Star Fox Command

Following the release of Star Fox: Assault (Assault) on the GameCube, a new Star Fox game, Star Fox Command (Command), was developed for Nintendo’s then-new DS system and released early in the system’s life cycle. Admittedly, I didn’t have much interest in this game at first, but I ended up investing in a physical copy, partly to fill the unsightly gap in my Star Fox collection after realizing it was the only game I didn’t own in any capacity and partly to complete my experience with the timeline started by Star Fox 64 (64). Rather notably, said timeline represents a more experimental era in Star Fox history, with each subsequent game after 64 attempting to bring something new to the table to stand out. In the case of Command, its most notable feature is its use of multiple endings, as well as a unique control scheme based around the DS touchscreen, making it stand out from even the radically different Star Fox Adventures (Adventures) and Assault. While these are interesting ideas in theory, the end result unfortunately falls a little short in practice.

Star Fox 64 3D

Following the release of the original Star Fox on the SNES, with Star Fox 2 having been shelved despite being fully completed, the series was rebooted for the then-recent Nintendo 64 system in 1997, aptly named Star Fox 64. In 2011, as part of a series of 3DS remakes of older Nintendo titles, Star Fox 64 received one as Star Fox 64 3D, which aimed to be faithful to the original release while adding new content. I had become curious about playing Star Fox 64 after playing Star Fox Adventures, which was made as a sequel to it, to get a better hang on the story, but didn’t actively attempt to do so until the Nintendo 3DS eShop was shutting down, at which point I went for a physical copy of Star Fox 64 3D both for convenience and to get the best experience possible. After finally getting around to playing it, I can see why it’s considered a classic game in terms of gameplay and story.

Star Fox

After playing through Star Fox Adventures, I became interested in seeing what other Star Fox games were like, which quickly turned into a deep-dive that involved going back to the franchise’s 1993 roots with the original Star Fox (aka Starwing in Europe) on the SNES to see how it all began. Although I own a SNES and the game itself isn’t too difficult to find, I would end up playing the game through the SNES Classic, as it happened to be one of the included games and has a save state function that would make an otherwise difficult game easier for me to get through and play in chunks. While the game does still impress with the hardware limitations at the time, there are still areas where it didn’t age quite so well due to later entries improving upon what it set out to be.