Star Fox for the SNES is the first game of the series. It introduces the four expert pilots and their Arwings, incredibly built ships which are far superior to just about all enemies and can perform maneuvers such as the infamous "barrel roll". On a console, it can be rather difficult to control the Arwing and very easy to run into obstacles. Obviously a TAS is called for in order to truly show off the skill of Fox McCloud. However, there is a problem with the emulation of this game, namely that it runs too fast compared to the audio. This can be seen especially in the beginning "Emergency!" scene, in the boss fights, and in the ending credits. The good thing is that this discrepancy doesn't affect gameplay and can be mostly ignored.
Snes9X v1.43+ v9
Use WIP1 Timing
100% kills, maximum score, hardest level
Corneria
I had to take a hit in order to get twin blasters. It is unfortunate, but I couldn't find a way to make the door close at a different time while still boosting continuously.
This level has an unbelievably high number of nova bombs compared to the others. I wish they would have spread them out, because in the later stages I often have none.
Asteroid Belt
Noticeably less obstacles to dodge than Corneria, so less entertaining maneuvers. I still barely avoid asteroids a lot, though.
HOLY CRAP, IT'S A HUGE BIRD!! Yes, shooting that particular large asteroid results in it laying an egg, which hatches into a bird, which, if I had touched it, would have taken me Out Of This Dimension.
The Blade Barrier can't be defeated in 2 rounds on a console without nova bombs. Even though I was shooting as fast as inhumanly possible, I was still barely able to destroy all three appendages each round before the blade started spinning.
Fortuna
The water part with the dragons was annoying to say the least. Where each head will pop up is highly dependent on Arwing movement, so if I moved towards one to shoot it, it might decide to appear somewhere else. I also ran into a large number of desyncs while recording; fortunately it plays back fine now.
This is, IMO, the best boss fight in the game. The Monarch Dodora didn't know what hit it. Literally, it didn't get a chance to turn around before dying.
Sector Z
Another space stage. But in a surprising twist, this one has an enormous amount of transparent blocks to dodge, resulting in entertainment and lag to the extreme.
I started off this stage with no nova bombs, and the one I get I decided to save for the Great Commander.
Macbeth
Okay, Andross somehow thought it would be a good idea to transform the planet right next to Venom into a giant bomb. WTF? Isn't this guy supposed to be a genius? Oh well, at least it doesn't explode on me. ;)
Fox is dizzy...
Venom (Atmosphere)
NO obstacles. I repeat, absolutely none. Wow. So what entertaining things can I do, hmm... I know, sped-up-twist-to-the-music!
The Great Commander fight is usually quite difficult, but 2 nova bombs as well as 2 other shots puts him in his place quickly. As he retreats, Fox watches in confusion.
Venom (Ground)
Oh, the lag, the lag! Seriously, there were 10 or so desyncs on this stage just from the lag at the beginning. It plays back fine now, but wow that was a pain in the proverbial enormous divine ass. (A "holy crap", if you will.)
There are a couple of flying enemies that are out of reach of my blasters, so I can't kill them. It might look a little sloppy, but unfortunately it's unavoidable.
The Great Commander returns, and this time he tries to molest me! But I turn the tables on him with my sexual harassment training! First, I shoot him in the crotch until his lower body explodes. Then, as he frantically waves his arms around in pain, I blow his head to smithereens. That's right kids, Star Fox knows what to do when someone threatens you!
Andross
As the head is forming, I shoot the locations where the blocks go in order. This serves no purpose other than pure awesomeness.
I couldn't defeat both eyes before the sucking began. It might be possible if the blocks weren't flying towards the Arwing and interfering with shooting, but even then probably not. Those eyes take a whole lot of hits.
No demon form! Hooray!
Truncated: This is popular enough to warrant a publication.
If what nitsuja is saying is true, there should be some mention that the speed of the game is emulated incorrectly in the AVI or description, or both.
I'm afraid I'm gonna have to vote no for several reasons, but I'll start with the positives, the game is good well known and popular and quite fun to play as well is that is was the first game to have actual proper 3D graphics.
