Kong 64, not that great game in my opinion but they had that memory expansion pack and they were they were showing off all the new stuff you could do with it so while showing this off at e3 uh probably like 99 or 2000 Nintendo saw it they probably knew it was in development they're like you've got a fox character we have a fox character we should talk uh and so it was at that point they were given the star fox license and trusted with it and uh at that point like i said before it was moved over to the game cube but a good chunk of this game was found, and it's currently kind of playable.

A Swedish game collector had a copy of a very late build of Dinosaur Planet for the N64, and hackers have kind of repaired it in some ways to make it playable. A lot of the crystal stuff is unplayable or has, like, broken flags in it, but you can actually see and play the original version of Dinosaur Planet via this release by this game collector, which is pretty cool. And I think Nintendo made the right call pushing games like it to the GameCube. like the game cube needed software like up front and it was going to you know they'd be waiting even longer to get out stuff like they didn't even have a maria ready for launch day uh like they did with maria 64 like they needed everything they get and like i i shudder to think how horrible eternal darkness would have been on an n64 by comparison instead of instead of a good game the only like good game accidentally that silica knights made i'd say yeah they made that legacy of cane no those were good I'm being extra mean

They only made just the one Okay yeah The first one That's all they could fucking ship man Star Fox Adventures I would even go so far as to say Nintendo made the right call Maybe attaching a Nintendo IP

To it rather than the somewhat generic sounding Dinosaur planet Like I think people Notice and acknowledged this game Because the name Star Fox was attached to it No joke I just think that Ultimately maybe it was a little bit of a poor fit

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and then we still have time to decompress together by watching a movie at the end of the day. go to hellofresh.com slash retro 65 and use code retro 65 for 65% off plus free shipping on America's number one meal kit. That's 65% off at hellofresh.com slash retro 65 and use code retro 65 for 65% off. Yeah, new IP perhaps. It was the early 2000s. We could still make new IP back then. You know, I wonder if somewhere in Nintendo, I bet that I'm just thinking that if they realize, like, if they're thinking that they might sell rare in the near future, do they want to give rare a personal IP that they can take with them called Dinosaur Planet? Or do they want to put a Nintendo franchise in it that they can't fully own once they sell it off? I wonder if that was part of the decision making. That's an intriguing theory, Henry, because the timing is so close.

Literally the day after this game launches, Microsoft announces the Rare purchase. So it's such a one-two punch. So that's maybe not that far-fetched. Yeah, that was hanging over the release of this game. The day after it releases, it's announced that Rare is leaving Nintendo, Microsoft is buying them, and they have a really rough time at Microsoft. I mean, we consider this game not very great. It took a while for them to make an actual good game.

Oh, yeah. Like Banjo Cazui nuts and bolts might be the next actual good game that they made for any Microsoft platform. Some people like Cameo. Nobody likes Perfect Dark Zero. No. And then they made a ton of Connect stuff. Don't forget, grabbed by the goolies. Right.

And that's a testicles joke, everybody. Check your goolies. Yeah. No, it made things worths for both sides. Both were lessened by doing it. No one was improved. Microsoft didn't know what to do. And I'll tell you what, on the IGN forums, as I mentioned earlier, where I was,

waiting for this game in my console warish era of going like Microsoft bottom no like this is going to ruin Nintendo it's awful how long before Nintendo goes to their party yeah yeah when will Apple buy Nintendo I was sick of that rumor still waiting on that one yeah I mean to be fair to this game I don't like it that much I tried to play a little of it and it's hard to go back to and I my own my own like the philosophy about this game is like do you want to play any 3D Zelda like from 2002.

This is the best possible version of that experience that's not a Zelda game and even like going back to Aquarium of Time can be pretty hard to do. So they did the best they could with what games could do at this time but it has aged very poorly in a way that 2D games have not aged poorly. And

there's like a lot of talking, there's a lot of cutscenes, there's a lot of unnecessarily showing you items that you're collecting and things like that. I feel like beyond good and evils maybe the one Zelda like from this era that is very playable and even then it's like five hours long it's very digestible yeah i i mean even by 2009 when a seven out of ten game like darksiders like i still played that all the way the end because i was like wow this is a good zelda clone you never get any of

these like i i beat that game but uh yeah so in that regard at least star fox adventures is like not terrible of being a zelda game yeah i think it's like the best possible case of this happening at that time but it's hard to go back to and some things i notice about you know this game by watching videos of it and playing a bit of it is that rare is still keeping their kind of quaint in-house development with the star fox brand so normally all of their characters are voiced by people at rare which is why like conquer is just some guy who made the game who's just got a funny voice they're doing that with the star fox characters but these are all very british people so it's so distracting, you can hear a very British person

just like cramming that accent down like trying to become American playing Star Fox. Peppy is played by the guy who plays Conquer and it's very obvious. I didn't know that. That's great. Look out. He's going to get you. Yeah, that's basically how he sounds.

But it doesn't really, like that bothers my ear hearing an accent being crammed down someone's throat. I was like you had Star Fox actors. The last game was four years ago. You couldn't have gotten them back but they were still doing things their own way and that's how rare operated but to me i just felt like it wasn't working anymore that kind of technique wasn't working anymore part of that charm was

great in conquer hearing characters like be that you needed subtitles you had to have subtitles to play that game and the britishness through the compression of an n64 just unlistable honestly without subtitles but I love I love those blokes talking it actually is most of the fun of Conquer

now is hearing the voices like not certainly not playing it all the blocs and the birds oh and then birds is it just does it inspire nostalgia because it's so attached to GameCube nostalgia is that what it is like so many kids

played it growing up and they're like oh man because actually I had a friend over the weekend And she's like, I think she just turned 30. She has very fond memories of Star Fox adventures on the GameCube. She was a young GameCube kid and stuff like that. So maybe it was just a case of misplaced nostalgia or whatever.

But I'm just wondering if there is actually something there that we're not really perceiving. I mean, it is weird. It happens to every generation where I noticed that games I really like, Gen Xers, no offense Diamond. They'll be like, oh, that game sucks. Like, I really liked a Mario RPG, but people that were born, maybe five years before me were like, oh, that game looks awful, it's terrible, it's not Final Fantasy. And I was like, I thought everybody liked this game. But, and I see the same thing with, like, Banjo Cazui and some of the other 3D platformers where if you were born, say, in like 1985 or later, you love those games. But if you were born before that, you're like, oh, those games are awful.

All you just collect things. It's not Mario. So I feel like there's always a generational divide, and it's so slight between a lot of games. I do think I'm sorry Using Kat's example If her friend is about 30 right now Then she might have been too young to play Mario 64

Or Okarina of Time So this would have been the right game At the right time for her She was definitely too young for Mario 64 Right So if you know And just given the general dearth Of GameCube games period

You know it's like if you had a GameCube around the house Oh here's the new game for it And here's some Likeable question mark characters and you get in a fun adventure, I could, you know, if this game is just put in front of you and you don't have the,

they don't have the option of getting another game or, you know, doing something else, I could totally see getting into this and say, oh, this is, this is, you know, this is great for me.

But, you know, as an adult looking at this now or even an adult, being an adult at the time, looking at it, I was like, I don't, I don't want to play this. I don't, I don't like this.

But I don't, that doesn't necessarily mean it's terrible. It just means that I don't want to, I don't want to put my hands on it. But it's, it's not, like, everything we're saying about it doesn't make it awful. It just makes little, little irritations that can add up to the point where it's like, I just, I'm walking away from this. I don't, I don't want to deal with this. You know, I think, I think the, not just the look of it, like, graphically it was, I do remember seeing in 2002 thinking, wow, that looks really good.

The rain looks really good, yeah. Yeah, you can save this as a reference like people who say the GameCube has the worst graphics, show them this, like kind of thing. I clearly all of my vision at the time was clouded through console war bullshit but and I owned all I own an Xbox anyway but but so I also think kids at the time probably really liked it just it is kind of a fancy fanciful world like all these colorful characters and perhaps if you're you know entering puberty some of these characters speak to you differently than it did for us past our high school age crystal launched about a thousand debon art accounts or more That's an underestimation. 10,000, 100,000. I have no problem with sexy characters. I've grown to like them more as I get older. But I feel like she's too much for this world, which is why they really tone her down.

Because I was like showing my wife images of Crystal just to remind her like, this is what Crystal look like. And she was like, is she wearing underwear underneath her like loincloth? And we investigated and she's got like white panties on. But it's not really panties It's like it looks like a fur coloring that looks like panties Someone had to texture that Someone that was having a lot of fun So they really

They clean up Crystal with future games So she is at her sexiest in this game And it's almost too much up front I don't know how visible it would have been on television at the time But if you look at higher quality images of that game right now As far as I can tell Crystal has both tribal tattoos Or something like a tribal tattoo around her arm

and she's got like a lower back tattoo. Like it's, it's incredibly, you know, eroticized. Like, there's no way they didn't do this on purpose. You know what I mean? Like, it's pretty out there for 2002, certainly for a Nintendo game. They could not dress a human character like that in a Nintendo game until like Bayonetta 2 when she's got her sexy Star Fox costume. Right. You know, she's dressed like, you know, Leah in Java's Palace.

