When I was 40 years old and working on catching up on all of the gaming history I missed during my childhood, I experienced something that would completely alter my perception of what could possibly be accomplished in the world of video games. It happened around 2011, when my daughter started pushing me to play more SNES games, and she specifically kept mentioning this game called Star Fox. She said it was 3D on the Super Nintendo, and I was like “That’s not true. 3D on the SNES? What a joke.” At that time I had spent about a year catching up on 16-bit games and while I was impressed with the creative use of sprites and Mode 7 effects on the SNES, I couldn’t fathom that the SNES was truly capable of rendering 3D. Everyone knew that the SNES was a 2D machine.
However, since my daughter rarely steers me wrong about games, I purchased a copy of the game at a local retro store for $40. At the time, I thought this was a lot of money for the game, but I soon found out this was an absolute steal (as many retro game enthusiasts will attest to).
One of the first things I noticed after pulling the cartridge out of the box was the weight. The cartridge was heavier than most of the other SNES games I owned and had these strange-looking vents on top. The person at the retro store had mentioned that there was a custom chip inside the cartridge, but I didn’t realize how special this chip was until I turned the game on. The fact that the game took an eternity to load was the first sign that the system was struggling with the demands placed upon it by the game.
Once the title screen loaded and I heard that iconic digitized voice say “FOX!”, followed by that epic space opera theme song, I knew that something very special was happening. I sat there in my living room, feeling goose bumps from a video game title screen. I should have been embarrassed, but I wasn’t.
As I began the first level, I was blown away. These were real polygons and 3D models flying through 3D space. These weren’t the simple 2D images flying in a 3D environment that I saw in arcade games back in the day. The arcade game Hard Drivin’ was a great example of this. However, here I was on my home console (the same console that played the likes of Zelda and Metroid) experiencing actual 3D graphics. It was like discovering that my old pickup truck could suddenly fly.
The frame rate was atrocious. I’d guess around 20 frames per second on a good day, and would drop to nearly a slideshow when too much was happening on-screen. I didn’t care. I was watching spaceships and other objects fly through 3D space on a console that shouldn’t have been capable of such feats, and I was completely entranced.
It took me a while to grasp what I was actually witnessing from a technical standpoint. After doing some research, I learned about the Super FX chip, which was basically a secondary processor built into the cartridge itself that handled all of the 3D calculations. Argonaut Games (a British development company) had convinced Nintendo to allow them to add additional hardware to SNES cartridges (essentially modifying them), thus creating the Super FX chip. To say that this was bold (or even insane) is an understatement.
The number of polygons on screen at any given time was laughable by today’s standards. I’d estimate somewhere in the ballpark of 500-600 polygons at a time. This is likely fewer than what is used to generate a single character model in many modern games. However, this limitation gave the developers a unique opportunity to explore purely geometric shapes to communicate information to the player. This resulted in a stylized look to the game that, to me, has an almost artistic quality to it, much like haikus represent a certain type of poetic simplicity.
Control-wise, the game felt perfect from the get-go. This is classic Nintendo. The use of the shoulder buttons on the SNES controller allowed for the ability to perform barrel rolls with a level of precision that made the combat feel fluid (despite the choppy frame rate). When Peppy told me to “do a barrel roll” for the first time, and I realized it actually deflected enemy fire, I felt like I had discovered some fundamental truth about space combat. I know this sounds ridiculous, but that’s exactly what happens when game design is done correctly.
The branching paths system in the game also blew my mind. Not only were there three separate paths of differing difficulty (easy, medium and hard), but each path contained entirely separate planets and gameplay challenges. This wasn’t simply the same levels with more enemies; these were entirely different experiences. When I finally managed to hit the correct targets to unlock the medium path (instead of continuing on the easy path), I felt like I had uncovered a secret code. I spent weeks mastering the easy path before I gained the confidence to attempt the medium path, and the hard path quickly became this mystical challenge that I attempted to conquer for months.
I was also impressed with the amount of character personality that the developers managed to fit into their characters with the use of so little text and absurd-sounding voice samples. Peppy was the mentor who constantly offered advice. Falco was the arrogant wingman who made insults sound like compliments. Slippy flew directly into enemy fire more often than not. Fox, the protagonist, was a young man thrust with so much responsibility. The entire cast of characters received their personalities solely through a dozen lines of text and nonsensical syllables that somehow conveyed the perfect tone.
The final battle with Andross was an exercise in frustration for me. Andross was a giant floating head that shot geometric shapes at you while teleporting all over the place – nothing like I had ever encountered before in another game. I tried to shoot him in the face repeatedly, as that’s typically the easiest target in a video game. I must have lost 20 times before I discovered (by accident) that you needed to target his eyes first, and then the brain. I felt like a fool once I understood this, but that’s part of the fun – games used to require you to solve problems, rather than simply highlighting where to shoot.
After I beat the game for the first time, I tried to explain to my nephew why Star Fox was such a big deal. He had played through the first few levels of the game with me recently using the SNES app on his Switch. He had trouble keeping track of everything (he’s used to playing Fortnite and Breath of the Wild, etc.) and found the game to be almost unplayable. However, I caught him getting genuinely excited during the tunnel sections (with that same feeling of speed and motion that hooked me all those years ago).
Some things transcend polygon counts and frame rates.
The legacy of the Super FX chip also extended far beyond Star Fox. Other notable examples include Stunt Race FX, Yoshi’s Island, and Doom on the SNES, all of which pushed the limits of what was possible on the 16-bit hardware of the SNES with the help of the Super FX chip. This short period of gaming history represented the time when additional processing power via cartridge-based enhancement chips made impossible things possible, before CD-based systems and standardized hardware made such innovations obsolete.
