Before there was Star Fox 64, Fox and company went on a second quest to save Corneria... but chances are, you didn't get to play it.
Shigeru Miyamoto has become quite well known for his outstanding games and their absolutely unique designs. He has led countless projects and played a major role in the runaway success of Nintendo since the introduction of the NES. However, he's also the reason Star Fox 2, a fully completed game, has never seen the light of day.
Chances are if you grew up when the Super Nintendo was in its prime you have some affinity for Nintendo's first foray into 3D gaming, Star Fox. Furthermore, if you had a subscription to Nintendo Power, you might remember that Nintendo, more specifically, Argonaut Software, was in the process of creating a sequel to the game that spawned the Super FX chip. At some point before the release of the Nintendo 64, the game completely disappeared from the release lists and was presumed dead.
Years later, an alpha build of the game surfaced that had been shown and played by journalists at trade shows. This build included a head-to-head multiplayer mode as well as a taste of the single player portion of the game. Unfortunately, it was a fairly primitive build and one that did little more than give a taste of things to come.
While this build was the first to surface, it wouldn't be the last. A near-final build of the game was discovered and released on the Internet. As it turns out, the game had been completely finished but held from release.
Lead designer and now founder of Q-Games Dylan Cuthbert revealed that Miyamoto canceled the game in an effort to make a clean break between SNES 3D games and the upcoming N64's much improved 3D. A reasonable idea, but as you may or may not remember, the N64 was publicly delayed 6 months; Cuthbert estimates that Star Fox 2 would've been on the market for a year and a half by the time the N64 released in September 1996.
While Miyamoto ultimately brought down the axe on Star Fox 2, clearly it was just the victim of unfortunate circumstances. Though the game is unlikely to ever see official release in any capacity, dedicated fans have modified the available code into what would've been the final build -- had it ever been released. The incomplete multiplayer mode was totally dropped (as was planned by Nintendo), bugs in the game were resolved, and it was fully translated into English.
IIRC, when Star Fox Assault was being developed, IGN asked a question if they would include this title as a pre-order incentive. Miyamoto said he would consider it, but instead Xevious was included instead.
Maybe re-make this for the 3DS eShop? They can bump up the visuals and sound to make a thrilling experience. We have the technology, We have the experience. We can make it better...
Wow, parts of this game sound like Vortex, which is probably no surprise given that's the game that Argonaut Software made in between Star Fox and Star Fox 2. The overall structure of the game sounds similar to the structure of several levels in Vortex, where you're plopped into one big area and have to move from objective to objective. The transformation apsect sounds directly inspired by the transforming mech in Vortex. One of those screen shots also looks similar to the first-person segments of the game.
Sounds like Vortex is basically Star Fox with a mech.
After hearing that, now I want Vortex! Time to go see if someone has it for sale...
I think that was an EU only release, but I'm not sure.
Honestly, the game seems like it needed a little more work before it was released anyway. They probably pulled the plug on it before they really got down to polishing the thing up. Sure it looks playable, but honestly it does not really seem fun to me. That's just my opinion though...
I've heard about this title for a long time but I've never seen this much attention paid to it. I learned a lot and this title needs to have more attention paid to it. It's a shame it wasn't released.
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