Born slippy: the making of Star Fox 20 years after its release, ex-Argonaut staff reveal the story behind the revolutionary SNES hit.
"20 years ago this month, British engineering ingenuity and Japanese design savvy elegantly combined to create what is arguably one of the most technically outstanding releases of the 16-bit era, and a truly significant entry in Nintendo's impressive library of software. Star Fox - or Starwing as it was retitled in Europe thanks to the existence of a German company called StarVox - marked Nintendo's first tentative steps into the realm of 3D, a world it had - up to that point - been curiously reluctant to explore. This exploratory thrust wouldn't have been possible without the involvement of Argonaut Software, a small UK-based studio with big ideas famous for its impressive home computer title Starglider.
How Argonaut and Nintendo came to be partners is a remarkable story of technical wizardry and rule-breaking. When you're a tiny team operating out of someone's house, you don't just waltz into the HQ of a multi-million dollar industry leader. It takes something special to get on the radar, and Argonaut got Nintendo's attention in the most brazen way imaginable - it defeated the copyright protection mechanism on the popular Game Boy console. "They had the Nintendo logo drop down from the top of the screen, and when it hit the middle the boot loader would check to see if it was in the right place," recounts Argonaut founder Jez San."
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