She has a navel. She's got cleavage. Like, they really, you know, they spared no expense. there is flavors of prisoner lea in here yes yeah crystal was the character that everybody loved to take shots at during the let's hate on furries era of the internet so yeah it's prime prime material for that yeah and like like we said earlier uh we're okay with furries on retronauts i'm becoming one over time uh i think i'm now like 14% after this but uh actually i'm I was really into anthrofiction all along, you know, and I really stand Crystal. That's why I like Star Fox. God damn it. I've said it on other podcasts before, but like I follow several gay male artists online and that post innocent things.

But over time, I'm like, wait, are you all furries? Am I the only one who's not a furry here? Come on, Henry. Get on the bandwagon. They're pushing me towards it. When we're all on meta, we can be whatever animal we want to be. It's going to be hot as hell. It's 2022.

Being furry is cool. Yeah. Let's embrace it, everybody. Yeah, that's Star Fox Adventures. It didn't review very well. I'm sure it's sold extremely well because game cue players, what else are you going to play? It was a big fall game before Metroid Prime. People were into Zelda.

It had been a couple years since Majora's Mask, and, you know, there's going to be a bit of a weight in America for a wind waker. So naturally, people are like, yeah, I want to do another Zelda. Maybe the Star Fox thing doesn't work, but here's a big game. game i need to get behind yeah it was it was just such a heartbreaker that when it came out i mean it was there were tears all over the forums then in nintendo world of when the game you'd been waiting for for your big fall game then the next day you learned the rumors were true the rumors you didn't want to believe all summer that you know Microsoft's going to buy rare and you're like yeah Nintendo's going to sell their 51% stake in rare to Microsoft yeah right and then

then it happened Yeah And like a lot of these rare guys Now do Fun things that are related to the role of games Like ukulele and the 2D ukulele And those are pretty fun But that was kind of the end of the rare

That we knew this game And it wasn't it wasn't really the rare that we knew They were changing And oh yeah And at the end of the game You just fight Andros for like no reason That was another thing I remember hearing about it His head comes out of nowhere

Yeah you beat the real The clearly planned final boss of the game And then he's like, actually, it's Andros. And then Andros's head pops up like, time to shoot Andros again. Oh, you forgot about general scales? Yeah, yes, that's his name. Oh, God, yeah. Look, we really need more Star Fox connections here.

Can you add anything? I don't. Andros? I don't know. People expect Andros here. And we can just take the, we can take the 64 boss fight and like tweak it a little. We have this monkey headline around. Can I just make a little aside and say that after Star Foxx.

the game that I imagined in my head was leaving the Lylat system and maybe going from a solar system to like almost like a galaxy, right? Like going to many different locations, but they only ever stayed in the Lylat system and it seemed to limit them somewhat. And that's why you kept fighting Andros over and over again. Preview for the end of this podcast, that's where Starlink comes in. talk more about that at the end. And I'm being completely serious here. for the GameCube. By the way, none of these

GameCube games are made available in any way because Nintendo hates money, doesn't want it. Even though you can play, you should be able

to play this on the switch. They gave you sunshine for six months, Bob. What do you want something? It was leased to me. Yeah. So yeah,

this is, Star Fox's return to form, kind of, because adventures no longer a going concern for Nintendo. They're not going to make their own.

Nintendo's like, hey, Namco, make us something. We're friends now because at the time Nintendo, Namco and Sega collaborated on

the TriForse arcade board, which resulted in F0AX, the arcade game, and Mario Kart ArcadeGP. And apparently it was reported at IGN at the time that this was also going to be an arcade game, but that never came into being. So to date, there has not been a Star Fox

Sit Down Arcade game, and that's a real damn shame. That would have been dope. I feel like if you look at the first stage of this game, it has strong arcade energy. It's like, sit down, okay, here's a giant space battle. There's ships everywhere. there's a score counter, you know, you're fighting smaller ships, you're fighting bigger ships, you're clearly going somewhere, and I can see it. I think, I think they, you know, as, as, whenever they,

whenever they pull the plug, whatever changes they made to make it more console appropriate, watching videos of this right now, it gave me a lot, it reminded me a lot of the Star Wars trilogy arcade gaming that just there was just tons of enemies everywhere and you're basically moving, you know, down a corridor and you've got to pick your shots and you, you know, we want to get the high score. I see it. Now, I, I, I remember when these Triforce games got announced and it was you know it was a rough time as a game cube owner because you're seeing a lot of the best third party japanese companies putting their games on the playstation two or maybe one or two on an xbox like ninja guidance and so you'd welcome announcements

like this or the capcom five we all remember and be like see they're the japanese developers they're still making games for it with nintendo it's not all over and and it sounded like such a great thing like, oh my God, they're going to hand out they've got Sega taking care of F0 and they got Namco with Star Fox and this is going to be a real Star Fox, not like that last Star Fox. And it kind

of is, but the game went through a lot of development problems. It was announced in May of 2002 at E3 it was supposed to hit shelves two years before it actually did. Wow, so it got announced before Adventures came out. Yes, it did. Wow. Yeah, the game didn't surface again until E3, 2003.

Roughly concurrently, I think. Like, I remember hearing about Star Fox Adventures and Star Fox Assault at roughly the same time and thinking, well, that's the one I want. I want the actual one. Yeah, it was announced in 2002, didn't premiere again until 2003. And apparently, I read this in a PDF of like an EGM at the time. The trailer was so bad, people were booing it. Whoa. The trailer for Star Fox Assault.

Or I think it was called Star Fox Armada at the time. It went through a few titles. Yeah. Boy, that's a far cry from the crying fanboys in the audience whenever they see Link do anything. Yes. But, yeah, so Assault went through a ton of changes, and originally it was going to be a multiplayer-focused game, and I can see why, because Nintendo's got four controller ports, and Halo 1 and 2 are taking over living rooms as this game is in development.

Maybe they thought this could be Nintendo's Halo. And if you look at an early screenshot, you can see basically like a first-person foxhand holding a gun and pointing it. So that's where this was going. And it could have been so much worse. Yeah. So it eventually turns into a variant of Star Fox with different modes to play, like an R-wing, the tank, of course, and on-foot missions. And this kind of shows to me why Nintendo has been so gun-shy about following up Star Fox 64 is because that game is so good that if you make something similar to it,

you'll just be thinking about Star Fox 64. and that if Star Fox assault existed in its own world without Star Fox 64 it would be perfectly fine it would be a good game but when you're playing it you're like I've played 64 and this just feels like a lesser experience and that was my own experience

and the on foot stuff isn't that bad but I say get back in the damn R wing stop walking around and doing stuff get in your damn R wing as I felt every single time I only beat like I think the first three worlds of it or whatever I was like every time you got out of that R wing it pissed me

Off. Yeah. And it feels like it was passed around Namco because when it was announced, Namco said, oh, yeah, Ace Combat developers were working on it. That wasn't the case. This game is directed by the guy who directed Cloanoa 2. Which Clono 2 is a great game. I don't know if he was ready to make this game, but yeah, that's who directed this game.

Wow. Ace Combat makes so much sense. It feels maybe that was the Armada game that the Nintendo was like, actually, we will find a different director for this game. Yeah, yeah. again a lot of development stuff is lost to time in secrecy but I think a lot of this was born out of the fear at the time where no a game a box game needs to be 60 hours or whatever

you need to get as much out of this as you can and the fear is well if we might make a bunch of like linear fast stages like in Sonic the Hedgehog the game will be over so fast consumers will be mad so I think they're open more open on foot and tank stages were the answer to that like let's make it a lot slower let's make it a lot bigger and that will very much pass add out these faster flight stages. But Star Fox 64 is like a 30-minute experience and it's so much fun each time.

But there was an anxiety at this time that I think is falling away about making games a certain amount of hours. At least I hope it's falling away. I rented it when it came out and I finished it in a weekend without too much trouble. It's not that long of a game. But yeah, you know, it's an interesting game to look back on. Like I said, I was playing it on my Steam deck. I'm like, wow, this game looks really good.

actually it's like pretty fun to play and things like that um of course they add another new character i think they add panther uh is added into this one he's on the star wolf team he's the counterpart for crystal uh he's got that little bit of james from team rocket thing where it's like the hopeless romantic with the rose and everything um i thought that the concept of having a stage where you would get out of the r wing to accomplish a mission on foot and then get back into the R-wing and fly back out while like Star Wolf is buzzing around the station. I thought that was neat at the time. I actually really enjoyed that stage.

I agree that the on-foot segments were the weakest part of Star Fox assault for the most part, where you're like having to run around on this world with all of those bullet spam everywhere, looking for the cores to actually shoot the flying bits were always consistently, the absolute best moments since Tarfax Assault. The weird thing about this game is that there's a lot of body horror in it. Various characters are dying and or being assimilated. Pygma gets turned into the Borg or something like that by the Arachnid characters. I remember at the time thinking it was kind of crazy.

The enemies are weird spacebugs, right? Yeah, yeah, they are. I think, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's funny. Kat mentions renting it. So this is where my blockbuss video story comes in

I was working a blockbuster video when this came out and Blockbuster video sucks awful place to work at you should have no nostalgia for block have nostalgia for rental stores Blockbuster awful terrible company I'm glad it's dead but when I work there

a nice thing was if you got in video games early you could play those video games before street date and then then they had to be returned for rental you couldn't you couldn't take home a free of a game that could be rented, but if it was pre-street

date, you play it, and I got that with Star Fox, and so I was like, wow, I'm playing Star Fox before release date. I'm like, one of those guys who writes about video games at EGM. But also, Star Fox had a deal. Nintendo of America made a deal with Blockbuster that

the game could be rented a week early at Blockbuster. It was early release, but at my Blockbuster, they didn't believe it. They got it sent early, and And they're like, all right, put it on the shelves. And then they got a call from a competing rental place that said, hey, we heard you broke street date on Star Fox.

