Starfox 2

With an all-new Star Fox game for Wii U on the way later this year, our thoughts sometimes drift back to the good old days of the Super Nintendo. With the critical and commercial success of Star Fox on the SNES, a sequel of some description was inevitable and it seemed that the SNES would be the platform to host it.

However, Star Fox 2 was never released, despite being almost complete - according to legend, Shigeru Miyamoto himself pulled the plug on the project. Of course, the N64 would later get Star Fox 64 (Lylat Wars), but the dream of having Star Fox 2 on your shelf has remained lost in the mists of time - until now.

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Talented graphic designer Stu Brett - aka Super Famicom Guy - is based in Scotland and is one of the many Nintendo fans that wondered what Star Fox 2 might have looked like if it ever went into production back in the day. Check out what he came up with:

In Stu's own words:

It all sort of started because I'm now taking Japanese lessons. I thought I'd work on a little design project at home that would tie in my studies and with my gaming, so I thought I'd create some Super Famicom boxes, carts and manuals for games that were never released over there and so that they'd look cool on my shelves and match my collection. My Katakana is far from perfect but I'm still learning.

Starfox 2 was fully completed back in 1995 but was shelved by Nintendo but thankfully, the game is now available as a repro, so I just ordered the American 60hz cart, disassembled it and created a new SFC version, complete with new custom label. The translating was the tricky part! I then just started drawing the Arwing and space backdrop for the box in Adobe Illustrator. I also did a little illustration of Fox McCloud for the spine and re-worked the original logo to suit, along with a Lylat system illustration. I worked on a few versions, but this one stuck. The SHVC codes are references to my initials. It's a great game and it's nice to have both SFC titles now sitting boxed, side by side. I thought it deserved something special as it's a Starfox game.

And that led to me picking up all the good SNES games that weren't released in Japan and I Super Famicom-ized them! The manuals are still in the works as my Japanese isn't that good. It was just a bit of fun and something for me to work on at home while I learn Japanese. It's great that I can now run my favourite SNES games on my Super Famicom without the need of a convertor sticking out of the console and they look Japanese... It was just a bit of fun that snowballed into working on more.

This image below shows Stu's mock-ups which he worked on before creating his final masterpiece:

Starfox 2 Mockups

So what do you think of this labour of love? Did it make you do a barrel roll?