The National Videogame Museum opened in Frisco, TX on April 2, 2016, and I finally had a chance to visit it last weekend. Although the museum has a few kinks to work out – the otherwise impressive display for online messaging was under maintenance when my date and I visited – it had all kinds of cool features such as an arcade room, a giant, playable replica of pong, and even Easter eggs to find throughout the displays and enter them into a computer. However, I found exactly one thing that stood out to me, one thing that I never thought I’d see in person: a copy of the unreleased box of Star Fox 2 .
This discovery is well-timed. Nintendo recently released Star Fox Zero , the so-called spiritual successor to Star Fox 64 that I have been waiting for. Unfortunately, Star Fox 2 was and is likely never to shoot for the stars. It suffered a fate similar to Mother for the NES. Both games were well into development, but were scrapped because they had poor timing; i.e., they were planned for release near the end of the lifespan of their respective consoles (although thankfully Nintendo later released Mother on the Virtual Console). I think the news of a lost-but-nearly-completed Star Fox 2 is something that fans will miss only in hindsight. Star Fox 2 featured an improved graphics engine that built upon the 3D polygons that the made the original game highly regarded. However, Star Fox 64 is much easier on the eyes in comparison.
According to head of Q-Games Dylan Cuthbert, who worked on the game, Star Fox 2 was fully QA’d, so it makes sense that Nintendo would repurpose the ideas that the unreleased sequel would have introduced. What you may find surprising, however, is how many of these ideas would influence the future entries. For instance, Star Fox 2 would have been the first entry to allow players to pick and choose which planets they’d like to visit. This might be unimpressive for those who grew up with an N64, but Star Fox 2 takes it a step further. Enemies can capture planets, so you’d have to free planets from Andross’s control – a feature that would later be included in Star Fox Command , which Cuthbert also worked on. In Star Fox Zero , you can seamlessly transition from Arwing to walker mode, and subsequently from air to sea. Star Fox 2 even allowed players to engage in all-range mode, which would be used to influence the camera programs for Super Mario 64 . Star Fox 2 could have been revolutionary for the SNES, but instead Nintendo would save its revolutionary ideas for the N64.
For a long time, interested gamers could play three different betas of the game. According to Yuriofwind , the first version is essentially unplayable. The second version, however, is near complete although some of the menu graphics were missing. The third version is more complete, but it’s missing a battle mode, which was speculated to have been removed in order to make a deadline that, well, never happened. However, Damien McFerran of Nintendo Life reported that a complete version of Star Fox 2 actually exists. Although you might think that Star Fox 2 would be perfect for release on the Wii U virtual console, legal reasons (as with Mother ) complicate things. However, the Japanese version of the ROM does exist, and is apparently more complete than any attempt to patch the previous betas.
Star Fox 2 likely won’t impress gamers who grew up with newer consoles, but its ideas were extraordinary for the time. While it’s a shame that the game will likely never be released on the virtual console, you may consider tracking down some of the betas – and even the complete version if you can manage – to check out a piece of gaming history.