We're calling our Nintendo rep right now. And I had to tell my manager, like, no, look, I'll show you the website. A Nintendo website. I can take it into a Nintendo website that says we can rent it right now. But they didn't believe me because they were worried they were going to get like a thousands of dollars fine for breaking street date on Star Fox, even though they were allowed to. so that's these sneaky undercover shoppers coming in looking what you've broken street date on

is that and now it's just crazy as I'm telling that story like this is that John Mullaney joke about like how old do you sound describing renting video from a video store but seriously that was how it felt at then this battle to remember that like we almost got narked on by a competitor because we broke street date on Star Fox over Star Fox assaults yeah

of all things. This game, I'll say what I said about adventures. Like, some parts have not aged well based on it being a 3D game of that era in that the ship combat's fine. And I love the ship stage that I play, going back to it for this podcast. And then you're on foot. And I said, I'll give this a try. So my ship combat, my ship controls were inverted because that's the way I do things. And then I'm on foot and they're inverted on foot.

Oh, no, I don't like this. Go to the pause menu. Oh, you can't change it in the pause menu because it's a game from 2005. Yeah. You lock in from the beginning what kind of controls you want, and then you're stuck with that. And it's like, well, my reticle's moving too fast. Can I adjust sensitivity? No.

It's the year 2005. George W. Bush's president. You can't adjust your reticle speed, okay? That's just the way things work. We just got inaugurated for a second. That was really fun for the turret missions, where you were standing on the ship and just shooting and enemies and your reticles are all messed up. It wasn't super amazing. It was a very, shall we say,

slap dash game, like some really good parts and then some parts that clearly came together very quickly, but I have some fond memories of it. I remember nobody ever remembers the Star Fox Assault multiplayer, but it takes the Star Fox 64 multiplayer

and dramatically expands it with way more ships, way more options and everything. It was never going to ever take off. Everybody was dragging Star Fox Assault when it came out, and it out kind of late in the GameCube's life cycle. So everybody was fully out on the GameCube at that point. But it felt like it took a really good idea in the Star Fox 64 multiplayer and fully fleshed it out. It's a shame that nobody remembers it anymore. Yeah, there's good stuff to find in this. It's a shame that these games can't be re-released. I mean, Nintendo chooses not to re-release them, I guess. That's the, that's the argument there. But I think there's stuff, the fun stuff to find in them, interesting game thing, game design ideas in them. But ultimately, it is a lot of the game is a third person shooter from 2005 developed way before that so that doesn't help it age well and also i must i don't think nintendo wanted this maybe they did but namco had the ability to write crystal and tricky out of this series completely but they are here in this game i don't think they're in zero we'll talk more about that later but i think finally in zero they've been executed by a military tribunal no more crystal and tricky in these games crystal was not turning on she's a fine addition crystal wasn't turning on haddecky came so she wasn't invited to the game.

I'm more of a cat fan, cats. I mean, that's fair. Or Amanda. Cat is pure evil and I like her, so. Yes. Or Slippie's wife, Amanda. Only seen in one game. Slippi's a real wife guy.

Is this the first completely non-British Star Fox game? Like, no Brits whatsoever? 64 had no Brits, although they did use a lot of their code. Oh, okay. But yes, no Brits, until the next.

game we'll talk about that very soon but one cool feature about this game is that the entire soundtrack is orchestrated by the Tokyo New City Orchestra so if you just want to listen to the soundtrack it's all on YouTube and it sounds great it's mostly remixes of the original Star Fox music but we weren't really doing that a lot in 2005 so it's just fun to hear that If you're a shrewd shopper, it's about to be your favorite time of the year. HyperX will be running massive sales for the holiday season. Get up to 50% off some of our most popular products like the Ultra comfy cloud two headset, the tough, responsive alloy origins mechanical keyboard, and the fan favorite

quadcast USB microphone. Sales will be going on at all major e-tailors, but be sure to head to hyperX.com and sign up for the newsletter to get the scoop on the biggest deals. Happy holidays from HyperX. So we're going to move on next to Star Fox Command for the DS, I almost said 3DS. So this came out in August of 06 in Japan and the USA. And yeah, after outsourcing a few games, The series goes back to its roots with this co-production between Dylan Cuthbert's Q Games and Nintendo. And my experience with this game is I game-flight it, played 20 minutes, kept losing, kept dying, sent it back to hell where it belongs.

This time, I bought a copy of it at Portland Retro Gaming Expo, and I was like, I'll give this one a shot. And initially, the difficulty of curve is really hard to get over. It's hard to internalize all of the rules and the tactical system in the game. but once I got into it I found it to be a very very fun game but probably not what people were looking for from a new Star Fox game in 2006 but yes I will admit the game you hit a wall in the first mission and it takes a long time multiple attempts to get over that wall but it really was worth it for me and I really couldn't stop playing it over the past couple of days man that's see this was one I didn't even give a chance after assault and then seeing the like oh it's on

the DS with wacky controls that I didn't fully understand and a slightly changed gameplay. I was like this, I'm done with Star Fox, I guess. I only, a few years later, once I entered to the games press,

for some listicle I wrote, that's when I discovered the many storyline implications of this game that made it at least very important to Star Fox lore, if not as a game I'd want to play. They're having fun in this game

with the story. Any other first-hand experiences with this game before I talk about, more about it how it's played how it was developed etc yeah i uh i bought star fox command at launch because i buy all star fox games at launch as a rule and i i was a little nonplussed by this game i have to say um it was it felt like a return i suppose to the original star fox in terms of the looks i did not realize at the time that the the folks who worked on it were the kind of the original developers in Q games and the mission the tactical map or the strategy map I should say

was kind of interesting it felt like a little bit like a board game I suppose I didn't realize again at the time that it was effectively Star Fox 2 but kind of repurposed for the Nintendo DS I enjoyed playing some of the bite-sized missions I didn't like it as much as I did Star Fox 64 I found it quite challenging it's a very very hard game. The actual controls were really hard to use. I remember my hand like developing a horrible claw trying to get that thing to work with the touchscreen. And ultimately, while I did get one or two of the endings, it got so hard that at a certain point, I just couldn't do it anymore. Like one of the missions that was really hard is you're chasing after

a missile or something and like a strip slip stream and you're trying to shoot it down. It's very, very difficult, especially with the controls in Star Fox Command. And there came a point where I was like, I can't do this. And that was pretty much it. Cool ideas, but per usual with a lot of British games, as we were kind of alluding to in the other episode, a lot of cool ideas, but maybe the actual game tech was, it was just being stretched to the limit, right?

It's like having multiple different ships with different performance characteristics and lots of different missions and multiple endings. the game couldn't support it, ultimately. Yeah, the controls are of the mandatory touch controls era. In some games, it makes sense because the games are designed around that. In this way, in this game, it doesn't make sense because this could all be repurposed for the controls on the DS and be fine. Actually, there's a fan-made patch where you can download it, patch your game, you can actually use the D-pad to control the R-Wing.

Oh, I can't want to try that. And use the buttons as buttons. Yeah. It would make the game much more playable because, yeah. But yeah, the way the game plays is that you use your stylus on the on the touchpad to steer your plane But it also does a lot of other stuff like scratching it back and forth makes you do a barrel roll You actually have to touch buttons on the on the touchpad in order to do a U-turn and things like that And you also have to use the touchpad to drag bombs onto the map to blow up a big target

So a lot of it They did what they could and they were probably forced to do this But a lot of it is like you taking your eyes off of the play screen looking down at the touchscreen with no real information on it in order to do certain things in the game and that really messes with things. The tactical

part of the game is very hard too because it's like Star Fox 2 and that you're protecting a base but in this case the stakes are much higher and the missions are much shorter because it's a DS game and they want you to be able to close it or play it multiple times if you're on the bus or on the train or whatever

in this case you're protecting the Great Fox, like the mobile command unit or whatever or the mobile command ship. And you have to take out various bases and missile silos with a prescribed number of turns. If one group of enemies touches that great fox, if one missile touches it,

the mission is over. It doesn't take damage. It is gone. It is dead. The thing is you have to kind of know where everything on the map is first before you start playing. And the only way to do that

is to lose multiple times. It's sort of like the advance horse problem, which is why I don't like those games. But it's even harder here because you can't make new units. So you play the same missions over and over And as you play them over and over You're like, okay, now this time I'll go this way

And the missile will not hit the base I'll intercept the missile But you have to play it over and over In order to know where things are Because there's fog of war In the tactical simulation of this game Well, you're really bringing me back, Bob It's all coming back into my memory

I'm like, oh, I'm feeling traumatized All over again by this game And it's And like you have such limited resources is because you have limited turns. If you use up all your turns and enemies are still left, the game is over. So you have to effectively take out bases

to earn more turns that will let you explore more. I mean, there is so much going on here that it took me like four tries to finally finish the first mission. The first mission is too hard. The next ones are much, much easier. But I think they want to make sure

are you ready to play this game? But that turned me off initially in 2006. That is such a nuts way to design it too because it's like Star Fox to most gamers if they know the name as anything it's like pick up and play ease like you get straight into it

and then you combine it with the you know it's early DS but this is you know by this point the DS is known for the Nintendo Dog's machine well I guess even not that early DS it's two years in yeah they know it as it's the Nintendo Dogs machine it's the brain it's the weird

touchscreen inventive game machine they even turned they even used a freaking stylist for ninja guiding right so like they were just like let's use the stylus for everything yeah it's shockingly hard both in terms of like the performance you have to put out and in terms of the tactical thinking you have to do to win the game and cat was talking about the slipstream earlier with the missiles yes missiles missiles come towards the great fox the great fox cannot shoot those down it can shoot other enemies down with limited missiles but when a missile is approaching the

great fox you have to get in the way of the missile and the great fox intercept it. And then once you do that, you play a mini game where you have to follow it through a slipstream while hitting targets and shooting at it. And if you fuck that up, the mission is over. The missile hits the Great Fox and the mission is over and you start from the beginning again. God damn. The dog bites

were pretty unforgiving too with those. Yeah, that too. The touchscreen controls just ultimately drag this game down so much. Yeah, I totally agree and it will never happen. This game could benefit from a remake with real controls and maybe making the maps a little less tricky to get into.

