Development

Yet another legendary 16-bit title from Nintendo’s Entertainment Analysis & Development (EAD) division, Star Fox was co-developed by Argonaut Software, who had previously worked on the 1986 combat flight simulator, Starglider. The team at Argonaut got their foot in the door with Nintendo due to the latter company’s interest in 3D, and the former’s increasing expertise in the same field. At the time, the dawn of 3D was trending across arcade and personal computer games, though even low-end PCs were far too cost-prohibitive for the mainstream. To put cutting-edge 3D into a home console was unheard of, so, naturally, Nintendo intended to do it.

Following a number of tech demos displaying Argonaut’s technological prowess—one of which would go on to become 1992’s X for the Game Boy, the first ever 3D game for a handheld system—the small, UK-based developer relocated key members of its team to Japan to work closely on Star Fox at Nintendo’s HQ. As the story goes, the move was meant to be temporary, but eventually ended up stretching over the length of development and beyond, with at least one former Argonaut member, programmer Dylan Cuthbert, still residing in Kyoto to this day.

Because the onboard hardware of the Super NES was too limited to achieve the type of 3D Nintendo was aiming for, Argonaut was permitted to design custom hardware to improve its 3D capabilities. That hardware was the Super FX chip, the world’s first 3D graphics processing unit (GPU) in a consumer product. And because the SNES used cartridges, it was possible to include the additional hardware in each Game Pak, rather than requiring an upgraded console or expensive add-on.

Programming was primarily handled by Argonaut, while Nintendo was responsible for much of the game’s creative direction. Game design is largely credited to producer Shigeru Miyamoto, with characters designed by Takaya Imamura, music composed by Hajime Hirasawa, and Katsuya Eguchi serving as director. Mr. Eguchi most notably went on to create the Animal Crossing series, as well as to direct Star Fox 2.

Star Fox’s gameplay was heavily inspired by arcade games such as Starblade and Solvalou. Thematically, Star Wars impacted development as well, and both franchises share a few notable parallels. For instance, flying inside large enemy aircraft and blowing them up from within is a recurring element in both Star Fox and Star Wars.

The smooth on-rails shooting was aided by the improved visuals. Whereas other 3D shooters up to that point were primarily vector-based, Star Fox filled in the wireframes with texture-less polygons, allowing the on-screen action to literally take shape in a way rarely seen at the time. The game may appear crude by modern standards, but upon its release it was truly a bleeding-edge product.