Let's focus on a failure. The recent avalanche of notable Nintendo anniversaries have almost all been cause for celebration, as Mario, Zelda and Metroid turned 25, Kirby hit 20 and the Big N's various home consoles all ticked off another half-decade apiece each in the past year or two. But today it's time to reflect on a milestone for a moment that should have us hanging our heads instead of jumping for joy – because today it's been 10 years since the Star Fox series took its first wrong turn.
Well, 10 years since this past Sunday, technically. Because September 23, 2002, was the day that Nintendo launched Star Fox Adventures.
Late in the life cycle of the Nintendo 64, the developers at second-party Rare Ltd. were hard at work on an ambitious adventure. They'd already brought N64 fans a wealth of great 3D platformers like Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64. They'd produced incredible 3D shooters like GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark. They'd even merged both platformers and shooters into Jet Force Gemini, and given us the adults-only, uncensored antics of a foul-mouthed squirrel in Conker's Bad Fur Day.
Rare was flying high, releasing hit after hit. And Dinosaur Planet looked likely to best them all.
Dinosaur Planet was a work-in-progress meant to be Rare's answer to the 3D Zelda titles. It copied its focus on exploration and puzzle-solving from Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, and even cloned signature aspects of those games' controls – like not allowing the hero to jump except when nearing a ledge. More than just rehashing what Nintendo's first-party developers had already achieved, though, Rare took new steps with DP's design – like automating the targeting of nearby enemies in combat, and introducing two different playable characters that gamers would have been able to dynamically swap between at will.
It all looked incredible. And followers of the Nintendo scene roughly 12 years ago, here on IGN and elsewhere, couldn't wait to get our hands on what looked like it was shaping up to be the N64's true epic swan song.
Unfortunately, Shigeru Miyamoto got his hands on it first.
Mr. Miyamoto has a reputation for being right. He's infamous for his ability to see a game in development, quickly assess what's working for it and what isn't, and redirect straying creative teams back onto the path to success for their projects. He's known for getting forceful about his opinions, too – "upending the tea table," other Nintendo employees have said. It sounds a little harsh, but it's an effective approach, since Mr. Miyamoto almost always gets it right.
He got this one wrong.
Nobody's perfect, and it's time to just admit that Miyamoto screwed up with Star Fox Adventures. What happened was a normal behind-the-scenes scene, as Nintendo's legendary designer was shown an in-development build of Rare's Dinosaur Planet. He offered his sage advice on how to improve this, how to enhance that – taking his normal role as a mentor presenting his insight.
But then he got fixated on the foxes. Rare's Dinosaur Planet was set on a planet full of dinosaurs, naturally, but for the game's two playable heroes – Sabre and Krystal – the developers had decided on using anthropomorphic foxes. They could have been humans, sure. They could have been any other kind of animal. But because they were foxes, Miyamoto stared at the screen and made a simple remark.
"He looks like Fox McCloud, doesn't he?"
It's hard to imagine how awkward it must be for designers working in Shigeru's shadow. Here is a man who always get his way – always. And his suggestions almost always make for better final products, which must just make it even more aggravating on the rare occasions when he sets his mind to something that might not be in a game's best interest.
Apparently no one did for Dinosaur Planet. Mr. Miyamoto's off-hand remark about the game's fox hero looking like his own Fox hero was enough to completely change the direction of the project, as Dinosaur Planet was fully converted into a Star Fox title.
The result was a mess of a game. Star Fox Adventures launched to fair acclaim – Matt Casamassina's IGN review even scored it a 9 out of 10 at the time – but, a decade later, it's much easier to see its flaws.
Fox McCloud just felt shoehorned in. You could tell it was a mismatch from the start, as Fox pilots his Arwing down to the planet's surface and promptly hops out to explore on foot. Then General Pepper forbids him from wielding his blaster, forcing him to take up a staff instead. Then he runs around fetch-questing items and spirits and magical who-knows-whats, all to ultimately save the life of a blue-furred she-fox he falls in love with at first sight.