But I think, oh, no, I didn't do that on purpose. I'm sorry. But I think if you want to try this out, get a few endings like Kat did back in the day. Play a few missions. Don't let the first mission turn you off. I know I'm not selling it very well. But I was surprised by like, oh, the design of this game is very cool.

They just made it way too hard and the controls aren't very good. But I can respect, like, what's going on under the hood. It even looks very good for a 3D. DS game. Like a DS game with all polygons on it. They unfortunately fleshed out the lore a lot. And this is not a universe that benefits from fleshed out lore. So you get various endings like Slippy, having kids, that's fine. Fox dumping Crystal and then Crystal going to the dark side and becoming cursed.

Like literally, that's her name, cursed. Yeah, like Punished Snake, right. Yeah, she's like punished. She's cursed with a K. Or it's kind of a cool ending. Fox and Falco apparently join an F0 racing team. And it confirms that F0 and Star Fox are in the same universe. And that I think is what gave rise to the Star Fox GP rumors from like five years ago.

So if you ever want to have A, a laugh and B, just have your mind kind of blown. go back and look at those Star Fox command endings because there are some wild ones in there. Yeah, that's how I learned about it because I was doing some listicle and I was like, oh, you know, some funny listicle of like surprising things about whatever. And of course, you know, a listicle,

if you're writing a listicle in 2008, time to make jokes about Slippy. And that's when I went to like a Wikipedia and found out like, wait, Slippy got married in one ending? What? This game? I mean, I didn't even realize Command.

had multiple endings and had all these cut scenes you could see of this just wacky stuff of that happens I I probably if I had actually played to the end of those I don't think I would have in 2006 had the sense of humor about them I would have been I would have been thinking like

Star Fox is not a joke he's he's mourning his dead father how dare you I mean 64 uh takes the lore like very seriously and that's part of the fun where it's like these funny puppet animals but they're all being very melodramatic and this game. Yeah, my initial

reaction in when I was like in my early 20s was like, this is so wacky. It's weird. But playing it again, I was like, oh, they know it's wacky. They're having fun with these weird characters. So you meet Slippy. Slippy has like left the R-Wing world because he found his first girlfriend

and he becomes a total wife guy and he's actually kind of a jerk. Like they're kind of razzing Slippy in a cutscene and he says, at least I have a girlfriend. And I tweeted that out. Everyone loved it. I was like, I was laughing at the dialogue in these cutscenes. Everybody is played up because they're kind of very flat characters.

So they're just having fun with them. And the endings are part of that. And yeah, like in one ending, like I was talking about, Crystal breaks up with Fox and there's like tears streaming down his faces. He's like reaching out towards her and she's like running towards the camera. They're having so much fun with the characters. And I like that interpretation because they're like, who is Slippy? I don't care.

Make him a jerk this time. I mean, I kind of love her joining Star Wolf. Like, I think that's cool. Me too. You can make her a bad girl. Once again, Fox McLeod was forced to wander the world alone and unloved. These really benefit from a dramatic reading, I think. Yeah, there was no voiceover, unfortunately.

But this game is notable, and that is the only Star Fox game with online multiplayer. Well, not anymore. Star Fox 3DS couldn't do it for some reason. Star Fox WiiU, no way in hell is it happening. This game, through the whatever that connection was coming. call that's been defunct since like 2014. To take it to a McDonald's hot spot? Yes.

Just like I played Mario Kart as well. You don't have to go to McDonald's. Well, that was the local hotspot in my neighborhood. But, yes, that is Star Fox Command. You can actually download this on the Wii Ue shop if you still have access to it. For clocks ticking on that, though, too. But you can't buy them directly online. If you want to buy a Wii U game, you have to buy a gift card, a Nintendo card,

and then put the cart into the Wii. Oh, boy. Not literally, of course, but put the code into the Wii. You have to say that because it almost is that complicated of physically inserting a card. Just show it to the Wii. Just like turn it around in front of it. But yeah, I didn't sell this game very well, but I say give it a chance if you want. It's kind of interesting.

Up next is Star Fox Zero for the WiiU. So let's talk about 2016, everybody. That's a long time between games there. Yes, an entire decade. We're all there. A lot of us were covering. I think everyone on this call was covering the Wii U. Rough time for Nintendo.

Worse than the GameCube. 3DS doing okay. It couldn't possibly be the same hit as the original DS. So zero releases at the tail end of the Wii U lifecycle one year before the debut of the Switch. And it was the game that it wasn't going to save the Wii, but it was like one last effort that didn't really work. And this game came into being because Miyamoto and a small team in the Wii era, we're working on various ideas for a Wii start.

Fox game, but none of their ideas really panned out. And Star Fox Zero entered development when they wanted to do something with these prototypes they've developed. And that's essentially how it came into being. Like, there was never a Wii Star Fox game, but they wanted to incorporate ideas they thought of for a potential Wii game

into their new platform. And I assume a lot of that must have been like gyroscope aiming and things like that. Man, it's, it's nutty to think of that time. I was, I, my first E3 I attended was the one they announced the Wii. And I mean, it makes a certain sense, you know, that they're like, what was there? They had just made the money

printing machines of the DS and the Wii. I've seen the GIF. So why not take, oh, we had a DS that's so successful. Three DS. We had the we. That's so successful. We, you. This will continue to make us money. Like, it's, it's not rocket science. And yet, yeah, the 3DS almost was a gigantic failure, and they pulled, they made a Hail Mary pass with that, and then the Wii U just was, like, it just was a big old failure, and it sucks.

It's just as I'm starting to become the Nintendo guy of my company I'm working for, a horrible, horrible thing for me personally. Yeah, your job was riding on the success of the Wii U. I know. Instead, oh, I know, you go play your Wii U games. Um, come on, guys.

Having fun in Nintendo Land, jerk. Super Mario, 3D world is really good guys, I swear. You said that on the last podcast. This era of Nintendo is what taught me the phrase, the last blockbuster syndrome, not related to the video store. It's the idea that Nintendo had some successes with things that didn't expect to be received as well.

Like, you know, like the Wii was so much, would outsold their expectations. The 3DS struggled, but then it seemed to recover. So that convinced them, oh, we just need to keep doing this. We keep keeping more of this stuff. And they completely ignored the fact that smartphones and tablets were blowing up. and then the when the Wii, by the time the Wii launched, like, oh, here's our new console, and everyone's like, this looks ridiculous.

You want me to, you want me to play an iPad while I'm playing on your system? What are you talking about? And, like, just, they seemed completely behind the times and out of it. And, yeah, it took them a few years to dig those out of the hole. And Star Fox Zero didn't really help them with that, but they tried. They really, I mean, I think more than the other games we've talked about so far today, this is one that really, they pushed, you know, like, again, me, you mentioned, Miyamoto. Miyamoto is like the face of this game

in the way he wasn't the face of many games in this era at all. Even the Mario and Zelda games had moved on beyond Miyamoto and other people had them to champion them. But here he is like, oh, I wanted to make a Star Fox game, so I'm the you know, I'm the supervising director. I have done this in 20 years. Like,

okay, you really wanted this, man. All right, here it is. Is it good? It was kind of born out of those random prototypes that he made. Remember the E3, where they didn't really seemed to have much to show, if I recall correctly, but they did have the Miyamoto prototypes and they're like, look, Miyamoto's back in development. You made some prototypes.

And at least one of them eventually became Star Fox Zero, or it developed in the Star Fox Zero eventually. And also the side games that came with Star Fox Zero. Yeah, yeah. The Star Fox, yes, exactly. Folks, I hate to alarm you, but the holidays are rapidly approaching. This time of year brings plenty of joy to us all but at the cost of causing much more stress in the six to eight weeks leading up to the main event there's more errands to run things to bake odd-shaped items to wrap and no matter what we do there's no way to delay the inevitable i mean what are you going to do steal christmas buddy you just try that in our current surveillance state there's no way to make the

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that was like the most, I got to go to the pre-show press day and see I was one of the part of the press group that got shown Star Fox for the first time and I got to be like, wow, they're finally bringing back Star Fox. This is great, but yeah, it was so, raw and new

and the whole point of that entire presentation that Miyamoto was definitely the face of was his way of saying like everybody thinks the Wii you sucks. Well, we made all of these prototypes that you could only play on the Wii you that have all these motion based

and second screen things. We're showing it off. Don't say that we use dead. I, Miyamoto, I'm saying it's not dead. And he shows Star Fox Zero well, a new Star Fox game. And yeah, that was when I got to directly ask him a question, and my question was, are you guys, my thought was, are you going to develop this as a first party Nintendo game for the first time of forever? Or are you guys working with the second party?

