Here's one to get us all arguing about assets and fonts into the weekend - someone claims to have images of a 'lost' Virtual Boy game called Star Fox: Red Zone. Hm...
Someone called Sparky_78 on Reddit posted the following images; they seem to be the same person that posted the details as Kallus on Assembler Games.
This is the message that apparently explains where the assets come from.
Some are convinced, though others think it's fake (including this writer); this is from a user called VirtuousRage on PlanetVB.
Eh.
Color me faithless, but I find most of these "I have lots of info, but I'm going to just trickle it out in tiny fragments" a hot load of garbage. Reminding me a lot of the whole "Polybius" arcade cabinet stuff. ( Great video on that here btw: https://youtu.be/_7X6Yeydgyg )
If you just take this "box art" example he's provided you can clearly tell the StarFox logo is cut out from another image as you can still see some white pixels around the edges. ( Take the bottom right of the X for example. )
Also, the font used for "REDZONE" is called "Beyond" a font made in 2011 by "imagex". (http://www.dafont.com/beyond.font) Nintendo would have to be pulling off some crazy time travel for that to happen.
Finally, I would question his story about this "box art" being used to show investors. From my experience, this is not common practice, but I think I've already put this to bed.
I truly will never understand how/why people like this "Issac" fellow get off on just perpetuating lies.
The idea of Star Fox on Virtual Boy isn't new, as it reportedly did the rounds in the mid-'90s as a tech demo but was pretty much lost to the ages. For example the video below (published on YouTube in 2010) is from WCES 1995 and purports to show glimpses of the Star Fox demo and a Mario platformer that never saw the light of day.
It's entirely possible that there was once a Star Fox Virtual Boy game in development, of course; the commercial failure of the system gave it a very short lifespan, so various projects in development may have been dropped. That doesn't mean that 'Star Fox: Red Zone' as seen in these 'assets' is necessarily real, though.
Do you think this box art and screenshots are fascinating assets of a lost game, or fakes by someone with Photoshop and too much time on their hands? Have it out in the comments below.
[source reddit.com, via planetvb.com, assemblergames.com]
Comments 45
Definitely looks fake to me. The screenshot looks like a space level from Starfox 1 re-coloured red. I was expecting them to have re-touched some screenshots from Red Alarm on the VB.
This looks pretty darn fake. On a side note, why doesn't someone like Shigeru Miyamoto who would know if Star Fox for the Virtual Boy ever existed get asked about things like this when being interviewed?
Fake! Although it be cool if we actually found the real deal.
Fake news
It's probably better than Star Fox Zero.
Fake
Wouldn't of been better than red alarm 😉 #teamreal
The ESRB logo is what makes me think it's fake. Didn't the ESRB ratings look different in its first years?
These are the old logos:
https://i0.wp.com/fc04.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2013/078/6/f/esrb_ratings_1994_1999_by_zacharylunsfordart-d5yjhp7.jpg
Clearly the one on the cover is using the modern logo.
Update:
Yes, the Rating Pending logo is the exact one used from 2000-2003. The RP rating was introduced in 2000. The cancelled Star Fox game on Virtual Boy is obviously from the mid 90s.
http://logos.wikia.com/wiki/Entertainment_Software_Rating_Board
Here's a wiki containing every logo of the ESRB used.
With that recent debunking of Polybius, I'm sure someone is jumping on the mysterious unreleased game train. However the Virtual Boy was for sure to give you headaches
Well if the zone is going to be any colour, it's going to be red! It's a shame they never did VB games on the 3DS. I'd love to try the Wario Land game, it actually looks quite good despite all the red.
@SLIGEACH_EIRE
Space invaders is prolly better than starfox zero xD
Mostly because I really enjoyed Teleroboxer I wish the Virtual Boy would have succeeded.
Especially if it meant I would have gotten a Star Fox game like this.
Yes clearly a guy just looking for attention. I really wanted a virtual boy back in the mid-nineties yeah call me crazy. Then one day I was in Walmart after it had been out about six months and they had them all on clearance for $50 each. I bought one and about five games, the games were about five bucks a piece. I enjoyed the heck out of it as a 10 year old. Wish I would of saved it, some of the games are worth quite a bit these days. Too bad it didn't catch on, blame it in the red graphics or the headaches, take your pick!
The "STAR FOX" lettering in the title is pathetically fake. Like, absurdly fake. A child cutting it out with scissors probably leaves fewer white edges next to lines.
I'd like for it to be real... but it ain't.
@SLIGEACH_EIRE
HA!!!!! Good one!
Slightly off topic but it always gets a mention in any VB article: I have never once suffered from headaches nor has anyone else in the nearly 20 years I've had my beloved Virtual Boy. 😑😉
The other part that doesn't make sense is why would Nintendo be showing a single game to "investors"? Anyone can invest with Nintendo stock and Nintendo is not a start up, to where they need to raise money, which is why you would be showing a game to investors. You also wouldn't show one game to wall street analysts either. So even the story makes no sense.
@Lukeim64
I'm glad to hear this....I just picked one up from Ebay with a ton of games. I might try it out tonight!
@Agent721 Mate, you are in for a world of joy. All the hate and bad press cannot hide the reality that the Virtual Boy is one of the most bizarrely brilliant consoles of all time! For >ULTRA VR< lay on your back in a dark room with it resting on your face. T&E Soft Golf is like the real thing. 😂😉
This boxart and the images are fake, but I would agree that there was likely a Star Fox in development for the Virtual Boy before the project was scrapped and the team moved on to SF64. But, if there was anything material or tangible that came from that project, we would've seen it by now.
