Starwing AKA StarFox (1993) for SNES
- Sam Cawley
- Jul 28, 2021
- 8 min read
Updated: Aug 31, 2021
Starwing, more commonly known as Starfox, is a "shoot em up" action adventure game set in a sci-fi universe.
Created and published by Nintendo, it was a revolutionary addition to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) that spawned a number of sequels on future Nintendo platforms.
After an extensive look at everything it has to offer, here's my take on whether Starwing lives up to its legacy, or if it's merely a footnote in the way gaming has evolved over time.
History
Starwing started out as a joint project between Nintendo and a company called Argonaut Software. By this point in time gaming was very much a 2D experience. Platformers like Mario or Megaman, puzzle games like Tetris, adventure games like The Legend of Zelda, all games that worked in 2D leaving a lot of what was happening to the imagination of the player.
3D gaming was obviously the next step in the evolution of gaming and Nintendo wanted to explore that before the competition. Their console at the time was the SNES which was also 2D but Nintendo experimented with putting a 3D game onto the system, and turned to Argonauts for help.
Together they created the Super FX chip, a chip that was inserted into a cartridge in order to give it more processing power, more than the SNES had built into it.
So they had the software, but now needed to create the game around it. They came to the idea of an arcade shooting type game and felt spaceships were the obvious fit. Argonauts began work on the technical elements and Nintendo worked on the story, characters, and what the game was going to be.
At the head of this development was Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Super Mario and Zelda, who was definitely the right choice for some creative input.
Mr Miyamoto said that during development he was inspired by Star Wars, and more specifically, the X-Wing spacecrafts seen in the films. He also stated that the upon visits to the Fushimi Inari-taisha shrine, a short walk from the Nintendo headquarters, he was inspired by large arches that you had to walk under, and felt it would be fun to fly under them in a spaceship. He also felt that human characters weren't the right fit and wanted animal characters to be the leads. This led to the creation of Fox McCloud, the character you play as during the game, who was inspired by a statue of a fox found in the same Fushimi Inari-taisha shrine.
And with that, the final game was planned out, a sci-fi arcade like shooter with a final cast of four main characters. These were Fox McCloud, Peppy Hare, Slippy Toad and Falco Lombardi. The game itself was really well received, gaining a lot of positive reviews from critics and the public, making it a commercial success for Nintendo, a strange difference in the game's release is its name. As I'm sure you've noticed the common name is StarFox but the PAL region version was called Starwing. The reason for this is StarFox sounded too similar to a German company called Starvox, not a very exciting reason for the change but understandable. I was very excited to jump into this game and got to play my copy on an original SNES console on an older TV, how it was originally supposed to be played. So without delay let's talk about the game.
Story
The story of the game is short and sweet, like most stories from the era of gaming Starwing comes from. The Lylat system, which is made up of two main planets, Corneria and Venom is under threat by an evil scientist called Andross, the main antagonist of the game. He's massed an army of invaders from his base on Venom to attack Corneria as a revenge plot for banishing him from the planet. It's upto Fox McCloud and his team to travel across the Lylat system and defeat Andross before he wins. Fox has to traverse through different levels in his spacecraft, called an Arwing, navigating through other worlds, asteroid belts and even dangerous space armadas in order to get to Venom and face Andross. I think the story is pretty entertaining and the Star Wars inspiration is very obvious while still having its own personality with its animal cast and world-building.
Gameplay
As mentioned earlier, Starwing is an arcade style shooter. High scores and waves of enemies are how the level encounters work and your main goal is to simply advance to the end of a level, defeat a boss and move onto the next stage. Movement is "on rails" which means you're constantly moving forward to where you need to go but you have the freedom to manoeuvre around the screen, slow down, speed up and such.
The gameplay itself is in 3D so you can see things popping into view in the distance and get a feel for the depth of the place your flying through and it feels great to glide around the interesting environments and through encounters. For a game that was one of the first to venture into three dimensional territory, it holds up quite well graphically and it's easy to tell where you are and what your doing which is great.
While moving through a level you'll be faced with obstacles and enemies, such as in the first level Corneria, you'll fly past buildings and under arches (which were inspired by the shrine Mr Miyamoto saw) while enemies fly towards the screen firing at you.