And I asked that in a nice way of like, you know, Starfax games have worked with the second parties a lot. Is this going to do that too or third parties? And he's like, we're talking to people like, yeah. Well, I'm glad you brought that up because they didn't really know. They had an idea for Star Fox Zero and they had some ideas floating around, but I was reading an article by Chris Kohler. What? Who's that? A friend of the show, Chris Kohler from this era where Miyamoto had a quote that was like, we're looking for developers to help us out with this.

We'd really like to reach out to some people. And the way this was announced was Time launched an article before embargo. I remember that. I remember. We saw it all on fucking Sunday. Yeah, no. Yes, it was the Sunday beforehand. Like Reggie told me where to sit.

That was a fun day. But anyway, and the time dude was there. And then the next day, it leaked. And we're all just like, okay, email the Nintendo rep. Ask if we can leak our Star Fox stuff now because time leaked. You know, that was, I completely forgot about that five alarm fire of our Nintendo coverage. Yeah, I was in the press then. I think I was a U.S. Gamer probably by that point.

But I do remember that. And so Nintendo had to make a teaser like, oh, crap, the game's announced. And the teaser, it's still online. It's like Miyamoto playing it. But the TV is blurred out. He's like, oh, boy, if only you could see it. Oh, wait until next year. That's kind of what it was.

And then in June of 2015, Nintendo had stopped doing, you know, in-person E3 conferences. They stopped them, what, like 2012, I believe? I think I went to the last one. You probably there, too. Yeah, the Nintendoland one. What a big fireworks to go out on there. Yeah, the pre-we-U-launch E-3 presentation. But this rules, because it's still online as is all this stuff.

but this announcement of Star Fox Zero has, you know, Henson Company created puppets of Iwada, of Miyamoto, and of Reggie, and they all, like, are told to go out on stage, and they transform into the Star Fox characters, except for Slippy, but who cares? And it's great. It's like, and also Iwada died a month later. That fucking sucks, man, yeah.

That was rough. I remember we, I wondered when it happened. I was like, oh, is that why they went with puppets? Because he was doing so poorly. He couldn't. actually like film a thing like yeah it added a real Starfax Zero just could not catch a break man with its PR I was just thinking of the shadow cast upon Star Fox

zero because we had the death of Iwada we had the death of the Wii U and also it came out during the 2016 primaries where it's like politics are getting a little interesting here and I don't like it wow man I forgot that too yes I'm sorry days I previewed Star Fox Zero when I was shown for the first time and they were really talking up the connections

to Star Fox 64 and Bob I think you were alluding to earlier that if you played a different Star Fox game than 64 you just automatically started comparing it mentally and they tried to own that connection but it wasn't working for me because even though they went with like a

kind of a stylized look to it to me it just kind of made it look old unfortunately and then the Wii U game pad controls were just a major problem from the very start so I would say that even by Wii U standards

the hype for this game was quite quite low sadly yeah I don't think anyone trusted it after being disappointed by past our Fox games and didn't a lot of already right before death talk about the NX like he was already

called the NX I think so yeah so it was already hanging over the Wii anyway, they're like, well, this system's effectively dead as it is. Yeah, the switch would launch less than a year

after this game launch for the Wii. And there would still be new WiiU games after that, believe it or not. But, yeah, so the way this development worked is Nintendo needs

to get this game at the door as soon as possible because the curtain is closed on the Wii already, but they need to make the most of it before the switch comes out. This is when they turn

to Platinum games who has been known to save certain games at this point in time because they really turned around Metal Gear Rising Revenge and a year later they would really help

near Automata become an amazing game I like when they do this I like when they kind of rescue games or they help a team who really doesn't do action that well they help them figure it out and I think Platinum games even worked on the near Replicant remake to make the combat more interesting I think they worked on that as well

I'm saying this before Bay and a 3 comes out and I have no knowledge of how good or not that game is but I think a lot of the times platinum is at their best is when they're partnered with another strong publisher developer that can give them the support they need like i think too you saw with their very uh paycheck cashing work on those activision games which are still actually kind of all right like i transformers devastation is a pretty all right game but you can tell it's them like

well you guys paid you guys paid for a six out of ten and we're giving it to you like that's they're not working much harder than that hey they did their job yeah uh but yeah Bainetta 2's director directs this game. Yeah, Yuske Hashimoto. He's no longer with platinum. He left in like 2019, but Bainetta 2 is so awesome. And there's a flying stage in Bainetta 2 that's very much like a Star Fox mission. And if you wear

the Star Fox costume for that mission, you transform into an R-wing. And Nintendo was very tickled by this, which is why they wanted him to direct the game. And apparently, as early as 2010, Kami, one of the big platinum guys, in the press was saying, we, Platinum Games, wants to make a Star Fox. Let us make a Star Fox. So

this seed was growing throughout the 2010s. Definitely when I got that part in Bayonetta 2, though I didn't unlock that Easter egg the first time I played it I just, even just playing that flight mission, I was like, this kind of feels like Star Fox. I definitely had a Star Fox thought while playing it. Yeah, yeah.

And like in the Baynetta 1, there's like a Space Harrier level 2 or a hang-on level. I forget, every level is different in those games. That's why they're so amazing. But yeah, this game, my own like speculation about Miyamoto is he's not that into the switch. I feel like Miyamoto

love the 3DS, love the DS, he loves Labo, I think he's into Labo, but the Switch is just a game control, a game device with a regular controller in a TV or a screen. When I'm seeing him talk about Star Fox Zero, I get the sense like,

oh yeah, this is the Mia mode I remember where it's like, everything has got to be this fun toy-like interaction. Like, there's got to be some novelty to it when a lot of people don't want that and so much of this game is built around that novelty. Novelty that I think is very cool, but the Wii U technology is not up to the challenge of delivering on that sense of novelty. It just makes the experience frustrating, although I did actually enjoy this game.

You know, you're really making me think about how Miyamoto engages with the press these last like five years because, yeah, very rarely is he the face of a game anymore. And like some might have thought like after a lot of passed away that like, oh, well, the guy he's going to host Nintendo of Rex now is Miyamoto, right? And, no, it's usually Kozumi, who also is a long, long time Nintendo employee as well. But, yeah, Miyamoto, my husband and I joke that it's because Miyamoto has gone Hollywood. He's been working on that movie for years now. And so he's like, ah, these video games boring.

I'm working with Chris-on over in Los Angeles. He loves stomping coupos. So he's just like Hideo-Kajima now. Miyamoto went full Hideo-Kajima. Kind of, yeah. Kajima still technically makes a game with famous people, though. Yeah, when it comes to the gyro controls with Star Fox Zero, first of all, this was the period where we started getting into the Star Fox cycle.

You know, you have the Sonic Cycle, the Star Fox cycle is. Oh, no Star Fox game. Oh, my God, they introduced some kind of gimmick. Why is this? Why can't they just make a freaking rail shooter? That's all we want at this point. the other thing is that I think Star Fox

Zero in a way was on the right track because it was having this concept of gyro controls and you're aiming by moving the actual game pad and everything and they had actually tried something similar with Star Fox 64 3D with the gyro controls on that which everybody immediately turned off because they weren't very good

but clearly Nintendo was very taken with this The thing was, Splatoon was a game that perfected this. And first person, it was much better for first person shooters than a kind of dynamic. You're like constantly in motion, shoot them up, rail shooter like Star Fox Zero, sadly. Yeah, it's funny. You mention that because at E3, 2014, you know, Star Fox got all the first headlines, but Splatoon was there too. Yeah.

And some people even wrote up Spiltoon like, well, this looks like a cute little side thing or whatever. like there wasn't a lot of faith even i was like uh thought like oh i guess this is like one of your new little little things right and like now it's so much it's like 10 star foxes oh yeah popularity yeah and so in theory i like the concept for this game in that uh you know you have your tv you're playing with and your wu game pad on the wu game pad you have the cockpit of the ship and you can use the wu game pad to actually do more precise aiming but you can also aim via your TV screen with your typical R-wing controls.

Nintendo, not fully confident in this, you can turn all of that off. You can use the select button to switch between the game pad and the TV screen. You can swap screens whenever you want. So technically you don't have to engage in that at all, but it's the way the game is designed to be played. In theory, I like that.

In practice, it involves jamming the Y button every 10 seconds to recalibrate the Wii U game pad because it doesn't know where you are. And the concept for this game makes me think that it's inevitable that Nintendo will do more with VR and I think the future of Star Fox is VR. Like this kind of game is built for

VR and it's almost a VR experience because you kind of have like a VR helmet that you're holding in your hand for precise aiming but then you've got the actual ship moving on the screen. Yeah, see that disconnect was always a problem for me with Zero whenever I played it. I didn't even buy it when it came out but

every time I like demo did or played it I was like my brain just can't make the connection. It can't maybe if I played it more I would I got pretty good with those gyro controls, actually, and I found that it was almost kind of essential when you were fighting the final boss to be able to have the precise aiming

that you would need with those. I was playing in the cockpit, too, a lot. And Bob, saying things like, this is a precursor to a Star Fox VR game, don't play with my heart like that. Like, I will buy a Nintendo Switch VR headset, no matter how bad it is, if they actually make one of those things.