Firstly, I still own the game be it StarWing but it was quite a shock to see the game being so visually unappealing it simply made my eyes bleed, secondly it all seemed possible there were few thing on screen and they didn't seem too tricky to shoot. Maybe no ones got 100% in continuation but I'm sure every stage has had 100% at some point, this leads directly onto my next point, thirdly how is it possible to obselete this movie when its on rails and all the stages have knowingly perfect scores. I mean I enjoyed watching footage of SF64 because enemies fill the screen and the odd few were very evasive plus you can increase you score by killing multiple enemies at once so you never trully know if you got a perfect score.
Joined: 12/26/2006
Posts: 256
Location: United States of America
hero of the day wrote:
If you listen to all the character voices in slow motion or in frame advance, it is obvious that they recycled the words "wing damage" and simply used it at different speeds for each character's voice.
Wow, I never noticed that before! : )
Although I also heard "Repaired" and "Twin Blasters" being used as well.
Oh, yes. This video brought me many fond memories from my SNES days. It's nice to see this games' hard route completely owned in a TAS, since it was so dang hard (I only beat the hard route once). Heh, you dispatch the final boss, Andross, so fast we don't have a chance to see the devil face. Oh well, it was a great run anyway.
Voting Yes, of course.
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
Wow, the SNES was NOT meant to handle anything remotely 3D. Unfortunately, throughout the whole movie I felt like I was having a polygon and wireframe acid trip. And, despite the N64 version being an almost direct port, (at least in terms of level layout) because of the crap graphics I couldn't tell what was going on for a good portion of the time. I really liked the boss fights, though, especially stage 3. It was well played (duh, 100%s everywhere), but in terms of entertainment.... meh. So that's my vote.
Joined: 11/27/2004
Posts: 688
Location: WA State, USA
mmbossman wrote:
Wow, the SNES was NOT meant to handle anything remotely 3D. Unfortunately, throughout the whole movie I felt like I was having a polygon and wireframe acid trip. And, despite the N64 version being an almost direct port, (at least in terms of level layout) because of the crap graphics I couldn't tell what was going on for a good portion of the time.
You spoiled whippersnappers and yer newfangled 60 fps pixel shaded video games. Back in my day we had to draw the pictures ourselves. We were lucky if we got 1 frame a minute. Even then then it was only 16 by 16 dots. We were so poor back then that we couldn't afford pixels. Even if we could we'd have to walk FIF-teen miles in the snow uphill both ways! Back then gravity wasn't as stable as it is nowadays. You young whippersnappers have it so easy these days.
</old man> </rant>
Nach wrote:
I also used to wake up every morning, open my curtains, and see the twin towers. And then one day, wasn't able to anymore, I'll never forget that.
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
RT-55J wrote:
mmbossman wrote:
Wow, the SNES was NOT meant to handle anything remotely 3D. Unfortunately, throughout the whole movie I felt like I was having a polygon and wireframe acid trip. And, despite the N64 version being an almost direct port, (at least in terms of level layout) because of the crap graphics I couldn't tell what was going on for a good portion of the time.
You spoiled whippersnappers and yer newfangled 60 fps pixel shaded video games. Back in my day we had to draw the pictures ourselves. We were lucky if we got 1 frame a minute. Even then then it was only 16 by 16 dots. We were so poor back then that we couldn't afford pixels. Even if we could we'd have to walk FIF-teen miles in the snow uphill both ways! Back then gravity wasn't as stable as it is nowadays. You young whippersnappers have it so easy these days.
</old> </rant>
Aww grandpa! Please tell us the story of Pong again! I know one paddle was intense, but TWO WHOLE PADDLES ON SCREEN AT ONCE?? We love to hear about how you had to survive with only a joystick and your wits. I'm sure your reflexes were sooo much better than ours ever will be.
This run is straight up Awesome! I'm not sure why I was entertained so much by it but regardless it actually inspired me. I enjoyed the spinning and depth defying maneuvers and all that stuff. It's difficult to consistently entertain a viewer unless you do different things (even as subtle as they get in this run), just know that at no point in this run was I bored. Yes vote and congratulations, it truely is one hell of a run.
