>They canned Star Fox 2 even though it was finished and used much of our code in Star Fox 64 without paying us a penny.
There is a somewhat happy ending to this tragic story for Star Fox fans: A nearly complete prototype of Star Fox 2 was stolen (!) from a trade show in the mid-90s, and later dumped and released on the internet. The beta is somewhat buggy and in Japanese, but dedicated romhackers produced a patch that fixed most of the bugs and translated all of the text into English. Obviously I can't link the ROM, but if you can find it on your own, the patch is here:
It's a very ambitious sequel and worth checking out. It's something of a strategy game/arcade flight sim hybrid: You start the game looking at a map of the Lylat system, but instead of it being a glorified stage select, there are also various enemy units positioned on it. These units move in real time, both as you navigate the map and as you are undergoing a mission. So, there are situations where you might need to complete a mission quickly in order to defend your home planet from missiles, or the Star Wolf mercenaries might attack you in the middle of trying to do so, and so on, adding a layer of depth to the game.
The other interesting part is that the entire game is in "all range mode" (as it was called in Star Fox 64), so you are never "on rails" and can always navigate wherever you want throughout a level. This is particularly interesting in space stages, where you can have Star Wars-esque dogfights in completely unoriented 3D space.
It's just a damn shame that Nintendo never bothered releasing it, either back in the day or in modern times as a VC download.
There is a somewhat happy ending to this tragic story for Star Fox fans: A nearly complete prototype of Star Fox 2 was stolen (!) from a trade show in the mid-90s, and later dumped and released on the internet. The beta is somewhat buggy and in Japanese, but dedicated romhackers produced a patch that fixed most of the bugs and translated all of the text into English. Obviously I can't link the ROM, but if you can find it on your own, the patch is here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Fox_2
http://agtp.romhack.net/project.php?id=starfox2
It's a very ambitious sequel and worth checking out. It's something of a strategy game/arcade flight sim hybrid: You start the game looking at a map of the Lylat system, but instead of it being a glorified stage select, there are also various enemy units positioned on it. These units move in real time, both as you navigate the map and as you are undergoing a mission. So, there are situations where you might need to complete a mission quickly in order to defend your home planet from missiles, or the Star Wolf mercenaries might attack you in the middle of trying to do so, and so on, adding a layer of depth to the game.
http://agtp.romhack.net/images/projects/starfox2/9.png
The other interesting part is that the entire game is in "all range mode" (as it was called in Star Fox 64), so you are never "on rails" and can always navigate wherever you want throughout a level. This is particularly interesting in space stages, where you can have Star Wars-esque dogfights in completely unoriented 3D space.
It's just a damn shame that Nintendo never bothered releasing it, either back in the day or in modern times as a VC download.