Starfox 64

Merry welcomes and hellos to all! As for my last blog post, I bring you one of the most memorable games of my childhood. It is Starfox 64, a forward scrolling shooter game released for the Nintendo 64 in 1997. The story is as follows. The peaceful Lylat System is under attack by the evil ruler Andross again, and the only hope is team Starfox. Team Starfox, now led by Fox McCloud, receives a distress signal from General Pepper asking them to come and help defend Corneria from the forces of Andross. When they arrive, the entire city is destroyed. After they clear out the enemies, the team decides to bring the battle straight to Andross himself, and begin their journey through the ruined Lylat System to meet him on planet Venom.

Game play is extraordinarily simple and extremely innovative. It's as simple as "Press A to Shoot!" (A quote from Peppy Hare, one of your comrades). There are a few easy to master fancy movements like loops and U-turns (in full range mode), but the ship in game moves one to one with your control stick. The levels and enemies can get pretty repetitive, as is the nature of all shooter games, but each level has different strategies of how you want or need to complete them. You can complete each level the easy way or the hard way, yielding a "Mission Complete" or a "Mission Accomplished" respectively. Completing levels in different ways chooses the next level that you do, like a fork in the road system. The image above shows the more you do the red line way, the harder the levels become, the yellow intermediately, and the blue being the easiest levels.

Starfox 64 is a classic. IGN praises it to the heavens in their article by Doug Perry saying, "An exceptional shooter that's only improved since its original 16-bit inception, Starfox 64 is deep with gameplay, strategy, and calculated level progression mechanics." Gamespot couldn't agree more in their review as well. Glenn Rubenstein tells us, "Star Fox 64 is the kind of game you will spend many sleepless nights with - even after you finish. The replay value will bring you back again and again." Along with providing many silly internet memes for us all, Starfox 64 is a simple, but phenomenal game that will be remembered forever by Nintendo fans alike. Now if you excuse me, I have to go and fire up the N64 to beat the giant floating monkey head once again.