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Star Fox 64, known as Lylat Wars in Australia and Europe (due to trademark issues), is a video game for the Nintendo 64 console. It was released in Japan on April 27, 1997, in North America on July 1, 1997, and in Europe on October 20, 1997. It was later ported to the China-only iQue on November 21, 2003. It is the second game in Nintendo's Star Fox series, and the first to be released on the Nintendo 64. The planned second game in the series for the SNES, Star Fox 2, was scrapped, but some of its features were used in Star Fox 64, such as all range mode. The game was the first to introduce support for the Rumble Pak. The game received positive ratings from reviewers who praised its smooth animation, detailed visuals, and use of multiple gameplay paths.•
Gameplay In most levels of Star Fox 64, the player controls one of the vehicles piloted by Fox McCloud, usually an Arwing, as it travels on a fixed-rail that generally moves straight forward. The player's vehicle can be maneuvered around the screen to dodge obstacles and shoot incoming enemies with laser cannons. All vehicles can also charge up their laser cannons to unleash a powerful track-on laser. As well as the forced progression of the main game, some levels and bosses take place in "all range mode" (available only with the Arwing during single-player), where the player can move freely around a rectangular arena and engage in combat with various enemies. The Arwing has one new maneuver it can perform in all range mode; it can Immelmann up-and-over to change direction (called a U-turn in the game). Returning from the original Star Fox game are wingmen that fly beside the player in Arwings and are sometimes pursued into your field of vision by enemies. The longer it takes you to save the wingmen the more damage they will take, eventually leading to their destruction. If one of the wingmen has been shot down that wingman cannot help the player in the next mission, but returns after that. Extra points are added to the player's score by keeping all of the wingmen's health meters full. There are a few secreat levels that can be found in levels. There are different places you half to fly in to get these hidden levels. Among Star Fox 64 Instead of the fixed series of levels of the original (determined by the difficulty level chosen), many of the levels branch out to two different levels, with the "upper" branch requiring the player to accomplish a certain task. If the task is completed, the end of the level will read "Mission Accomplished." However, if this task is not achieved, the ending will read "Mission Complete", and the player must take the "downward" route. The levels correspond loosely to the difficulty levels of the original Star Fox, with routes colour coded blue, yellow and red to represent the easiest, medium and hardest levels of difficulty, respectively. Many of the forced paths bring the Star Fox team into contact with the Star Wolf team, a nemesis squadron originally slated to appear in the unreleased Star Fox 2. Finally, to add replay challenge, the game features awardable "medals," which are earned by accomplishing a mission with all wingmen intact and having achieved a certain hit total. These totals are often a high percentage of the total enemies on the stage, leaving little room for error. Obtaining medals results in unlocking bonus features, such as a sound test and the ability to fight on tank and foot in multiplayer mode. Acquiring all medals unlocks a new "Expert" mode in which there are more enemies per level, the player's Arwing takes more damage (a direct collision with solid obstacles will destroy any of the Arwing's wings in one hit), and Fox wears sunglasses similar to his father's. Acquiring all medals on Expert mode unlocks a new title screen for the game. Vehicles Unlockables To unlock the Landmaster Tank in the multiplayer mode, complete the game with the best ending by taking the top-most branching path. To unlock Expert mode, achieve a medal on every stage. To get a medal, a certain number of hits must be acquired. To unlock on-foot combat in the multiplayer mode, collect all medals in expert mode. Story
Multiplayer The game features multiplayer support for up to four players simultaneously. Users can choose to play using either the Arwing spaceship, the Landmaster tank or as the pilot equipped with a bazooka. The two latter modes, however, have to be unlocked. Unlike the main game, players cannot upgrade to hyper lasers and can only carry a maximum of one nova bomb, but Landmaster tanks can have twin lasers. Reception Acclaimed by many reviewers, Star Fox 64 was one of the top-selling games of 1997, second only to Mario Kart 64. In the first five days of the game's U.S. launch, over 300,000 copies were sold, surpassing the record previously held by Mario Kart 64 and Super Mario 64. Sales were considerably less in Japan, where it sold 75,595 copies during the first week of sale. . It also took the GameSpot noted that Star Fox 64 is "an instant classic" and was impressed by the voice acting. Glenn Rubenstein, the reviewer, noted that the game is "a pleasure to look at" and liked the cinematic quality of the storyline. Although other reviewers such as IGN said that the game is "extremely repetitive" and that the music quality was not as good as the original Star Fox, they still praised the branching system and "intelligently designed levels" which compensate for those points. Star Fox 64 was promoted in a Taco Bell kids meal toy. There might have been more than one kind of toy for the promotion. Nintendo Power subscribers received a promotional video prior to Star Fox 64s release (the same tactic was used to promote Donkey Kong Country for the SNES) that advertised the game's cinematic presentation, as well as new features like the Rumble Pak and voice acting. It revolves around two agents of Sega and Sony (who, at the time, were Nintendo's biggest competitors) kidnapping Nintendo employees and forcing them to reveal information about the upcoming Star Fox title by "torturing" a Mario doll. A copy of the video can be viewed here in its entirety. Speedrunning Mike 'TSA' Damiani of America holds the world's fastest time of completion of Star Fox 64 in normal mode on August 18, 2005 — 27 minutes and 29 seconds.• | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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