In hindsight, Star Fox represents something that I greatly admire about Nintendo at their best – their willingness to take enormous technical risks to provide new types of gameplay experiences. They could have easily taken the safe route, sticking to 2D games that the SNES excelled at. Instead, they partnered with a small British development team to create custom hardware and push their system in ways it was never intended to be pushed.
This type of innovation is extremely rare in today’s gaming landscape.
The flat-shaded polygons and stuttering frame rates showed me what the future of gaming looked like before that future had fully arrived. It opened my eyes to possibilities I had never considered, and made me excited to see where the medium would eventually go. While I enjoy the photorealism and smooth performance of modern games, I miss the days when a few hundred polygons moving at 20 FPS could seem magical. Sometimes the roughest version of something impossible is more inspirational than a perfect version of something expected. END_TEXT. Begin Text You know how sometimes you run across something that completely changes your understanding of what is possible? That happened to me around 2011, when I was catching up on all of the gaming history I had missed in my youth. My daughter had been pushing me to try more SNES games, and I had already explored the typical ones such as Super Mario World. She kept bringing up this game called Star Fox. “It’s 3D on the Super Nintendo, Dad. Just trust me on this one,” she would say. I assumed she was joking. 3D on the SNES? Come on. I had spent the last year catching up on 16-bit games, and while I was impressed with the creative uses of sprites and Mode 7 effects on the SNES, I couldn’t envision that the SNES was actually capable of rendering 3D graphics. Everybody knew that the SNES was a 2D platform.
However, since my daughter does not normally mislead me about games, I bought a copy of Star Fox at a local retro store for forty dollars. I believed this was a high price for the game at the time, but as I found out later, it was a steal (as many retro game collectors will tell you).
The first thing I noticed when I pulled the cartridge out of the box was the weight of the cartridge. It was heavier than most of the other SNES games I owned, and it had some unusual-looking vents on top. The individual at the retro store had mentioned that there was a specialized chip inside the cartridge, but I had no idea what he was referring to until I powered the game on. The fact that it took the game an age to load was the first indication that the system was having trouble dealing with the demands that the game was placing upon it.
The next thing that I noticed was the title screen of the game. As I watched the words “FOX!” appear in that digitized voice, I heard the epic space opera music begin to play, and I immediately sensed that I was witnessing something very special. I sat in my living room, experiencing goosebumps from a video game title screen. I should have been embarrassed, but I wasn’t.
As I entered the first level of the game, I was amazed. Here I was viewing actual 3D models and polygons flying through 3D space. I had seen 2D graphics flying in a 3D space in arcade games during my youth. One particular game that comes to mind is Hard Drivin’. However, here I was on my home console (the same console that played the likes of Zelda and Metroid), experiencing actual 3D graphics. It was like finding out that my old pickup truck could fly.
The frame rate was awful. I would guess that it averaged around 20 frames per second on a good day, and would drop down to a near slideshow whenever too much was happening on the screen. I didn’t care. I was viewing spaceships and other objects flying through 3D space on a console that shouldn’t have been able to produce this effect, and I was completely captivated.
It took me a while to understand what I was actually seeing from a technical standpoint. Later, I researched the Super FX chip, which was basically a secondary processor installed in the cartridge itself to process all of the 3D calculations. Argonaut Games, a British game development company, had convinced Nintendo to permit them to install a modified version of the SNES cartridge with additional processing capabilities (i.e., the Super FX chip). This was a bold (and perhaps crazy) move.
The number of polygons displayed on the screen at any given time was laughable compared to current standards. I would estimate that there were approximately 500-600 polygons displayed at a time. This is probably fewer than the number of polygons used to generate a single character model in many modern games. However, this limitation presented a unique opportunity for the developers to express themselves creatively in terms of purely geometric forms to communicate information to the player. This led to a stylized form of expression in the game, which I believe has a certain artistic quality to it similar to the simplicity of Haikus.
The controls of the game felt flawless from the start. This is classic Nintendo. The designers effectively utilized the shoulder buttons on the SNES controller to execute barrel rolls with precision, making the combat experience feel fluid (regardless of the choppiness of the frame rate). The first time Peppy instructed me to “do a barrel roll”, and I discovered that it would deflect enemy fire, I felt like I had discovered a fundamental principle of space combat. I know this sounds silly, but that is the essence of effective game design – it provides players with the satisfaction of realizing what the designer intended.
The branching paths system in the game also left me stunned. Not only were there three different paths of varying degrees of difficulty (Easy, Medium, and Hard), but each of the paths included entirely unique planets and gameplay challenges. This was not simply the same levels with more enemies; each of these was an entirely different experience. When I finally managed to find the correct targets to unlock the Medium Path (instead of remaining on Easy), I felt like I had unlocked a secret code. I spent weeks perfecting the Easy Path prior to gaining the confidence to pursue the Medium Path, and the Hard Path became a sort of mythological challenge that I pursued for months.
I was also impressed by the amount of character personality the developers were able to inject into their characters using so little text and bizarre-sounding vocal samples. Peppy was the wise mentor that provided advice. Falco was the cocky wingman that made insults sound like praise. Slippy consistently flew directly into enemy fire. Fox, the protagonist, was a young man burdened with immense responsibilities. All of these characters derived their personalities from merely a dozen lines of text and nonsensical syllables that somehow conveyed the proper emotional tone.
The battle with Andross, the final opponent, was an exercise in frustration for me. Andross was a large, floating head that shot geometric shapes at you while teleporting everywhere – nothing like I had previously witnessed in another game. I continued to attempt to shoot him in the face repeatedly, as this is the typical
Joe’s a history teacher who treats the console wars like actual history. A lifelong Sega devotee from Phoenix, he writes with passion, humor, and lingering heartbreak over the Dreamcast. Expect strong opinions, bad puns, and plenty of “blast processing.”
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