Playing With Super Power: Nintendo Super NES Classics Guide Super Fans

Fansite Spotlight: StarFox-Online

Years Online: 13

@StarFox_Online | Starfox-online.net

Although it existed in some form since 2004, StarFox-Online was given new life in 2006 by two community members, “DZComposer” and “Mr. Krystal”. “StarFox-Online was intended as a place to aggregate information about the Star Fox series, and as somewhere where fans could share art and stories as well as participate in discussion and roleplay involving the Star Fox universe,” explained site administrator “Sawtooth”.

Although the focus on the site always remains on Fox and his adventures, creating a home for fans is a secondary priority according to moderator “OneUnder”. “StarFox Online strives to be a community organized around a mutual enjoyment of the Star Fox games and universe, but not strictly limited to them. The forums reflect this. Star Fox topics are always open for discussion, but more general ones on various video games, films, pop-culture phenomena, and current events, among other topics, are welcome. The site tends to see a rise in membership around the release of a new Star Fox game or an otherwise significant update to the series, and the members that stick around for a while tend to be close. As time has passed, StarFox-Online has gained members, moved servers to be able to host larger amounts of content, and has started to feature notable fan works.”

“Our fansite is like a family at this point.”

“Our fansite is like a family at this point,” affirms forum administrator “Dr. Orange”. “It’s really hard to describe this for me since I’ve been here for so long it just feels like a second home. We get together and talk or have fun and support each other and laugh with one another. And while over the years our site’s design changes and games come and go, that’s been the constant trait of StarFox-Online over these past years.”

Some of the community has become literal family; at one point the admin team consisted of two married couples. Sawtooth explained that their unique, accepting spirit has helped many of the community find their voice in the world. “Some of my most dependable and longest term friends I’ve met through this site, people I’ve talked to every day, or at least every other day, for upwards of five years. For me—I grew up on the site and as a sheltered middle class kid—it opened my eyes to what different kinds of people were out there and how they thought and acted. It also gave me an anonymous social outlet where I felt free to be myself and not have to change or hide my personality to fit within what I perceived as the norm, for better or for worse. This allowed me to grow into my own person, and I can credit StarFox-Online with giving me a lot of the confidence I needed to become who I am today.”

OneUnder mirrored the same sentiment. “Being able to immerse myself into the events and atmosphere of the games through discussions in the community worked wonders for assisting me through difficult times.”

To keep up with the changing Internet landscape, the site has adapted. “Message boards as a format are having to evolve to survive, since the notion of what social media means has changed so significantly in the past few years,” explained Sawtooth. “As such, we’ve added a live chat feature to the site, and have expanded to a Discord server, where we have to have a separate moderation team due to the pretty high level of activity. We’re also trying to build out our editorial content and provide new and interesting articles, as well as archiving content related to the series. I’m really excited to see what we can do to grow the site and be a better home for the Star Fox community.”

The team was universally ecstatic about recent events in the fandom. “I was absolutely floored,” recounted Sawtooth, speaking to the announcement of Star Fox 2’s inclusion on the Super NES Classic. “I think the release of Star Fox 2 on the Super NES Classic will really revive people’s interest in the series.”

“To think that we’ll finally get to play the game, and see two characters that didn’t make appearances in any other Star Fox games to boot, is truly awesome,” echoed OneUnder. “It’s not every day that you get to play a game that was canceled over two decades ago, after all, let alone a Star Fox game!”

Super Nostalgia: Star Fox

The StarFox Online team trends young, and the majority of them were introduced to the franchise via Star Fox on the 64. That doesn’t mean they find the Super NES classic any less impressive, though.

“My first experiences with Star Fox came when Star Fox 64 was released,” recalled staffer “Sideways.” “I only recently came into a copy of Star Fox for Super NES and a system to use it. I had been missing out.”

“I’ll never forget booting up the game for the first time and just looking at it,” remembered OneUnder, picking up the thread. “The visual style, comprised primarily of angular polygons and accent colors, was like nothing I had seen before, and more or less like nothing I’ve seen since. The sensation of piloting your own craft throughout the vast, and potentially dangerous, territories of the nearly endless void that is space is beautifully realized in this graphical style, and it still stands out as compared to the rest of the Super NES library, and 3D games that have been released since.”

“Rail shooters everywhere take inspiration from Star Fox,” agreed fellow team member “Faye”. “It is easily one of the best railshooters of its time, and regularly makes top 10 lists all over the Internet.”

“Super NES Star Fox really showed me what innovation in software and hardware could do,” continued Sawtooth. “Packing the Super FX expansion chip onto the cartridge allowed the Super NES to pull off what people at the time thought impossible, 3D polygonal graphics on a home console. Of course, in a few years this would become the norm, but at the time it was some real cutting-edge stuff. Nintendo does a great job of doing incredible things with what little hardware they give themselves, and it’s set a trend in their software even today. That’s one of the reasons I like Nintendo so much—they refuse to just throw out how many gigaflops their console can push or how many gigabytes of RAM it has. They make the most of their hardware with rock-solid software, always have, and I hope, always will.”