Hello, everyone! I'm Akinori Sao, a writer in Kyoto.

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When NES Classic Edition was released last year, I think a lot of people (including me) also wanted a Super NES version, and now here it is: Super NES Classic Edition!

From the release of the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985 to the release of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1991, gamers had to wait six years, but this time there’s only a gap of one year. Isn’t the pace of progress astounding?

This time I will be interviewing developers of Super NES games. My first topic is the 3D shooting games Star Fox and Star Fox 2, the latter of which has been considered a “phantom game” since it was never released.

This enjoyable digital manual explains the game content of Star Fox 2, so please check it out.

And now for my interview with Shigeru Miyamoto, Takaya Imamura and Tsuyoshi Watanabe, who were involved with development of these two games.

Miyamoto: The three of us have been working together on the series since the original Star Fox. I was game designer and producer, Imamura handled graphics aside from polygons and character design, and Watanabe was mainly in charge of polygon design.

Imamura: Yes. I designed vehicles and rendered characters.

1. F-ZERO™: A racing game set in the near future and included in the Super Nintendo Entertainment System: Super NES Classic Edition. The game was originally released in Japan in November 1990.

Watanabe: I was designing the backgrounds for The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.² A senior developer rendered the Light World, but I was in charge of the backgrounds for the Dark World.

2. The Legend of Zelda™: A Link to the Past™: An action-adventure game included in the Super NES Classic Edition. The game was originally released in Japan in November 1991.

Miyamoto: I also asked you for that enigmatic art for the opening narrative text.

Watanabe: That’s right. I also did things like render pictures of the Seven Sages.

Miyamoto: Watanabe, you joined the company later than Imamura, isn’t that right?

Watanabe: Yes. I joined a year after Imamura. I entered the company before the release of Super NES and spent my first year debugging.

Miyamoto: I wanted to make a full-fledged game using polygons.

Miyamoto: That’s right. Inside the company, we considered various approaches, but the hardware development people said it was impossible.

Star Fox Snes Rom

Miyamoto: They said, “the Super NES isn’t polygon hardware!” (laughs)

Miyamoto: That’s right.

Miyamoto: Nope! (laughs) A British company called Argonaut Software³ was making polygon games for personal computers, so I thought it might be possible to use that technology and develop a special chip. The result of about two years of development was the Super FX chip.⁴

3. Argonaut Software (later Argonaut Games): A British video game developer that developed a 3D engine.

4. Super FX™: A chip for rendering polygons and 3D graphics that was added to Super NES ROM cartridges. In addition to Star Fox, the chip was included in games such as Super Mario World™ 2: Yoshi's Island™.

Miyamoto: That’s right. With cartridges, it’s helpful to be able to add hardware.

Watanabe: Even with the Super FX chip, Super NES had a lot of constraints. Rendering any design you like in polygons results in processing overload. So when rendering starfighters, I went through a process of trial and error in order to make the direction their noses were pointing clear with the smallest number of polygons possible.

Miyamoto: Each new polygon vertex increases the processing burden. So I investigated how many vertices I could show on one screen beforehand. As a result, I made many buildings square or triangular and made enemies with as few polygons as possible, with flat shapes so they could fly in any direction.

Imamura: And we made the ground scroll.

Miyamoto: We put a pattern on the ground and had it scroll to convey a sense of movement.

Watanabe: For that pattern, we could do little more than a simple gradation.

5. Out of This Dimension: A hidden stage in the asteroid belt of level 3. Destroying a large meteorite that appears on the right causes a large bird to appear. If players ram into it, their fighter enters a hidden stage.

Imamura: Oh, right! You warp into a hidden stage where a slot machine appears!

Imamura: And the children’s song “Yuki Yakonko” plays in the background…

Watanabe: That stage began with origami. Miyamoto said he wanted to do origami.

Miyamoto: Oh, now I remember! I was talking about how fun it would be to have paper cranes fold.

Watanabe: But that was declared impossible. (laughs)

Miyamoto: It didn’t work. (laughs)

Watanabe: Paper cranes were out of the question, but paper planes would work, so…

Miyamoto: Pieces of paper fold into airplanes and fly around. We experimented with various things and thought it would be a waste to simply throw away what was left over, so we packed them into that bonus stage.

Miyamoto: And then you get to shoot them! Even back in the days of Super NES, we wanted to avoid commonplace staff credits and do something interactive.

Miyamoto: If you think about it now, we were awfully ambitious. After all, we had a hard time just making the main game! (laughs)

Everyone: (laughs)

Miyamoto: I wonder if maybe we should have let it keep being a phantom game… (laughs)

Miyamoto: I haven’t played it in a long time, so I hope people can enjoy playing it in this day and age.

Miyamoto: The Super NES Classic Edition system’s producer said he wanted to include it. He said it had been through debugging and was a complete game, so it would be a waste not to put it out in the world.

