starfox

StarFox Adventures [GC – Beta / Unused Stuff]

We already knew that StarFox Adventures once was the Nintendo 64 title Dinosaur Planet. However, the title did not only change during that transition, but also during its time as a StarFox game.

Although the main enemy in the game is General Scales, you will never fight him. Such a battle against General Scales was planned however, evidence was found in unused audio files on the StarFox Adventures game disc. In addition, it appears as if Fox McCloud would have had only to collect the Krazoa Spirits to save Dinosaur Planet; the Spellstones were only needed for saving Krystal. Fox did not want to leave the planet before Krystal was not safe.

Prior to fighting against General Scales, it seems as if Fox McCloud would have released Krystal. Both would have teamed up for the final section in the Krazoa Palace. [Sadly only Krystal’s audio files for this part were recorded.]

For games developed by Rare, it is also common that a special animation of the company logos was made [Example of Perfect Dark Zero]. For Starfox Adventures something similar was planned, but it did not end up in the final product:

Lead designer Lee Schunemann tried to give an explanation for all these changes: “We ran out of dev time due to the looming Microsoft buyout so we had to wrap up the game and just focus on one final boss.”

In the Krystal Archive we can listen to various unused voice clips that reveale many details on lost parts of the story. There are upwards of 50 clips for other characters that never made it into the game. The Starfox Online archive contains pages for ALL Star Fox Adventures voice clips. There were 730 non-duplicate voice clips in the game. All clips under the Unknown heading were not in the game. You’ll also find a few error clips, many alternate versions of clips, differing voice actors for characters, references to places and events that never made it to the game, and other interesting plotpoints.

Special thanks to Mr Krystal from the Krystal Archive!

As we can read from Giant Bomb’s Starfox Adventure page:

Members of the Star Fox Online forums discovered that a decent portion of the original Dinosaur Planet script is still contained within Star Fox Adventures. A file on the Star Fox Adventures disc called GAMETEXT.bin contains  text used in the entire game, both for the Nintendo 64 version of Dinosaur Planet and the GameCube version of Star Fox Adventures. Though not entirely complete, many scenes from Dinosaur Planet’s storyline remain intact.

[…]

It would eventually be revealed that by joining all Krazoa Spirits together at the Krazoa Shrine (originally called “Warlock Mountain” in Dinosaur Planet) they would form the ultimate weapon in the galaxy. Not enough of the Dinosaur Planet script remains to describe what happens after that.

You can find the GAMETEXT.bin to download at the Krystal Archive! Sadly there are numerous examples of text not listed in the file. While the amount listed is considerable, Mr Krystal noticed that only one version of each existed: a given phrase would only be from one game or the other, not both, but which game it referred to would switch from line to line. Large sections, and whole plotpoints appeared to be missing.

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StarFox Armada / Assault [GC – Proto / Beta / Unused Stuff]

Star Fox: Assault was first announced on May 8, 2002. It had a tentative release date of April 2003 for Japan, and would be developed by the same employees who worked on Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies at Namco. New information about the game didn’t show up until a short video montage at 2003’s E3 in Los Angeles, which showcased the game’s first-person perspective.

During development, the game had three working titles: Star Fox Armada, Star Fox 2, and Star Fox. It eventually came to be known as Star Fox: Assault. [Infos from Wikipedia]

In 2003, the game was intended to be multiplayer oriented and was rumored to have a LAN mode too, but sadly it never did.  If you play the game you can almost feel that there is more content in the multiplayer mode, with more stuff to unlock. Most of the missions in the single player are the same arenas used in multiplayer, with a touch of story.  There was going to be a coop-mode for the Adventure mode, but sadly it was cut.

In these screens and video, we can see an early version of the game, with inferior graphic,  Aparoids from level 9 seen in level 2, different text, slightly different character design and HUD.  It’s interesting to notice that the Star Fox Armada Project was going to have an arcade version too, as it happened with F-Zero GX. The arcade version of Armada was never released and we can only wonder which kind of differences it could had.

Also a Unused Game Over music has been found by Gabrielwoj, it is the same Game Over Music of Star Fox 64, see video below!

Update: New video of the E3 Trailer (the other one was deleted, enjoy this one)

Thanks to bydolord and Gabrielwoj for the contribution!

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StarFox 64 – Lylat Wars [N64 – Beta]

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During the early stages of development, Starfox 64 (Lylat Wars in Europe) looked very different from the final version. The level design was much more meager, lots of details, from the textures to the polygonal backgrounds, were much simpler and more blurred. Some enemies were slightly different, the HUB on the screen (energy, radar, maps etc..) was changed  various times before reaching the final version.

italian_flag.jpg [spoiler /Clicca qui per la versione in Italiano/ /Nascondi la versione in Italiano/]Durante le prime fasi di sviluppo, StarFox 64 (Lylat Wars in Europa) appariva molto diverso dalla versione finale. Il level design era molto più scarno, tantissimi particolari, dalle textures alla costruzione poligonale, erano molto più semplici e approssimativi. Inizialmente gli sfondi erano inesistenti e come in diversi titoli dei primi anni del N64, una strana nebbia riempiva le zone più lontane. Anche alcuni nemici erano leggermente diversi, le icone a schermo (come quella dell’ energia dell’ accelerazione, il radar, le mappe ecc.) sono evolute in diverse fasi, prima di arrivare quella definitiva. [/spoiler]

[Thanks to D-vide for some of the images!]

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