#5: Star Fox
Platform(s): SNES, SuperFamicon
Year: February 1993
Why Did it Change Gaming? (Rail Shooter):
Starfox was one of the first true 3D games on the SNES, game developer Jes San, founder of Argonaut Software, created an impressive 3D engine that caught the attention of Shigeru Miyamoto, founder of Nintendo. The collaboration sparked one of the first 3D portable games “X”. The title was only released in Japan. This collaboration essentially happened due to the fact that Miyamoto was tired of the long development process of creating multiple angles for sprites, Jes San showed Miyamoto a prototype SNES game entitled “SNES Glider”, the game only ran at 3 frames per second. Jez San stated that:
“Without additional hardware support lower frame rates was all the Super Nintendo could achieve for 3D based games.”
Nintendo later gave Argonaut Games 1-million dollars to develop the necessary hardware which birthed today what most nintendo fans know as the “Super FX” chip. While building the game (Star Fox), Argonaut was constantly shut down by Miyamoto. He stated he’d rather have the game be more fun than cool, and while it was frustrating for the team it ended up working for the best.
Inari is a shrine built near the Nintendo headquarters, while Miyamoto visited this temple he was inspired by the multiple images of foxes throughout the Inari temple. He was inspired furthermore and decided to base the entire game on the fox images and statues connecting with the idea of ships flying through the interesting obstacles around the Fushimi Inari-Taisha Temple.
Star Fox was one of the largest released games at the time and it became the staple of the rail-ship shooting genre, EGM titled it to be the best shooter of 1993 in their buyers guide, fans everywhere praised it for its innovation and replay value. Nintendo’s Star Fox 64 was released 5 years later and came with a rumble pack that became a standard part in most video-game controllers even today.