I honestly think they love experimenting with this series and I think this could be the future and yeah I got very good at this game too because when I first started playing it I was like oh no is this what I'm in for and then you get used to using the Wii U game pad as both a way to move your plane and also to do precise aiming with the game pad

on that screen itself and I was actually having fun with things that at first seemed like a terrible idea like there is a hovercraft in the game that's basically like a drone mission your first mission was that with that is a stealth mission. So I was like, all right, number one,

you're making me do a stealth mission with a drone. This is going to suck. I had fun with that mission. It sounds like a bad idea. I hated that mission so much. I actually like that mission. Yeah, people were yelling at me for saying I liked it. But, yeah, like the controls are so cool.

I'm still tickled by this 10-year-old technology where it makes me miss, like, you can do so much stuff with this double screen that you can't do now. And I really miss it. but this game like I said earlier the Wii was not ready for this game

it should have been a launch game because this game came out four years after the Wii you launch or nearly four years and by that point in a system's life cycle they stopped using all the technology of the actual inputs it's like no just play the game

like you play any game but this feels like it was a launch game in terms of no use everything use every part of the Wii you you have to turn up your volume on your speaker to hear the Kodak calls on it because it's not coming through any other speaker

oh man yeah I mean that shows you just how back assword the Wii U was because like this in the past this would have been the thing they have ready for launch like this and I guess Nintendo Land was supposed to be that it's like oh it uses every trick

but it didn't do it particularly well like this at least feels like what would be you know Super Mario 64 in that it showed off all the things that N64 could do at the start but in this case it's like yeah it

comes out when the systems effectively is dead. Yeah. Hey, color splash is still coming. Do we know why it's called Star Fox Zero? Like, what's the angle there? Because it's not a prequel. Is it? There's something going on with the kanji

and that the kanji and zero could make like the tail on the Star Fox logo, I think. That could be all there is to it as far as I know. And yeah, I went into this thinking... Is it a reference to the classic World War II plane? It could. be, I don't know.

I mean, that's a fighter plane. Like when I went into it, I was like, this is the prequel, right? And then I start playing, it's like, no, it's another remake of 64. It's another reinterpretation of that story. So it's like, you're not going to learn how they all meet. You're kind of doing the same things, but in a different context with these new controls. And it's not like it's a remake, but using a lot of the same ideas. And like I said earlier, there was no crystal that I could find in this game.

They went back to basics. They eliminated crystal. But Cat is still here. So is Bill. So it's all your 64 friends, a diamond. Command advanced, you know, we talked about, you know, the sort of the wackiness of it, but basically Command did advance the story in different directions and had different endings, but even from the start, it took place, you know, after many of the events from previous games.

So if you played Command and you enjoyed it and you play StarVox Zero, it kind of like, oh, I'm going back now. Because, like, the General, like the Dog General has retired in Command, But if you play Starvex Zero, the dog general was right back. And, you know, it's, it's, so it's 64 again, but it's not before 64. They couldn't call it 63. So they call it zero. I was very confused by these things. I don't, yeah.

I mean, I think that's a testament to Miyamoto's involvement in it that he said, fuck this lore. I'll just, I'm starting back over again. It's all simple conversations. Yeah. No, and he despises if you try to put it into his games. But yeah, like I said earlier, uh, This game could be better, but I appreciate all of the work that went into it,

and I'm sure a lot of people didn't play it. And again, Platinum Games did co-produce this, and I respect them a lot. They were put up to a challenge, and they tried their best. It's really the Wii U's fault. It's not the game's fault. Don't blame the game, everybody,

because the game, I think, is pretty cool. And I'd say give it a chance if you somehow missed it, and you probably did, most people did. I mean, and this is one of, like, the only Wii U games that's not getting a port to the switch. still hasn't. It could happen, but probably not. I don't know how, I mean, I guess if you pair your iPhone with your switch or something.

Hey, they made Skyward sword work somehow. They could make this work. That's right. There's a lot of love put into little things in this game that I appreciate. The fact that, you know, if you have your amoebo, you can basically play as an old, you know, as a limited polyship, like the old ships. And the fact that, you know, this came out 2016. So this is before they resurrected Star Fox 2 from the, from the deletion file. so they put like a Walker feature that was in Star Fox 2

they put it in this game at a time when no one really knew that was this did and then a few years later people saw StarFox 2 and oh the little walker thing is there so you really it's fun to see these little things that they went back in the Star Fox history and pulled these things out and put them in this game so they did they put a lot of effort and care into this

that it just didn't click and it didn't find an audience and part of that I think as you said Bob was the console's fault but yeah I think another problem that I think Star Fox in general has, I think, you know, looking at all the games we talked about today, is that Star Fox just never managed to get this identity, you know, Star Fox, Star Fox 64, all had a very clear, you know, through line with certain characters and certain expectations of how to play the game. And the rest of these games are kind of like, oh, here's an adventure game, put Star Fox on it. Oh, we need a strategy game. Put Star Fox on it. It just feels like, oh, here on an arcade. how about Star Fox Arcade? And it feels like they're just throwing things at the wall and like, will Star Fox do this?

Will Star Fox do this? And I feel like that really hurt it in the long run because it just became this sort of mercenary, well, let's put Star Fox in here. And no one, it just, it went in every direction. And as a result, it went nowhere. So I wish it. Yeah, it is frustrating. I wish they had had more of a clear creative direction to what Diamond was saying.

I think that when it comes to. The Star Fox, they got trapped in this mindset that it could only be a rail shooter. And so, therefore, we must always be experimenting with it. Rail shooters can never work. And when they got stuck into this mindset, then Star Fox, I suppose, got treated as this second or third class franchise, which I think is too bad. I think in a way they actually were on the right track maybe by kind of rethinking what Star Fox could have been and I kind of wish that they had gone to well like fully gone really gone for it

in reimagining Star Fox wholesale stick to keep like the elements that you know like the lilac system and vehicular combat and stuff but turn it into an RPG that's all I ask I want a Star Fox RPG that's what I'm saying yeah it could still happen yeah I don't want to go on too long about this game again please play it if you have access to it but there are some really cool like platinum game style moments in this game I'm looking forward to play the rest to see them and one of the earlier missions you're fighting this giant starship that has a shield around

it and it's blasting like giant lasers through its shield you have to fly in through the shield as it's flying its giant laser you fly around to the back of the ship you turn into a walker walk inside the ship and then blow up its core and fly out it's such a really cool moment that's really hard yeah it is but I feel like so many people didn't get to see that moment and it's so cool and it's very

true to like Star Fox and it's incorporating so many of the ideas, like the transforming R-Wings, going inside of the ships and firing at the cores, like in the first game. It's all working, but with controls that are a little off. Okay. But, yeah, that's all I'll say, and pleasantly surprised. Turning into the Walker is very Macross-like, and there is a show called Macross Zero.

Is this an elaborate reference to Macross? That's what I'm asking. Is there a Gundam Zero? No, sadly. No, not yet. The Gundams do transform, but they don't turn into Walkers. They turn into Jet. So there we go

I'm stupid Whatever just ignore me Of course there are walkers No It's it's not it's just the Rwings are just going full Macross in this series I had totally forgotten about the walker aspect Oh my gosh

Yeah it's just a Valky Yeah You're right Those are all the games. Those are all the games. Let's cover some oddies and ends that we need to talk about. like cameo appearances, other media, and we have to mention Smash Brothers

because the original Smash Brothers launches in April of 99. Star Fox still very relevant. And I think Smash Brothers, along with many other characters, has kept Fox alive and in the public memory because he was in the original roster. He'll always be in the game.

He's part of the No Items Fox Only Final Destination meme. He's an S-tier character in the competitive scene for Smash. Falco's added with melee. I forgot that Wolf is one of the characters in the game. was added with brawl. So there were three Star Fox characters in Smash perpetually throughout time. I never did Crystal. I couldn't believe.

If Banjo Kizui got in the game before Crystal did, I couldn't believe that. Like, yeah, I'm glad. Boy, let me tell you about, I played Smash Brothers one and melee so much with me, me, me, and my brother and my bros. And my younger brother, he played Fox all the time. It makes me hate Fox. I actually hate. I just can echoing in my brain, even now, the sound of Fox having a shield up, then rolling and shooting you, just like the chich-poo, chik-poo, chik-poo, over and over, just it reminds me of my brother drive me crazy.

But then the satisfying sound of finally breaking his shield and being able to, like, hit him with a smash, like some of my favorite moments of smash brothers. His damn bicycle kick was so OP. but I used Fox when I wanted to win in Super Smash Bros. Melee, which is funny. He felt he had some good stages too. Smash Brothers Brawl was where they brought back the original Star Fox soundtrack that you could play on some of the Star Fox maps. And let me tell you, I always played the Cornelia music when I was doing the, when I had those themes up because they let you choose the action.