Strike 1. Strike 2. Strike 3. All of those elements could have worked wonderfully if an original character had been kept as the game's hero, but instead they all felt contrived with Fox pressed into the role. They went against everything we knew about Fox from previous games – he was a pilot first and foremost, and never left his cockpit on a mission (only in the just-for-fun Star Fox 64 multiplayer mode). He was a loner with daddy issues, the type of character an in-game love interest was never meant for (the girls hit on Falco in Star Fox 64.) And he wouldn't have just left his blaster behind because Corneria's General asked him nicely too – he would have blasted everything in sight and sent Pepper the bill for his destructive services. (Again, as in Star Fox 64.)
In fact, that bit with General Pepper ordering Fox – an independent mercenary – not to wield his own weapon on a mission seems, in hindsight, a bit too eerily similar to Adam commanding Samus not to use her equipment in Metroid: Other M. Think about that connection for a bit.
Star Fox Adventures' problems continued beyond the damage done to Fox McCloud as a character, as the conversion of Dinosaur Planet from a late-generation N64 masterpiece into a first-year GameCube position filler clearly took its toll in other ways too – the storyline was convoluted, and entire gameplay sequences were left unfinished in the final product. Remember General Scales, the game's main antagonist? The whole single-player quest builds up to one last decisive fight with the T-Rex-esque villain, but just as you're about to attack him, the game crazily shuts down.
Seriously – I thought my personal copy had glitched out when I came to that moment myself, 10 years ago. But no, it was actually deliberate. You get into the battle with Scales and start preparing for an epic fight, and then the combat sequence just abruptly ends – since a full fight was never actually finished in development, and the game has to scoot you on to the "real" final battle with a ridiculously nonsensical version of old Star Fox nemesis Andross instead.
What's worse, the poor decisions heaped upon Star Fox Adventures then rippled out to bring down the series' next installments, too. Nintendo next tossed the reigns of the franchise over to Namco for Star Fox Assault, which was weighed down by having to integrate characters like she-fox Krystal into the on-going series storyline and was crippled by poorly executed on-foot missions – neither of which would have been there if Dinosaur Planet had just remained as Dinosaur Planet. 2006's Star Fox Command brought the series' gameplay back to an earlier era and was more successful, but, again, Krystal had to be accounted for – her weird relationship with Fox ended up stealing way too much of the spotlight as the game went in the odd direction of presenting multiple different possible endings, most of them concerned with whether or not the two foxes ever got busy making babies.
It was all, and still is, ridiculous. And it's all Star Fox Adventures' fault.
Star Fox Adventures was the last game Rare ever developed as a Nintendo second-party – after its release, they were purchased by Microsoft. Some Nintendo fans minimized that loss, pointing out Adventures as evidence of the company's poor output – but that was mostly just self-protection, fans walling themselves off from the realization that the excellent artists who brought us Banjo-Kazooie, GoldenEye and Conker were forced to compromise their vision on what could have been their best Nintendo title ever.
But, at least from the perspective of the Star Fox franchise, things here 10 years later are once again flying right. Someone at Nintendo finally figured out that Adventures had been the point when the brand veered off, and the wise decision was made to reboot and redirect the series by revisiting its best game – Star Fox 64. 2011's Star Fox 64 3D remake for the 3DS was exactly what Star Fox needed, to get refocused on what made the series great in the first place – intense shooting action, in vehicles, with a team of chatty wingmen offering criticism, advice and pleas for help with no blue-furred love interests in sight.
With hope, Star Fox 64 3D will be used by Nintendo as a new starting point for Fox McCloud, and the past decade of missteps will be ignored by any future sequels that come along. Let's just hope whatever's next will be an original adventure this time around – not another unrelated work-in-progress ruined by having Fox shoehorned into it.
For those interested in more about the original version of Dinosaur Planet, click here to read IGN64's archived coverage of the game and watch this recently-released video playthrough of the title's first sequence:
Lucas M. Thomas recognizes that the graphics of Star Fox Adventures, including Fox's fur, were pretty good. (He disowns the rest of the game, though.) You can follow him on his IGN blog and Twitter.
Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com
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