Given the reception to the latest Star Fox offering in Zero (a game I'm a big fan of and felt it was one of the most unique video games I've played in 11 years), the franchise has seen better days. Nintendo tried a lot of experimenting to see if anything more substantial can be drawn from it. Efforts like Assault and Adventures (Ocarina of Time with Star Fox characters) vary in appeal. It makes me think about how interesting the very first one has aged. Over time, the original Star Fox is definitely a product of its time, but still absolutely fun to revisit.

Star Fox was developed by Nintendo in 1993, with assistance from Argonaut Software, who aided in creating the Super FX chip for the Super Nintendo. The Super FX chip allowed graphical advances for the console, allowing the SNES to produce 3D images. This was incredibly ambitious, but came at a cost, as the FX Chip caused overclocking and it hindered performance. Star Fox ran at about 10.74 mhz, yet even at its lowest frame rate (when the action really picks up) and hiccups, it's pretty playable.

Most rail shooter prior to like Space Harrier and After Burner presented a faux sense of perspective and depth with the positioning of characters and vantage point of contact with the crosshairs. In Star Fox, positioning and reading your shot or evading feels a little more delayed by comparison, because it's a little slower, so as a player I will likely overcompensate for some of the actions I take. Barrel rolling, for instance, is used to deflect damage from smaller bullets. I'll mash that repeatedly just to insure that it confirms. I'll take this as a brief opportunity for indulge. Just in case people out there wish to state something about not seeing the difference between 30 and 60 frames are reading this, pop in Star Fox and come back to me with that faux elitist viewpoint when smiling asteroids are hurling towards you at 8fps and try to react to it. It isn't a matter of the human eye not seeing it, it's the ability of your brain to register it to your neurotransmitters to your muscles to adequately respond to the situation............you laggy scrubs.

Star Fox consists of 13 total stages with three different main routes that vary in difficulty. The middle path being the easiest, the far left route the intermediate course, and route 3 serving as the toughest. Some stages are longer than others, but can be completed in roughly 12 minutes with enough practice. It's one of the reasons Star Fox has such relatively high replay value, I'll practice one route more than others, seeing how quickly I can proceed through compared to others. 

Visually, while time hasn't been kind to it, it is fascinating for the hardware's limitations. This isn't like the 2D hand drawn image with polygonal characters rendered onto it, it's essentially blocks everywhere. Some polygons have some texture to them and react to some light sources, so that is incredibly ahead of its time. But for the most part, Arwings are triangles and the enemies you blow up are an assembly of squares, if you're willing to forego the technical jargon. As mentioned before, the hiccups in the frame rate are all over the place in Star Fox and screws up reads and gauging depth perception, so that does make me bash my head against a wall when avoiding obstacles. 

The composition, music, and sound effects are among my favorite from the exclusive Nintendo library of titles. The OST is incredibly addictive, the metallic "PINGs" when deflecting a shot, the crushing thud of taking incredibly heavy damage. And since this was clearly before Peppy, Falco, and Slippy had actual voices, they merely squawked, honked, and bleeped as they yelled at Fox to save them or to stop shooting their Arwings. General Pepper and Fox were the only characters with discernable voices, but it's just a couple lines of dialog. Suffice to say, I always thought Star Fox was very memorable on the ears.

With Star Fox 64 existing, a sequel that excels in every capacity, the original Star Fox is an important title to serve as a history lesson. OG is fun to play, though it does show its age, it almost requires reallocating your senses to adjust to its technical shortcomings. It would be like going from Ultra Street Fighter IV to playing the original Street Fighter competitively. Star Fox still stands as a cool and progressive SNES game, and launched my second favorite Nintendo franchise. It also lead to one of the best sequels ever made.