Star Fox 2 SNES Classic Review

Star Fox 2 was infamously shelved for the reason of N64 and eventually Star Fox 64. The game was completed, just never released outside from leaked versions. Now Nintendo has bundled the game along with the SNES Classic, finally giving gamers the official copy of the game to play. While it has some issues it shares the same incredible aerial combat found in the original Star Fox for the SNES with a new direction on how it's played. 

Unlike Star Fox Star Fox 2 has players in control of an optional pilot from the Star Fox mercenary team. This includes Fox, Peppy, Falco, and Slippy along with newcomers Miyu and Fay. The player acts as the main pilot and the second choice as the player's wingman. There are 3 different types of ships linked to 2 of each of the pilots. Fox and Falco have a balanced ship, Peppy and Slippy are more defensive, and Minyu and Fay are offensive. I tried a mixture of each type and found my teammates were supporting me to the best of their abilities very well. Compared to the original game, which is a requirement to play before unlocking Star Fox 2, this was shocking to see my ally actually providing support. While they repeat the same helpful tips over and over again, which can be annoying, they will shoot down enemy ships.

As you can probably tell Star Fox 2 doesn't operate the same way as the original. Instead, players are given an RTS board where Andross is constantly sending new dangers. This includes missiles and boss enemies which cause damage, if the damage counter reaches 100% it's game over. This means in conjunction of completing the planetary stages the player must repel all attacks. 

The player uses the D-pad to move a cursor around the screen. When you collide with a planet, station, missile, or enemy it begins a battle. Andross will sometimes send boss enemies for the player to fight against such as Dragon robots and Star Wolf's mercenary team. Completing each task adds to a timer and if you survive when it reaches 0 you'll be taken to the final battle.

The plants are a lot less exciting than Star Fox. Most of them are plain and uninteresting military bases where you kill a central power source or enemy and since the entire game is open from the beginning optional planets are gone. What changes the gameplay is the introduction of the Walker. The Walker is an Arwing transformation that allows the walk on the surface and controls much better than the Star Fox Zero version because no motion controls are needed to aim. The shoulder buttons control the direction and the D-pad movement, at any time you can swap to the Arwing and start flying again.

The arwing controls the same as Star Fox. Using the direction pad the player aims and shoots using lasers, which can be upgraded by finding resources littered on the battlefield, bombs to clear the screen of enemies, barrel roll to repel enemy fire, and boost or slow down. The controls for the Arwing haven't changed much since the SNES days and Star Fox 2 isn't an exception. 

This is a technically demanding game and it's shown in the game's frame rate. During a lot of 2 playthroughs of the game, I experienced consistent periods of slowdown during both the aerial and ground missions. While I expected this to happen since it was a common issue in the original game it wasn't much of a problem. As someone who has frequently played the original Star Fox, I became adept to playing the game at low FPS but others will find it difficult.

Star Fox 2 is an excellent Star Fox game and would've been a great addition to the original SNES library. Some may look down on the new take on the adventure due to the limited planets and optional routes that many find alluring from the original game. However, compared to the gimmicks put into Star Fox Zero Star Fox 2's RTS elements actually work and make for a refreshing experience. Star Fox 2 is one of the best of the franchise and worth experiencing if you love this franchise.

Adam Siddiqui, NoobFeed
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