Joined: 6/4/2006
Posts: 97
Location: Everywhere including nowhere
The game is essentially one giant autoscroller, but you did a good job making it interesting. I especially like the fight with Didora Monarch. Voting yes.
A resounding yes vote from someone who rarely actually votes on a submission.
The game is played very well, and YtterbiJum made a potentially dreadful movie the least repetitive (boosting was a much better option than not boosting if even just for attention span reasons) and most artistic that I could imagine. Superb!
Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 66
Location: ...No clue but its not here....
A few parts COULD have used less rolling ( AHEM...mechbeath for one >_<;;; ) But otherwise this was the run many star fox fans have been waiting for...
Congrats on getting it done! A solid YES from I!
Im Everywere!!!.....................................Or am I???
Current Projects:
AGH on Very Hard (Alpha-Stage 1 done)
GSH on Hard (Beta-Stage4 done)
I guess i'm one of the few who liked the FX chip graphics (in a sort of experimental way). Watching this makes it clear that SF64, a game I played to death, was sortof a hi-res version of this games with the same skeletal gameplay.
About the run, I found nothing wrong with it aside from some briefly repetitive bits, but a lot of the dodging while boosting gave it a real speed thrill for me
I liked it. It's just long enough where boredom doesn't set in and it's got a lot of "OMG I'm gonna crash, but I'll move at the last second" type things which I like. Yes.
I don't mind the outdated graphics, but watching Star Fox games never entertained me. Riscy maneuvers aren't enough to keep me interested for 20 minutes, and there wasn't anything in the run that managed to surprise me.
Don't get me wrong, this run is probably as good as a Star Fox TAS can be, I just think that the game is boring to watch. But that might be because I never played the game, so I'll vote Meh instead of No.
There's something else to take into account: The emulation timing in Snes9x 1.43 is incredibly inaccurate for this game. I'm not exactly sure how much faster that makes it, but it's something like twice as fast as on a real SNES. That's a pretty big discrepancy even for a run that doesn't have speed as a primary goal.
Joined: 7/17/2004
Posts: 985
Location: The FLOATING CASTLE
I vote yes, but mostly because I love this game and have many fond memories of it. The height of my skill was being able to barely scrape through this hardest path, so I am quite in awe at the boss ownage and 100% ratings, not to mention the acrobatics. Great job!
Any plans on making a shorter warping run?
When Star Fox came out, the graphics blew me away. Three dimensional objects were a major advance. The first time I played Star Fox in an emulator, I was like, "Was Star Fox always this ugly?" It certainly looks like crap now, but it was the coolest thing ever at the time.
I enjoyed the WIP very much, but my regular computer is suffering from random reboots every 30 to 60 seconds right now, so it may be a while before I can watch the finished product. I can't offer my Yes vote yet, but I certainly offer my congratulations.
TASing or playing back a DOS game? Make sure your files match the archive at RGB Classic Games.
* I had to take a hit in order to get twin blasters. It is unfortunate, but I couldn't find a way to make the door close at a different time while still boosting continuously.
I think it is but your positioning has to be dead on. I didn't do it on my speedrun at SDA though.
* I had to take a hit in order to get twin blasters. It is unfortunate, but I couldn't find a way to make the door close at a different time while still boosting continuously.
I think it is but your positioning has to be dead on.
I'd like to see this. Not that I tried too hard, but it seemed like the door is on a regular, set schedule of open-close-open-close from the moment it appears, and getting there at the same time, regardless of position, will make it hit. I'm not ruling it out, I'm just saying I couldn't do it.
Also, does anyone know how fast the game runs on a console in terms of frames-per-second? I know the emulator runs it at 20fps assuming no lag.
Currently working on:
SNES Star Fox, Level 3 (100%, published)
SNES Star Fox, Level 2 (33%, after Sector X)
SNES Star Fox 2, Expert mode (100%, published)
