Starwing for the Super Nintendo was a game I’ve always wanted to play, and now I have finally gotten my hands on it. It’s fair to say that Star Fox 64 was an incredible piece of work and is probably the finest in the series. So I expect great thinks from this game. So jump into your arwing and take a ride through Starwing.

The story is pretty much the same as Star Fox 64. Andross is threatening the lylat system from the depths of Venom and you have to stop him. Your father, James McCloud, disappeared when trying to stop Andross, presumed dead. It’s up to you and your team mates – Peppy Hare, Slippy Toad and Falco Lombardi to stop them.

The first thing I noticed when I booted up this game was the poor frame rate of it all. You couldn’t have too much on the screen or it would have lagged. This had to be the laggiest game on the Super Nintendo I know. All the rest of the games have smoother game play. Although, this game did incorporate some rather advanced 3d graphics at the time. Looking back at it, it looks rather awful. But back then, Nintendo classed this “light years ahead” and some people were impressed by it. I shouldn’t compare the graphics of a 16-bit game to a 64 bit game.

As you start the game, you are given some rather sweet music as you test what controls suit you best. You can do some training which involves going through rings, shooting enemies and doing some formations with your team-mates. When you’re ready for the actual game, you just quit training. You have a choice of three different routes to Vemon: Straight through the middle (Level 1), a right turn in-front of Venom (level 2) or around the back for a sneak attack (Level 3). Each one has different stages you must blast through. Once you pick your route, you see the level avatar increase in size and General Pepper gives you a brief of what’s going on.

On the first level, there is a rather interesting opening scene with you and your team-mates in the Grey Fox and some rather static like voice acting. As you exit, you are in the first level. You are greeted with awesome music as you are now able to move your arwing. This music really gets me in the mood to shoot stuff, and is a prime example of music to get people to continue playing your game. The controls are fluid enough. You can hold down the shoulder buttons to bank left and right to improve momentum to dodge attacks. If you press them twice, you’ll do a barrel roll, which sometimes repels attacks. The thing is, this move is rather stiff, and you have to hold it for about a second then tap it again, rather than just “Tap” it twice to do a barrel roll.

Once you get into the flow of things, it’s a rather awesome experience. I will always praise Star Fox for making me feel like I’m in the arwing. I sometimes even talk to the characters as if they were real. Some things bring out the chi8ld in us, and this series kinda does that to me, but I digress. At the end of every level, there is a boss. These can be linked to future bosses in Star Fox 64 as they do look a lot alike. Some are easy, and some are a right challenge. You can collect extra laser power along the way, but it’s fairly rare. If you lose a wing, though, you’ll lose all the upgrades you got, so don’t crash!

 On a side note about crashing (and you might never figure this out on your own), on the asteroid belt on Level 1, if you crash into the three spinning links of asteroids and then shoot continuously at the big asteroid to the left (the one with the troll face), you’ll encounter a black hole. This is known as the “Awesome Black Hole”, created by Andross’s experiments, and is said to be where your father was last seen. Well, if your going to fly into a black hole, your bound to be crushed….oh, this is some sort of warp world of sorts. You can take some worm hole to different parts of the game. What if Fox’s farther went into one….and he...ohhhh. I see now. Erm….spoilers. There is also some sort of secret that enters you to some weird world, but I’ve never found it.

Your team mates are pretty much useless. All they are good for is being chased and for you to save them. Like how Falco says “there’s a bogey on my six” and when…..wait, what did he say? “Bogey on my six”? Is this one of those poorly translated games with poor grammar?

The music is greatly atmospheric. The awesome start of Coneria, the emptiness of the asteroid belt, the seriousness of Venom, it all adds up to using the music to make the feel of the game. The graphics, on the other hand, are pixelated and slow. I would go as far as saying it looked like some sort of flash game someone would ship up. It’s a good one at that, but I didn’t feel any professional touch to it. To be fair, they were incorporating 3D graphics in a 16-bit game, which was quite a stretch at the time, and in all honesty, they did execute it rather well. Every time I see this, it reminds me of Star Fox 64 and it makes me think this will have good graphics for a 16-bit game. This is just my personal opinion to the game.

Overall, I give this game an 8.4/10    Sure, the graphics didn’t please me as much as other SNES games did, but I always want to look past the graphics in a game and find that heart of gold within, and this game offers a fair share of it. There isn’t much to say without saying give it a go. If you are an avid fan of Star Fox 64 like me, then you might find some things in this game that they might have improved the game play and feel that they did in the 64 game (like I did). Star Fox 64 is pretty much a perfected version of Star Wing, but if you want to see something different or are an avid Star Fox fan, I highly suggest you play this game.