@Lukeim64
Ha! Nice tip, I will try that out! Cheers!
There just too many things wrong with this to be real. The story of investors looking at the box art for the game is just improbable. The Virtual Boy was made to replace the Original Game Boy and there was hype for it when it was being released, but unfortunately it was rushed to launch to coincide against the then new Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn. The 1994 Japanese launch of the Virtual Boy was abysmal, with the fact that it had warning labels covering it and little to no games being at launch. Although with that being said, it did do semi-decently in North America, but not enough to where Nintendo would considered it a substantial success, so it was discontinued shortly after to focus their efforts on the upcoming Nintendo 64.
What I'm trying to say is, Nintendo would never have a meeting with investors about a new "Hit" for the Virtual Boy, especially after the pitiful Japanese launch and the mundane sales in North America, Nintendo would rather cut it's losses and focus on a product that would sell rather than try to focus on a product that wasn't.
With StarFox 2 dropping this month, fake.
I would be cool if Nintendo shed some light about StarFox Vertual Boy.
Team real or team fake. Splatfest incoming 😂
Definitely fake. All the points that are brought up as evidence towards it not being real, are VERY convincing, and it does indeed look like a shoddy copy/paste job.
Obviously fake, as I have the only copy.
Team Fake
The Mario platformer looks absolutely terrible it's way too slow for a platformer especially with Mario being behind it.
The "RP" ESRB rating is the wrong color. The letters didn't go solid black until 2000. Pre-1999, it was white with a black outline.
Example:
Super Smash Bros (1999)
Pokémon Stadium 2 (2000)
EDIT: @MrGamerClock64 beat me to it. Well played.
Definitely fake! This would have came out of the wood work a long time ago with it being associated with a popular IP. Red Zone WAS, however, hinted at being some sort of version of Star Fox in a few magazines back in the day if I remember correctly.
Also, I owned the entire VB collection by June 1996. I traded in a Mega Man X2, Vectorman, and Demon Crest for for a new copy of 3D Tetris (playin this for 6 hours straight one night in July is probably what hastened my need for glasses), Nester's Funky Bowling (ugh), and Jack Bros (damn good game, I replayed the shit out of it).
Not one of my better trades tbh, but who knew this stuff would be super rare one day? I did the same thing with extremely rare Dreamcast, NGPC, Saturn, and PSX games. :/
I was also calling Nintendo once a week asking WTF Dragon Hopper was up until that Oct. I used to be an addicted little Nintendo freak.
If a game was far enough along to get box art, it would probably have been mentioned in Nintendo Power.
Also, Red -ALARM- was a game that some say was like StarFox.
When makes me wonder if Red Alarm was the game this poster meant and he's so bad at faking he messed up the fake title.
Also, anyone remember about a decade ago when somebody did a laughably bad attempt at a hoax for Zelda III for the NES?
This sounds about that bad.
Maybe they should make a virtual boy classic and add this game as the unreleased game ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Ok that's the stupidest idea
A lot of people are saying this is fake because of the esrb rating, but I have another reason. Starfox 2 for the SNES was cancelled because Nintendo wanted to shift its focus to the Nintendo 64, and make a Starfox game there. Judging by that, why would they then go ahead and make a Starfox game on the Virtual Boy, a SIGNIFICANTLY worse console???
One of the worst attempts to fake box art I've seen. The logo is just plain sloppy. I'm sure I could find a clean background-less PNG of that logo just through a google search, they needn't have bothered cutting their own out.
@TurboTEF Mate I share your pain. I sold in the early noughties a near complete Neogeo pocket colour collection... Money was appreciated at the time but imagine how much it would be worth one day if I kept it.... Ho-hum. 😏
Like @MrGamerClock64 explained, the ESRB logo style used in that box pic was not used during the mid-90's time period. 100% fake. And yeah, the font creation date of 2011 is a crucial point. (Font creation dates can be used to detect forgeries, such as the Calibri font scandal conducted by Maryam Nawaz, the daughter of Pakistan's Prime Minister.)
This is what the RP logo would have looked like back in September 1995 (before being abandoned):
https://www.trademarkia.com/rp-rating-pending-entertainment-software-rating-board-74735680.html
The (current) RP logo style used here was trademarked back in 1997:
https://www.trademarkia.com/rp-rating-pending-content-rated-by-esrb-75227210.html
This is how magazines like GamePro handled previews back in the day in 1995, with no official ESRB RP logo existing by August 1995, when the Virtual Boy released in NA:
I bought a Virtual Boy about 9 years ago in Japan for about 50 euros. One of the most underrated consoles of all time. It's a lot of fun. Both retro and futuristic. Unlike anything else and the games are still awesome.
Loved Virtual Boy
All this makes me wonder WHY Nintendo has not brought Virtual Boy games or color Virtual Boy remakes to the 3DS e-shop
StarFox REDZONE sounds like a new scent for Old Spice's deodorant line.
@Zelda_Geek It's worth noting that there was a legit Star Fox project being developed for Virtual Boy: https://www.unseen64.net/2008/05/18/star-fox-virtual-boy/. It may well have simply been a tech demo, of course, like Mario 128 or the GC Zelda footage. That has no bearing on whether this new info is real or fake, and I think the ESRB info points in the direction of it being fake.
There was definitely a Starfox title in Development for VB. this wasn't it. This is fake.
Looks like garbage
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