Before I begin today's entry, I did the math and with this 20th blog in a row I have equaled the number of blogs I had written in the past 3 years. This is mind blowing to me because it is difficult for me to write. The way I have to look at this project is that it is not just me sitting down and putting thoughts to keyboard, but trying to imagine myself telling a story to someone about these games I love.
Now back to work:
-Day 16: Super Mario Bros. 3
-Day 17: Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
-Day 18: Super Metroid
-Day 19: Chrono Trigger
Day 20
Star Fox 64
-Nintendo 64 (and recently Nintendo 3DS) June 30, 1997
"Do a barrel roll!"
Heh. There is no other way to start off this entry. I prefer "Can't let you do that StarFox!" from Wolf O'Donnell, but Peppy's line in the one synonymous with this game in gaming history. The pinnacle of shooting games in my view, StarFox 64 had the correct mix of action, challenge and excitement that hearkened back to the arcade style that was missing for a while.
Of course this was yet another game for a system I did not own due to being a broke college student at the time. Thankfully me and my comic shop co-worker at the time (Ryan Takatani) had "borrowed" a Nintendo 64 and this game from our buddy David Madina for an extended period of time and played the game everyday at work for about 3 months.
Why did we play it for 3 months straight at work? BECAUSE IT IS FUCKING AWESOME!
Well, it is more than just that. We loved taking turns to try and figure out all the secret paths and the number of kills needed to gain the elusive medals for each stage. Those damn medals. That probably consumed the majority of those 3 months. Playing each stage over and over to figure out how the heck we were going to get the seemingly impossible number of kills AND keeping the wing-men alive the entire time.
Oh man, the damn wing-men(or mammals and amphibian if you prefer)
Star Fox is well known for the whole team. You play as Fox McCloud, but the overly talkative wing men are one of the memorable (for better or worse depending on your point of view) parts of this game. The sage advice of Peppy Hare, the annoying high pitched Slippy Toad (whom I have shot down on purpose on MANY an occasion) and the cocky asshole remarks of Falco Lombardi. Nintendo games were never known for their dialogue. Mario? An occasional WOO-HOO starting with Super Mario 64. Link? Grunt and yells, but never any dialogue. Samus Aran? Silent up until Metroid: Other M and she should have remained silent considering how terrible the dialogue was. StarFox was the first Nintendo produced game that really was dialogue heavy and used a high volume of voice over. (I actually did not realize this until I was writing this blog, but I am sure someone will correct me)
The game itself was full of replay value. Once the task of getting all the medals was completed, it unlocked a "hard mode" which brought on even more enemies, harder bosses and more difficult goals to earn the medals in THAT mode. Ryan and I eventually figured it out and got every damn medal in the game and finally returned the N64 to David so he could play Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (I think)
Finding out that this game was being remade and released on the Nintendo 3DS was a dream come true, because the series AFTER this game had fallen on some pretty hard times with the disappointing StarFox Adventures, the So-So StarFox: Assault and the terrible StarFox Command. A remake of the best game in the series that I can carry with me everywhere I go? I am in so much trouble...
Tomorrow we stay in the same year, but jump over to the other system in this console generation to cover another classic.
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