 It's a huge fanboy of the original Star Fox game, nobody was more disappointed than I was to hear that Star Fox 2 was never going to get an official release from Nintendo, instead deciding to concentrate their efforts on the upcoming N64, and also citing the desire to not mislead the public's perception of what a 3D game quote unquote should look like? That's according to a Nintendo Life article I have linked in the description, and if that was indeed the case, that is a devastatingly stupid reason to cancel a game. Yeah, I'm sure there was pressure from how good the Sega Saturn and PS1 were performing, but if a game is good, a game is good, regardless of how it looks aesthetically compared to what else is out there. And guess what? Star Fox 2 is pretty good. Man, Nintendo did some really dumb shit in the mid-90s. Anyway, while we never saw an official release, there are some unfinished ROMs out there, even one beta ROM translated to English, so we can at least get the basic gist of what Star Fox 2 would have ended up as. It was supposed to be one of the very few games that utilized the GSU 2 chip, the most prominent game of which was Yoshi's Island. Needless to say, Star Fox 2 is going to be packed with a ton of technical firepower, but this game is not what you'd think it would be. Star Fox 2 is pretty different from its predecessor. Sure, the two games look similar. They kept the lo-fi art design intact. Just based on the game intro here, this game looks waaay faster. It really does appear to be Star Fox on steroids, and methamphetamines. This game looks frickin' great, and I can't get enough of how fast it is. It's so satisfying, especially when you're used to the slow, clunky frame rate of the original game. Star Fox 2 adheres to a totally different game structure, however. There's a map system here that's very similar to Star Fox Command for Nintendo DS, where you move ships around to different locations, intercept missiles, and strategize a game plan as to what to attack and when. Everything is in real time here. As a rebuilt Andross launches a counterattack, sending enemies and missiles from the other side of the map. You can choose who to lead your crew. The original Star Fox guys are all here, and they all have slightly different ships, which is a nice touch. There's two new characters as well, Faye and Miu. You go to these oddball levels that take place in a confined space. You can switch to this bipedal tank form thing, where you run around knocking over blocks, pushing buttons, opening doors. Some of these can be confusing because the game doesn't exactly tell you what to do. And there are these corridors that you have to navigate, but they don't last long. But yeah, there's not much linearity here. You're pretty much just traveling around space going from one battle to the next. It could be taking on Star Wolf, or one of his minions, or you could land on battleships or enemy bases. There's a lot to do and a lot of variety here. As you can see, it's very easy to tell that Star Fox 64 and Star Fox Command borrowed a lot from this game. The real-time map, being able to charge your weapon, the shorter missile segments, the all-range mode, switching between vehicles, head-to-head battles, they even kept the weapon lock-on sound the same in Star Fox 64. It's a bummer we didn't get an official release of Star Fox 2, but at least so many of its ideas were able to show up in later games. So while there's a lot of cool and innovative ideas here for its time, one important aspect of Star Fox is missing. The straightforward levels where you just fly through a long level and finish with a boss fight. I mean, that's what I love so much about the original Star Fox, so it's a little disappointing to see that represented in such a limited quantity here. Really, I guess Star Fox 2 is best described as breaking down the basic gameplay of Star Fox into several pieces, and weaving them into this real-time map where you run in and out of short bursts of action, and I guess that's an interesting way to create some replay value, because there's so many different possibilities for every playthrough. But like I said, I do miss the linearity of simply flying around and blowing stuff up. According to one of the developers, Dylan Cuthbert, there is a mastered ROM out there that would have ended up as the completed game, and he's quoted as saying that it's much better than the other unfinished ROMs floating around out there. The level that's quoted from is over a year old, and I'm honestly not sure if the finished ROM has leaked or been made available yet, since Cuthbert alluded to legal ramifications that would prevent that. But who knows. Anyway, Star Fox 2 is not what you'd expect. It's much different than its predecessor. Nintendo took a chance with the layout and structuring of this game, and I think it would have paid off pretty well. So while I personally would have preferred just more Star Fox, more linear levels and more bosses, I commend the developers for doing something off the wall and unique for the time. For God's sake, get this game on the virtual console. There's no good excuse to keep it off of there if the game is finished. Star Fox 2 is certainly worth playing today just because it's something different within the confines of something very familiar. So if you have a chance, I recommend seeing for yourself.