N-E Show StarFox memories

[Kaepora_Gaebora]

Hello all

 

After the success of the Zelda memories (@Blade's in particular ) I asked in the latest N-E show what your favourite StarFox series memories are!

 

So, let me know...

 

I'll start you off with mine, and it concerns StarFox Adventures;

 

Bafomdads. An absolute nonsense of a word, and the name given to extra lives in the game. I can still remember my friend telling me he had just collected a Bafomdad, and being in hysterics at the name!

 

Special mention to the merchant who used to say, in that high pitched voice "Nope! That's too low" and "You pay this much!"

 

And an honorable accolade to Lylat Wars 64 and the mystic and magic that I saw from afar when I didn't have an N64. I used to happily look at the box for ages in Dixons or Beatties in town, it just looked like this fantastical game that I wanted to play so badly!

 

Anyway, any more from you guys?

[Londragon]

I fell in love with the original StarFox on the SNES as an older child, so much so that when the N64 received a pricedrop during my Uni years I picked it up with only 1 game that I could afford. The dilemna was Goldeneye or Lylat Wars for that 1 game, to the despair of my room mates Lylat Wars was chosen. Goldeneye was bought shortly after with everyone chipping in, but I never regretted the initial purchase such was its quality (btw Goldeneye surpassed all my expectations though).

[Guy]

Whenever Peppy would say "You're becoming more like your father!" my buddy and I would yell, "DON'T TALK ABOUT MY DAD!"

[Nicktendo]

I played Starwing (lol) as a kid and didn't like it. Maybe I was too young to appreciate it at the time, but Lylatwars (really, so weird to refer to these games by there orginal EU names) absolutely blew my 11-year-old socks off! The story was fantastic, touching, especially after discovering the secret exit on Venom, the graphics were great, as were the controls and the sense of maneuverablity.

 

My lasting memory however, is of course the rumble pack. Hitting the eight switches on MacBeth triggered the train explosion at the end of the level. My and my friend used to sit the controller on the table and see how far it would move during the explosion. I think the record was 25cm or something like that. Watching it move, freak out even, of it's own accord was brilliant fun. Simpler times.

[Fierce_LiNk]

I had Starwing on the SNES but didn't connect with it anywhere near as much as I did with LYLAT WARS. It was my first N64 game and it blew me away. I thought the water looked fantastic on the introduction to Corneria. It was my first experience with the rumble pak and feeling the controller shake with every hit was unreal. I played through a large part of that game in the cockpit view because I did truly feel like I was there.

 

I remember coming home from school one day and powering my way through to the end of the game. The boss fight against Andross just felt so epic, especially with his trash talk on the approach to the fight.

 

 

When I eventually did get through to Andross, I couldn't figure out why I was fighting a giant head. I was just navigating through these narrow paths and then BIG HEAD, BIG HEAD! It was surreal and it definitely threw me when I played this for the first time.

[dazzybee]

Loved star wing like everyone else, but lylat wars really was an amazing cinematic experinece. I was living with my girlfriend at the time and I destroyed it and she watched me; the bit were you're flying out from andros and the rumble was going apeshit...

 

The rumble Pak itself was great, I remember putting it on my crotch and making sure I hit stuff to make it go off. My girlfriend laughed. I was so turned on.

Edited April 6, 2016 by dazzybee

[drahkon]

The rumble Pak itself was great

 

Yeah, it was.

 

 

I remember putting it my my crotch and making sure I hit stuff to make it go off.

 

 

My girlfriend laughed. I was so turned on.

 

 

Can the next N-E show please have a 5 minute segment about @dazzybee's post?

[Jamba]

I can quite clearly remember seeing Starwing for the first time (not playing.... my brother surely would not let me PLAY the Snes!)

 

The whole opening to the game had such a brooding atmosphere, with the ominous cruiser eclipsing the view of the camera. Pretty menacing for the time. Then the menu music cuts across in a way that completely demands your attention, 'cause it's ACTION TIME!

 

Prepping for your first mission continues to build that suspense with dark tones of the map music. It's a serious mission Fox... concentrate. There are words here somewhere but we never read them cos we HAD to get to the next screen as soon as possible.

 

WARNING! WARNING! SCRAMBLE! GO NOW! SHITS GOING DOWN!