In terms of fighting back you have a main blaster you can fire as much as you want and a "super bomb" which unleashes a devastating blast in a wide area but only has a set number of uses unless you find one to pick up throughout the level. Enemies tend to be destroyed with one or a few blasts making them easy to take down if you can predict where they'll be flying and shots coming from them are just slow enough to avoid if you're focused enough.
On top of offense you've got some defensive options too. Alongside strafing in different directions to avoid enemies you also have the barrel roll, which when executed correctly, it can actually deflect certain attacks so it's wise to master as early as possible but it's not necessarily needed.
Fox isn't alone against the odds in this game, as his team are right there behind him. Every now one of your teammates might pop up to lend you a hand fighting off incoming attackers. They're not incredibly helpful but they can draw fire and shield you from incoming fire. It's also nice to know you've got some friendly faces too. However, sometimes one of them will get into a bind and ask for help as they fly past you being pursued by another spacecraft. If you don't help them quickly they'll take damage to their healthbar and if they run out of health they'll have to retreat and temporarily stay out of the action for a few levels. It's a good idea to help them out when you can as the more help you've got the better, especially in later levels.
In terms of your own health you've got to be careful to not take too much damage. Like most games you have lives to spare and can grab yourself continues for getting a high enough score so blasting as many enemies as possible during levels is a high risk high reward strategy.
If your health does get low while flying through a stage it's not the end of the world, as you can find item pickups that are hidden in certain areas or drop out of defeated enemies. These can be silver and gold rings which replenish your health, a blaster upgrade that lets you shoot two shots instead of one, and super bombs.
This is where I personally think Starwing shines as a game. It isn't the easiest game in the world but it's not impossible for a more casual gamer. If you run out of lives and continues you have to start from the beginning again but the levels themselves are a perfect length and there's just the right amount of levels to play through where you can get back to where you left off relatively easily.
For those looking for a greater challenge, Starwing offers increased difficulty in the form of different level paths. There are three to choose from when you start a game. The middle path is the easiest, the upper path is slightly harder and the lower path is the hardest. This is good for future play-throughs and I personally played the middle and upper paths and felt moderately challenged.
I feel as a game, Starwing holds up quite well in the gameplay department. It feels satisfying to blow up waves of opponents and the challenges faced are of a good difficulty in my opinion.
My favourite part would have to be the bosses at the end of the levels. They're not visually impressive and while the shape design is distinct there isn't much in terms of colour of methods of defeating them. A typical boss is a large enemy that has specific glowing spots to shoot that knock off parts of its body, opening up new spots to blast until its healthbar is depleted, thus ending a level. It's refreshing to fight a boss after charging through a level as it's usually a one on one fight and blowing up parts of its form and watching it explode at the end feels like an accomplishment.
Audio
The audio is average to say the least. The SNES is capable of doing some extraordinary things in terms of audio and the Super FX chip featured in Starwing makes the audio even better. Unfortunately it isn't much to talk about. However I will say that explosions and blaster fire sound incredibly good and add to that satisfaction when you destroy a boss or something else.
The music is fine, fitting into that high tech sci-fi theming and it compliments that game quite well.
What really shines to me in terms of audio is the sound of the characters featured in the game. The SNES can't really support full voice acting. The occasional sound clip can be used but not full dialogue. In a game that takes place in a team of spacecraft pilots, exposition could have as simply as text boxes after levels, but Starwing goes a step further and features unintelligible voices for the characters with subtitles for what their saying. I don't know why I like this so much but I think it's because the voices match the characters so well in terms of pitch and tone and it just sounds so charming to me.
Conclusion
Overall, I think Starwing is a fun game to look back at. While the smooth and blank looking graphics might not appeal to many people these days I think historically it's an important game to remember. I think it also says a lot that it still has fans today and has had its fair share of sequels and re-releases, whether they were good or bad. Fox was also a playable character in Super Smash Bros for the N64, the first title in Nintendo's crossover fighting series, with Falco, and Fox's rival Star Wolf, becoming playable in future entries.
Ultimately Starwing is a wondeful game, and definitely deserves its place in Nintendo's hall of fame, and I personally hope we see a return to the series in the future in a similar way to how the Metroid series has returned to form through the upcoming Metroid Dread game. It might not be for everyone, but it's great for a bit of arcade style fun on a home console. You can find it the on the Nintendo Switch Online service and the Wii U virtual console so I'd definitely recommend giving it a go if you haven't already.
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