Star Fox

The year was 1993, and the world had seen very little 3D computer graphics, let alone play with them in a video game. Then along comes StarFox, and egad it was awesome. Utilizing the new FX chip (whatever that does) this game unleashed polygonny goodness upon the kids of the 90's for the first time ever. You play as Fox McCloud, leader of a team of anthropomorphic animal fighter pilots called StarFox. Your ship flies along a set track, although you have some maneuverability besides that--think of the starship levels of Lego Star Wars, except with SNES graphics. You have several wingmen: Slippy the frog, Peppy the rabbit, and Falco the bird ... thing. They don't really do anything, but you're given the choice to help them when they're in trouble every so often. They also provide idle radio chatter to give life to the game. StarFox has several pathways containing different levels, but I haven't figured out how it decides which path you take. Basically there are third-person shooting levels where you can see your ship, and there are first-person shooting levels where you see everything through your cockpit. The levels range from flying near the ground and avoiding buildings to asteroid fields, to inside space stations and capital starships. The grapics aren't that good compared to games of the present, and the frame rate is a little shoddy, but MAN. They went out of their way to make sure the game with the new technology was also fun to play. (And my man Shigeru Miyamoto worked on it, so you KNOW it's got to be awesome.) If you've never played, seen, or heard of this game, you've seriously got some issues. The end boss is one of the defining icons of the Super Nintendo, and the whole game is fun to just pick up and play for however long you've got. Supposedly Starfox 64 is even better, but after that one the series went totally downhill. Stick with the first couple games.Read full review