Miyamoto: We finished it in 1995, but the next year…

Miyamoto: Right. Nintendo 64 was hardware geared for polygons, but Super NES wasn’t, so we were going to have to add a chip—the Super FX 2 with double memory—raising the price.

Miyamoto: The price was high and the timing of the release was awkward, so we decided to cancel it and start from scratch with a new Star Fox game for Nintendo 64.

Miyamoto: Yes.

6. Star Fox™ 64: A 3D shooting game originally released in Japan for the Nintendo 64™ system in April 1997.

Watanabe: The Super FX 2 chip allowed more polygons and the possibilities broadened for what we could show. So we decided to have the fighters transform.

Watanabe: That’s right. We could show more but could still only produce graphics that looked simple. So to make it look more fun, we experimented with having the fighter spin to change form. But when Ashura Itoh⁷ saw that…

Imamura: At the time, Ashura-san had a Star Fox comic series in the American video game magazine Nintendo Power.

7. Ashura Itoh: A multi-media artist who also professionally plays guitar in addition to drawing manga and other work in illustration. He has been involved in the development of many video games, including games in the Kirby™ series.

Watanabe: When Ashura-san saw the fighter spin, he said the pilot would get dizzy!

Watanabe: So the fighter transforms, but instead of simply making it look fun, we designed it in consideration of the actual mechanisms at work.

Watanabe: Yes. (laughs) For this interview, I rummaged through my desk drawers and found this. (He opens a folder.)

Watanabe: This is a picture Imamura drew of Star Wolf. Without hesitation, he simply dashed it off!

Imamura: To mark this occasion, we included it in the game manual available for download. We were finally able to share this twenty years after the making.

Watanabe: We just talked about the transforming fighter, so… (flipping through the folder) As for exactly what that entails, check out these illustrations.

Watanabe: Actually, I drafted these later. I thought the players would enjoy having an explanation of how the fighters transform mechanically.

Watanabe: Yes.

Imamura: Watanabe was in the high school manga club.

Imamura: He was always good at drawing mechs.

Watanabe: I was shocked.

Watanabe: I worked really hard on it and thought it was too bad that I couldn’t deliver my work to the players.

Watanabe: For that reason, it was an event that really made me think, and I was really disappointed.

Watanabe: To be honest, it’s embarrassing! It’s like having an old diary suddenly appear and be exposed in public! (laughs)

Everyone: (laughs)

Watanabe: At the time, we used the latest technology and worked as hard as we could to make the game, but I’m not sure how enjoyable people will find it today.

Miyamoto: Actually, I’m glad it’s coming out now in this fashion. Back then, the reasons we couldn’t release it had to do with pricing and timing. It’s not like we showed it to testers and they gave it a low grade.

Miyamoto: All right.

Miyamoto: Yes. Together with the industrial designer, I did most of the console design for the original Super Famicom version of the system released in Japan and Europe, plus the packaging.

Miyamoto: During the NES era, the company grew and evolved to the point where hardware designers would consult game developers on how to handle various matters.

Miyamoto: That’s right. That solidified during the days of NES.

Miyamoto: Yes. Relatively early on, we decided to introduce round elements to the controller design.

Miyamoto: And the design of the round ends, where you hold it, makes it easier for small children to grip the controller wherever they want. We shaped it that way so it would be easy to hold for any hand size.

Miyamoto: For example, the arcade version of Street Fighter II⁸, which is included in Super NES Classic Edition, had two sets of three buttons per player, so a total of six buttons would be necessary for playing.

8. Street Fighter II: A fighting game developed by Capcom. Many Street Fighter series games have been released since the arcade version debuted in 1991. Super NES Classic Edition includes Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting, which first released in arcades in December 1992.

Miyamoto: Not just for Street Fighter II, but we wanted the console to be compatible with a lot of such trendy games at the time, so we increased the number of buttons. Also, the A, B, X and Y buttons are lined up in a cross, right? We placed them that way for use like a +Control Pad. And depending on the game, you could play with a ten-yen coin on top! (laughs)

Miyamoto: But we really worried about the arrangement of the A, B, X and Y buttons. We couldn’t figure out whether to put the B button diagonally above or below the A button.

Miyamoto: Yes. We decided on that placement to unify it with Game Boy, but that made it impossible for Mario to do a B Dash! (laughs)

9. Super Mario World™: A platform game included in Super NES Classic Edition. Originally released in Japan on the same day as the Super Famicom™ system in November 1990.

Miyamoto: Yeah! (laughs) And we tried to divide the buttons into groups. We assigned priority, so the primary buttons are A and B, with X and Y as secondary. That’s why we decided to call them X and Y instead of C and D.