Yeah, and I think in Brawl also, that's when they introduced the, like, the Kodak calls for all your teammates as taunts. So if you're in a certain Star Fox stage and can do the taunts, there's a chance you'll actually bring up one of the radio calls from Star Fox. And then I linked to this video, because Salt Snake is in Brawl too, you can have various codec calls with characters in that game. And there is a moment in Nintendo history in which Snake has a conversation with Slippy. This happened. He also had one of the most overpowered final smashes because he could call down the landmaster and put, trap everybody on it

and just lift off into space to remove them right off the map. And if you didn't do that, you could just shoot. You could just shoot the cannon. It was so overpowered that people banned final smashes as a result. Typical fox. Two O.P. He was too fast for me to play as and play against. Yeah, no, Mario was more my speed.

or D.K. No, I, yeah, I really loved the Star Fox stage that was fighting on top of R-Wings and the Great Fox. Like that, that was a great great stage. Until the R-Wing lifted off into the air and took you off the stage, again. Ridiculous. Not fair. We have to move on, though, to the comic, which Kat brought up in the first podcast, and I said, no, next episode. But yes, Nintendo Power trying to indoctrinate children to all Japanese media was like, hey, you like Japanese video games,

about Japanese comics. You like those too, huh? And most of us read manga for the first time without realizing it in the pages of Nintendo Power. And yes, there was a Star Fox comic

serialized in Nintendo Power throughout all of 93. It actually premiered in the magazine before the game launched in order to build hype for it. And this is not... So the Zelda manga

and the Mario manga from Nintendo Power were collected into books and sold that way. This never was, but you can read it all online very easily if you just Google for it. It's like 153 pages.

It's very good. it's really too bad but like the the super mario world and Zelda ones at least in the United States got collected and re-released in like modern hardcover collections with very very good

recreations of the pages I'm sad that this one among others of the Nintendo Power comics hasn't gotten that treatment yet I loved this comic when it was running in Nintendo Power I read them over and over and over again you were talking earlier

about Star Fox 64 treating the lore with deadly seriousness and this comic does much the same Fox is a much more hardcore figure in this one

very angry over the death of his father there's a whole panel if I recall correctly where he's finally getting his revenge on Androfts and he's so mad about it

but like the art was fun space action was a lot of fun they really leaned into the concepts of the Fox team being mercenaries rather than just always working for the Krenerian army and that kind of thing. And of course they had

Farah Phoenix who was the original Crystal and she was a little puppy. That's right. Oh no, she was a Phenic Fox. That's what she was. That's right. That's right. I remember her. This was created by the same guy who drew the Super Metroid manga and Nintendo Power also very good. Benny Mario Ito.

He's done a ton of Nintendo. He briefly joined Creatures Inc and then jump to Hal nearly aughts and he is currently an advisor mostly on Kirby games. Oh, cool. So he's a big Kirby guy for like the past 20 years now. No, I wish I'd, I'd missed

I read the Zelda one and I read the Mario one. I missed this one when it was new. I'm sad to say, I'd probably be even more of a Star Fox fan because I read I would have read it then. And I didn't know that it was, you know, manga

style Japanese and origin. But definitely, I can say with the Mario and Zelda ones, when I read those and then read the valiant comics that were made in America, I did have the reaction, like, oh, this sucks. This value one sucks. Like, I don't know why this one, like, looks uglier and is less fun. Yeah, never liked the valiant ones. My response was, I should like this.

It's based on a Nintendo thing. It stars a boy with his Game Boy, just like me. Any of the thoughts on the comic? It's very good. Somebody has just posted all on Tumblr. Hey, print it out yourself. Make your own book. No one's going to sue you.

moving on to the final not the final but close to the final entry there was going to be a TV show maybe what the hell what's going on here well in 2011 remember when there were all of these sites like college humor and machinima and funny or die and jash

and all the rest they were all making these videos in the early odds and one of them made by college humor was the fantastic star fox or Mr. Star Fox but it was basically making a West Anderson style trailer using a lot of the dialogue from 64. It's very cute.

It's still online. And it was based on this that a potential Star Fox series could have happened. So thanks to Adam Conover of Adams Ruins Everything. And I think Adam is a patron because when I log into the Discord, I see him and his avatar as a patron of retronauts. If that's not you, Adam, someone is faking your identity. That's, Adam should ruin that guy who's pretending to be him. But I think it's him. So hello, Adam, Conover.

So based on He was a college humor employee And we know based on his statements That in 2015 College humor was in talks with Shiguro Miyamoto To develop a Star Fox animated series That would look like the stop motion short they made There were meetings that happened

Seemingly this probably would have launched in tandem with zero But Adam says that when Netflix leaked That they were making a Zelda series Nintendo pulled the plug on all adaptations They got really cold feet And that is why this never came into being But you know

There was never any pre-production There weren't any scripts written as far as I know There were just Miamoto Went to L.A. to meet with college humor To have these meetings And L.A. Miamoto. Hollywood Miamodo. Maybe he swung by Illumination on his way back.

I don't know. No, that's uh... Well, I mean, I, I could see it even just as you know, college humor uh, they did advertorial. Like that was a huge. part of their income. So I can totally see them just be hired, you know, Nintendo could approach

it the same way they did with, uh, for Kid Icris Uprising hiring the Japanese animation studios to make, to make stuff to promote that game. College Humor could be hired to make promotional things for, for Star Fox Zero. And yeah, what came of it was nothing, but there was a short made to launch with Star Fox Zero called the Battle Begins. It's an officially sanctioned 15 minute anime short like cgai anime made by like a very notable studio so studio uh wits uh they made attack on titan and recently they made a ranking of kinks and spy family like everybody likes what they make and this is just a fun cgai short with the characters it shows the potential it feels like a pitch reel for what could be a star fox anime that just never came into being i don't know if anyone has seen

it but me it's on youtube posted by nintendo it's very easy to watch but i was like this is kind of cool i i wish they they had pursued this more done anything with star fox yeah i i i i watched it when it started i mean even if it was a successful thing and whit maybe would have wanted to stick with it like star fox zero sold so poorly that there was no way they were gonna a company would invest in it as a full animated series i would think but not in 2016 or 70s no has anyone else seen this or any comments on this potential uh college humor series oh i don't getting nose i would have thought that college humor series could have been uh at least another good chuckle i'd be like yeah Well, yeah.

And hey, more time has passed. That's how far Star Fox fell is that Nintendo's like, sure, college humor. Do it. We'll do whatever you want with it. We don't care. Make some fun shorts. Yeah, and that's the story of a TV show, a potential TV show. And who knows what could have happened?

Never would there ever be a Star Fox anime. We came close. There's 15 minutes of it online you can look at. Hey, that Illumination movie does great. In 10 years from now, we could be a decade deep into the Nintendo cinematic universe and Elimination's making a Star Fox movie. Now that I would care about.

Marvel, your time is up. Yeah. Moving on to the last entry, a surprising entry on this list. Starlink. Hey, guys, ever play Starlink? Yes. I know, I haven't gone crazy.

It's real. It's based on a toy, right? Yes. This was a very, very late entry in the To Life genre. That, its time had come in the mid-teens, I think. And this was a surprising

launch, Ubisoft getting behind toys to life when everyone had moved their toys to life into the Toys to Death graveyard. They were just, they were going into garages, they were going under beds, they were going into dumpsters. We didn't want this crap in our houses anymore, but Ubisoft felt strongly about this game

and the Nintendo Switch version of Starlink Battle for Atlas includes Star Fox content. And I was curious, I'm like, I bet if I go on to the Switche shop, it'll be like $60. No, it was $11. And you get all the content So I was like, okay, I got to try this.

It's a new Star Fox game kind of in 2018. What's going on here? And I'm surprised to report that's actually, it's very good. Yeah, yeah. It is an Ubisoft like overworld map icon dungeon where it's like, fly to this, pick up that, go do here, go over here, talk to this guy. Because Ubisoft can only make one kind of game. That's what the machine is built to do. The factory can only pump out one type of thing.

The computer made this kind of a game, but it has flying and it. It is very faithful to Star Fox and the characters, and it has all the voice actors. The Star Fox content is like three or four hours, but I am having a really good time with Starlink. Yes, yeah. I'm shocked. I, you know, I also bought it for like the very cheap amount of money because they fucked up so hard thinking that people wanted a choice to life at that point. But yeah, I mean, their plan, here I am mocking their business strategy, when their business strategy of if we get Star Fox in this game, Nintendo dork will buy it. It did work.

They were correct. I did buy it. They worked on me. But not a full price. Yeah. And though, yeah, when you, that's the same kind of math that also leads to Mario Plus Rabbids because it lets you know, oh, who's the publisher who gets to make the calls on the sale prices

for this? Ubisoft, because it's actually the price a four-year-old game should be. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. And to me, I don't know the story behind this game. I know it was always a Toys-Life thing. To me, this feels like secretly somebody at Ubisoft wanting to make a Star Fox game because every character is bland as hell. Like when you look at the...

Because they're a Ubisoft lead character. Yes. That's why they're bland as hell. They're slightly hip. They've all got fun hair. But if you look at the Starlink cover art for the Switch version, it's like all of the profile faces of the main characters of Starlink and then the profile of Fox. And it underlines my theory from the first episode. This is why animal characters are more interesting.