 

And the next handful of minutes represent one of the most thrilling video game experiences of my childhood. Within 10 seconds you have the heart pumping synth/heavy guitar of the corneria theme giving you this amazing sense of urgency, your team mates all talking at you (video game characters didn't talk back then!) and this furore of 3D goodness heading directly for you face! Everything about the level design was putting things in your way, forcing you to handle this new 3D experience and really asking you to stretch your skills or there was a good chance you were toast. The enemies weren't like Mario, they were all out to get you, hell the buildings were out to get you too! The Arwing was loose and skittish which only added to that pressure and excitement.

 

It's hard to look at this game now and get that feeling if you didn't play it in the context of the era. Starwing was simply the best graphical, audio and action experience design that was available at the time. It used everything it had at it's disposal, affecting as many of your senses as it could to increase this excitement, danger and twitch experience. It gave some real credence to the phrase "flying by the seat of your pants".

 

 

 

 

By comparison Lylat Wars felt a bit more laid back. Nintendo had obviously taken a decision to flesh out the universe a bit and wanted to give you more of those vistas. But if you had played the SNES game, it felt a little slow. You were up against bosses that you'd fought before and I wasn't a great fan of the new content either.

 

The submarine level was bad. I didn't think so at the time but retrospectively the handling was swimmy (ha!) and slow at the same time making it feel disconnected from the game world. Everything was slowed down making it super easy and oh would you look at that, they're going to let Slippy talk ALL THE WAY THROUGH THE LEVEL!

By comparison the tank levels was a mixed blessing. It had some excellent level design in the way that your view was constantly restricted by the objects around you but essentially being locked to a pseudo-2D movement plane felt constricting. I suppose that's a tank but I wouldn't say I enjoyed it that much.

In a lot of ways it feels as though Lylat Wars was Nintendo's directors cut of Starwing, where they wanted to add in a lot of the creative vision that they couldn't achieve on the SNES. More character development, more script (oh god some of the script is BAD) and getting to more viscerally experience some of the higher points of the game, like the escape from the final boss with Fox's dad-ghost guiding him. The game bit of the game just lost some of it's purity and fun for me along the way. For instance, I think that they need to get rid of the old charge shot.

 

But how could I not talk about the all-range levels

There were some great all-range moments particularly any dogfight with Starwolf. Some were a bit lacking but this truly delivered something above the SNES experience that continued on it's spirit of action arcade. The amount of "crap-that-was-close" moments are a testament to it's success.

 

The multiplayer extension of that was also a lot of fun. As a 2 player experience it wasn't great but 4 players got really hectic. It was no Goldeneye or Mario Kart but it really felt like it could have been with a bit more development time and alternate modes.

 

 

I'm not going to go into much detail about Adventures as it felt like a side game to me and I remember very little about Assault aside from it failing to capture that experience again.

[Fierce_LiNk]

It's too late, @Jamba. This thread is now about where else exactly @dazzybee placed that rumble pak.

 

It was always too late.

[nekunando]

As with several of my N64 games, I picked up Lylat Wars when I was in town after a half-day in school before a week or two of holidays to enjoy the game.

 

Slightly more recently, however, I found myself setting a couple of new high scores on both my N64 version and Starfox 64 3D. This was due to the now AWOL darksnowman being at my house one night and taking himself to the top of the standings on both games! I obviously couldn't allow that so my initials are back at the top, where they belong

[tapedeck]

I never really got into the SNES version (other than the amazing graphics and music) as I found it too hard to get through the latter stages.

 

In my teens I picked up the N64 version in the giant box with the Rumble Pak. Trying to explain it to my grandmother was fun. I was glad Nintendo named it as they did...

 

The game was a hit with me and all of my friends. It hit the Star Wars nerve that the late 90's brought when the Special Edition VHS re-releases landed, and had an arcade-like addictive quality due to the hit points and quick play nature. The local multiplayer was also good for a quick game, offering a tight dog-fight setup, further cementing the N64 as THE console to play with friends.

 

What was really great about the game was the cinematic nature; specifically the voice work. Equally cheesy as it was cinematic, the writing stuck with all of us. Before the Internet had hit the mainstream we were all doing barrel roll nods to each other during school. I'll always remember sitting in the school canteen and bursting out into the following speech with my mates across the table:

 

Caiman here... no problems...

Caiman: Do you copy? Emergency Maneuvers!

Falco Lombardi: Too late. Game over, pal!

 

Fantastic memories!

Edited April 7, 2016 by tapedeck