Miyamoto: We also decided to use four different colors for the buttons. I actually wanted to call them the Red button and Yellow button and so forth, but…

The American version of the controller adopted two tones. Japan and Europe used the same design, for the main console as well.

Miyamoto: In America, they did their own design for their market. For example, if you touch the X and Y buttons, they’re concave.

Miyamoto: By making them concave, you can tell the difference between the primary and secondary buttons without looking at the controller. That was impressive. I realized America has some outstanding industrial design. But I was sorely disappointed that I couldn’t call it the Red button! (laughs)

Imamura: Yes?

Imamura: That’s right. I’ve talked about them all over the place! I originally considered making the characters human, but Miyamoto overturned that and suggested making them animals. We made the main character a fox because of its association with the Fushimi Inari Taisha shrine near the head office, and then for the other characters, we chose from among the types of animals that appear in Japanese folk tales.

Imamura: But there’s something I still haven’t talked about. The faces of the characters on Team Star Fox are based on staff members at the time.

Imamura: Fox has a fox-like face like Miyamoto.

Miyamoto: (laughs)

Imamura: Falco is Watanabe. At the time, we laughed over how his nose sticks out like a beak! (laughs)

Watanabe: (laughs)

Star Fox Snes Walkthrough

Imamura: Director Katsuya Eguchi¹¹ has a mouth like a hare’s, so he became the hare, Peppy. Planner Yoichi Yamada¹² has large, round eyes, so he became Slippy Toad.

Miyamoto: Yamada’s personal mascot has always been a toad anyway. (laughs)

Katsuya Eguchi: In addition to participating in development of the Animal Crossing series, he has recently served as general producer for games such as Splatoon and ARMS.

12. Yoichi Yamada: Since serving as assistant director for The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, he has participated in the development of almost all subsequent Legend of Zelda games.

Imamura: And the villain Andross is…I shouldn’t say. (laughs)

Miyamoto: Yes, you can’t say this one! (laughs)

Imamura: (softly) Andross is my boss at the time. (laughs)

Imamura: I was surprised to see the materials that Watanabe brought today. I did the illustration for Star Fox 2’s packaging this time, but if I had seen those first, I might have drawn something different.

Watanabe: I’m the manager of the group in charge of package design. When the subject of package design came up, I was going to show you those pictures, but you had already finished! (laughs)

Miyamoto: He’s always fast! (laughs)

Imamura: Yeah, well… (laughs)

Everyone: (laughs)

The SNES Classic has arrived, and to commemorate the occasion, we’re diving into those classic SNES games of yesteryear to reveal awesome secrets, hidden levels, cheats and special techniques to make revisiting these games even better. There’s a lot to love about Star Fox, the space shootings polygonal action game included in the SNES Classic Edition along with it’s never-before-released (officially) sequel — and foremost is the replayibility.

At the start of the game, you’ll get your pick of one of three routes to reach Venom, the last stage in the game. Each route is progressively more difficult, with the first route reserved for beginners while the third route is for experts. Throwing a monkey wrench in the works are two bonus levels you can access; the Black Hole, and an even more surreal visit to an alternate universe. Learn how to access both hidden levels with the quick guide below.

Secret Levels & Easter Eggs Guide

There are two hidden levels in Star Fox — the Black Hole, and Another Dimension. Both are pretty strange, but Another Dimension takes the cake for weirdness. In each entry, I’ll explain how to reach the secret level, and then dive into a little more detail. They’re strange, I’ll leave it at that for now.

How To Access The Black Hole

1. Reach Level 1-2 (The Asteroid Belt, Route 1)
2. Continue until you find a gold asteroid with four spinning grey asteroid.
3. Blast the gold asteroid and fly through the center of the grey asteroids (where the gold asteroid was located).
4. Do this for all three gold / grey asteroid clusters.
5. A asteroid with a face will appear in the corner of the screen. Shoot it until a black hole appears.
6. Fly through the reach the Black Hole!

The Black Hole is a strange ship graveyard with three level warps. You can fly through one of three portals that appears in the stage — Sector Y (Route 2), Sector Z (Route 3), and Venom (Route 1).

How To Access Out Of This Dimension

1. Reach Level 3-2 (The Asteroid Belt, Route 3)
2. In the stage, you’ll fly by a massive asteroid to the left. When you encounter the second massive asteroid on the right, keep shooting until you destroy it.
3. A bird-like origami creature will fly out of the second destroyed large asteroid. Don’t shoot it!
4. Instead, ram into it to teleport into the alternate dimension.

Unlike the Black Hole, the “Out of This Dimension” level is actually a weird alternate ending to the game. You’ll find paper airplanes, and the boss doesn’t even have a health bar. The boss features a slot machine design, and the only path to victory is to shoot until you get a 7 / 7 / 7 jackpot. You’ll even have to fight the credits. The game won’t end until you blast letters to correctly spell out “THE END”.

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