This is on display. This Foxhead is so much more interesting to look at than like all of the bland. and like triple A game characters that you have to choose from. Well, there's spiky hair and five o'clock shadows. And safe piercings that your mom won't turn an eye up at. Yeah, it's so much fun when Star Fox shows up and actually talks with the other characters in that game. That was another of my pandemic purchases to finally play that game. But once I did only play like five hours of it.

it was all nice. I was like, man, finally a fucking space game where I'm just flying around shooting stuff. Like, this is good. But yes, you're right. It also has Ubisoft Map. It suffers from Ubisoft Map Syndrome. UMS. I feel like a bad Star Fox fan because

obviously I was very interested when it was announced. But I'll admit, I saw the little Star Wing toy and I was like, this looks kind of plasticy and lame. And I didn't really want to spend the time and effort to acquire

Starlink battle for Atlas and actually play the thing, even though people were like, no, actually the Star Fox content is pretty good. And now I'm kind of sad because like listening to you describe it, I'm like I actually kind of want to do play it. Too bad.

You don't need any plastic to play it. Digital version has everything you need. And for me at the time, it was 11 bucks. And I was like, should I get this? And then I remember that same morning, I spent $7 on an ice coffee. And I was like, if I can spend, $7 on coffee.

I can buy this game for $11. It's fine. Who would have thought that the French and Nintendo working together that would end up with one of the best Star Fox games in a long, long time? It's kind of ironic because the British kicked off Star Fox and the French have ended it and they're bitter enemies in real life. They're like dogs and monkeys. I can buy it now.

Cool. I thought it was just on the league. You can buy it now. Buy it right now. Dude, I'm going to buy it. I don't know. No, it's, yeah. Well, though, when I say the French,

It's like, if you ever beat a Ubisoft game and watch the, as I have, you watch the end. It's like, it's made by like 700 global studios in every, the sun never sets on Ubisoft games. No. Technically, I think this one's made by Toronto, but there's got to be French people there. Some person named Eves probably in the credits. A Frenchman's calling the shots there.

Yeah, that's for sure. But yeah, that was, like I said, Starlink was surprise of the show for me. So was StarFox Zero, but I think Starlink is way more playable. than Star Fox Zero. But when you get to the end of Star Fox content, stop playing. It's not going to be

that much fun with these boring humans. More furries, I say. I'm a 25% furry as we in this podcast. To wrap up, just really quick around the horn here,

I want to know where you think the future of Star Fox is going. As for me, you've heard my thoughts. I feel like when Nintendo gets into

VR, it's inevitable. I feel like Star Fox will be resurrected as a VR game. And after playing the Wii version and controlling the cockpit with my Wii U game pad, it feels natural and we'll feel even better with better technology.

That's what I'm saying here. And I guess other final thoughts are give some of these games a chance. They have a really bad reputation. Some of them are slightly deserved. But I think there's something fun to find in all of them if you like Star Fox. Kat, we'll start with you. Any final thoughts on where you want the series to go? Oh, I'm so sad by how Nintendo treats Star Fox.

They just treat it as a gimmick or something that they can experiment around with. and I guess I've just kind of accepted that that's how it's going to be from now on. I kind of wish that they would release a proper Star Fox rail shooter just on the e-shop. I think that it would be a really good downloadable game, but I think Nintendo just has it in their head that, no, a rail shooter, a pure rail shooter would never work, it would never sell, et cetera, et cetera. And maybe they're right. Maybe that's the case.

I've said already that my dream Star Fox game is pretty much an action RPG where you're going around on the planets you're flying around both foot action and then flying around action think Starfield but with foxes that would be kind of cool sadly it's never going to happen

alas yes and by the way Starlink is not Starfield do not get them confused one does not exist yet Starfield Starfield's at it again folks Diamond how about you What do you think is the future for Star Fox Or what would you like to see?

Well, first of all, I wanted to shout this out during the last episode and I forgot. So now I'm making good in part two. There is an indie game right now on Steam in early access called X Zodiac. That's EX Zodiac. And I don't know how many people are making this game, but I know it's extremely 90s Star Fox

in look and feel. You know, you get little characters appearing on the screen. It's much more colorful. Of course, this frame rate is much better. but if you enjoy if you played star fox a long time ago and you want more star fox I really think you should check this game out last I saw it was like maybe 10 bucks because it's early access but keep an eye on it if you don't buy early access I understand but if you if you try it and you like it I really I would say maybe jump in on it I know I

happen to play it at BitSummit in Kyoto which I felt was appropriate because you know right there near Nintendo but it was very hard for me but I was really impressed by how much they nailed sort of that look of the 90s game, which I really appreciated. As far as what happens to Star Fox now, I think Kat kind of said it, you know, if they share the same universe and Nintendo doesn't really care about either one, then mash up F0 and Star Fox together. You know, maybe two tastes will taste great together. I don't know.

Or maybe take what Henry said, you know, if Spiltoon is the new hotness, then put Sputon on top of it, you know, maybe make us, you know, put Spiltoon in the R-Wing. They got to do something You know, mix them up I mean there's no There's no one at the rudder So mix you know Keep experimenting then

Until you find someone Someone or something that works Because right now it's in limbo And I hate that And Henry what about you Future of Star Fox Yeah you know Maybe it's just recency

That we were just like I played Starlink And hadn't really thought about it Since playing And I'm like you know what Just Their friendship with Ubisoft only increases they just put out the second

Rabbids and Mario game like just handed to Ubisoft give it let them just make a proper Star Fox but I don't feel like that's what Ubisoft's into I think they they're up for a crossover that lifts up both of their things but Ubisoft isn't going to just fully make a game they don't own

just make a full Star Fox so you know I then I guess really I hope that they find another Japanese third party because that seems to be the only people they really trust with making one of their games and that they want to work with you know capcom hasn't given it a shot yet how about capcom they're they're they're one of the big three they're too busy being insanely

successful yeah they don't really do yeah they're not desperate namco it'd probably just bounce back to namco again because they're still pretty friendly with namco uh though yeah bob if they if miamoto behind the scenes is working on some sort of VR thing for the next thing that follows switch maybe they'll figure it out finally on that you know yeah i was thinking when i was playing Starlink, this sounds crazy, but I could play this as a Star Fox game. You know, Bob, you mentioned VR. I know that they have those big,

Namco has those big, like, VR-style pod arcade things here in Japan. If they made, if they finally made a Star Fox okay game and put it in that sort of pod, maybe that'll take off because you literally step in this giant thing, and the screen is bigger than you are. It's pretty intense. I actually,

because I can't really do VR, I absolutely could not play that game. I had to leave the pod. It was maybe sick, but I for people who are into that, I think that could be a thing. I would go to Japan and you would never get me out of that pod. I would just live in it. Fully, fully immersive

Star Fox experience. You could ride the R-Wing, you could date Crystal, marry Slippi's wife. All the fun activities in the game. We're going to wrap up, though. Thanks for listening to Retronts, everybody. Again, this is a listener supported show. We're also part of the HyperX podcast network. If you want to support the show

and get all these episodes one week at a time and ad-free, please go to patreon.com slash Retronauts, sign up for three bucks a month, and you'll get just that, but you want to sign up for the $5 level friend, because if you do, you'll get all the advance episodes. And also, all the episodes that have been behind the $5 paywall. We've been doing those since the beginning of 2020, which means there's close to 70, I think, at this point, if the math is correct, you get access to all of those, access to all of those, access to the first Star Fox retrospective. And also access to all of the wonderful articles and podcast, Diamond here has made for us, dozens of those as well on top of all the exclusive podcast and exclusive access. That's all happening at the $5 paywall. at patreon.com slash Retronauts and you also get Discord access as well which the Discord's very fun and I like checking out on it but... The Discord was a little upset about our Thunderbirds hate

during our last episode so sorry about that Discord but I maintain I'd never hate them. I just think their puppets are a little bit weird and I don't understand why they're still popular in 21st century but... Yes, they're very creepy, I agree. They'll never be a Thunderbirds episode but again it's at patreon.com

slash Retronauts. Thank you very much. Katz. We know you're at IGM. What's going on with Kat Bailey and Axe of the Blood God? Yeah, I host a podcast on a weekly basis. It's Axe of the Blood God with Nadia Oxford and Eric Van Allen. We talk about RPGs

and we also have a Patreon, patreon.com slash Blood God Pod, where we have a ton of bonus episodes. Right now we are in the process of looking at Pokemon Black and White Gen 5 for our monthly Pantheon episode

and having a good time. in time for the release of Pokemon, Scarlet, and Violet. Let's go check it out. And Diamond, how about you? Well, you mentioned the stuff I do for Retronauts, but I do write other places. In fact, the last time I saw Cat in person, we were at the Tokyo Game Show, and I was doing some work for IGN there, so that was a fun little time. But other than that, you can find me on Twitter and Twitch as Fight Club, F-E-I-T, that's

my last name, C-L-U-B, it's a word you all know, and yeah, thank you for inviting me back. No problem. Anne Henry, I know we've appeared on a podcast at least once. Once or twice, yeah. Yeah, so me and Bob also do the Talking Simpsons Network of podcast where we go through the Simpsons one episode of the time on the main show Talking Simpsons. We are deep into season three and 13 concurrently. We're bouncing back and forth the whole decade. We have a good time talking about 1992 and a bad time talking about 2002.

It's a year of softwarks adventures. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's, and also we do the What a Cartoon and What a Cartoon movie podcast as well, where we go deep into an animated film or TV series. And we do a ton of bonus content as well. So that is on Patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons where you can hear us talk about King the Hill, Futurama, Mission Hill, and The Critic. And coming very soon at the time you hear this, we're doing eight more episodes of Blabin

about Batman, the animated series, that you are all going to. to love at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. That's it for this episode of Retronauts. We'll see you again next time for another new episode. Take care. You know, I'm going to be able to I'm going to be able to be.