Star Fox 2 ("Co-op" Blind Run) — A Crash Course

So yes, all that excessive drama and space aliens and… Kirby golf… it was all for this moment! …a game I’ve never played that’s a sequel to a game I’m already bad at playing and will certainly make me miss all the advancements made instead of releasing it in the first place and beyond!

Hopefully you brought your own sense of humor for this one, because the in-flight movie is probably going to cause some turbulence.

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I will say that, despite the game still reaching for stars a fair bit beyond the platform’s grasp, there’s a noticeable amount of technical improvement to be had in Star Fox 2. It’s still wacky polygons zipping about colliding with one another, but this is the kind of thing that proved back in the day that being a number-crunching NERD completely flips video gaming on its head and straight through several paradigms. If Mode 7 was impressive, I don’t even know what to call this.

Of course, what good is all this power at your disposal if you don’t immediately let it go straight to your head? Suddenly, the development turned to a bunch of even more revolutionary, game-changing ideas that would, in fact, determine the guiding course for Star Fox as a franchise all the way through to the present day, whether or not people realized it until the game finally saw some manner of official release. I’m just… shocked… as a series fan… just how much is owed back to this game.

Where do I start? All-Range Mode! Tactical maps! Flight plans! Walkers! Star Wolf! If you thought these were elements from other games that took decades to realize, apparently you underestimated how ahead of its time this franchise’s grand designs were… just as much as it overestimated the capabilities of hardware from its own time. ALL these things are in the game, when it would’ve been SO easy just to be another rail-shooting arcade-style flight simulator…ish… thing. Never mind whether or not you personally like the mark these elements have left on the series, they were already old news by the time they made their “proper” debuts with players. I… don’t even know how to feel about that!

Given that I like more of these things than most fans and un-fans alike seem to, I think it’s safe to say that if I was any good at Star Fox on the SNES, this game would’ve been for me. I would’ve MADE myself git gud for this game.

I still might have to. It’s so… ambitious and misunderstood! … … …probably not worth the price of admission… if only there was some kind of… service… where Nintendo would sell… old games… digitally… to be played on newer devices… and maybe there was proper support from Nintendo and other developers… and miraculous licensing agreements could be struck, even from beyond some companies’ graves! … … …alas, to my knowledge, there’s no such thing, so I guess we HAD to do it this way!

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I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to look like General Pepper’s wearing huge black sunglasses when delivering his explanation of the game map and general briefing… but I can’t unsee them as huge, saucer-like… well, literal puppy dog eyes. (Who’s a good general? Who’s a GOOD general?! You are! You are, sir! You are! Yes, you are!)

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Anyway, yes! The title reads “co-op”! This game doesn’t just put you in the cockpit with Fox and let you annoy and occasionally rescue your teammates… you get to pick not one, but TWO characters from the available roster (expanded with not one, but TWO girls added to this boys’ flight club) and save Lylat! … … …I have no idea what everyone else does with their newfound free time, but I guess saving the galaxy is strictly a two-(wo)man job these days.

Now, if we had expected this under-precedented mechanical shift, we might’ve played to our roles and such… but… basically, we switched off every sortie… except when occasionally we didn’t. Since even I don’t remember the specific details and we didn’t exactly see the need to document anything while having a joyride in an Arwing or two… … …just assume that when something mediocre-to-good happens, I did it… everything else was the fault of my used-to-be-good-I-swear cohort. Fair, right? Right. (Sure glad there’s no dissenting opinion lying around to defend itself!)

You might notice that each pair of characters as we proceed down the select screen has a different-shaped Arwing design (another first that would be revisited in much later series installments!), giving them rather different capabilities and specializations. Unfortunately, we picked two of the same, so this wouldn’t be particularly apparent. Double-unfortunately, we picked the ones that could take the least abuse and have the same special move, a damage-nullifying shield of limited uses.

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If I had trouble with depth perception and shooting targets before, just wait until the REAL dogfighting begins! … … …what do you mean it’s already OVER?! I demand a refund! (15 minutes back!)