Star Fox 2 Launches 22 Years Later on the SNES Classic Edition

By Shane McGlaun

Yesterday I talked a bit about the newly announced SNES Classic Edition retro game console that was announced this week. That console is coming with 21 different games installed and one of the games that you can play was actually never released. Star Fox 2 was meant to be the followup to the original Star Fox, but the problem was the game was delayed and before it was ready to go the Nintendo 64 was on the horizon. What that means was that after working on Star Fox 2 for a long time, the game was shelved in favor of beginning work on Star Fox 64 instead.

That means that all the work and sweat the dev team put into Star Fox 2 went unappreciated as the game was never played. Back in 1995, the press got to see some game demos of Star Fox 2 at CES that year and word is that by time the game was ready not only was the Nintendo 64 nearly ready, but the original PlayStation and Sega Saturn were launched and the game showed its age reports

The Verge.

One of the Star Fox 2 developers, Dylan Cuthbert, is still in the industry and says that he and members of the original Star Fox 2 team went to have a belated launch party for the game that was completed two decades ago. Many of the ideas that the team had come up with for Star Fox 2 made the transition to Star Fox 64 such as 360-degree flying and a tank vehicle.

Cuthbert also worked with Nintendo on a remake of Star Fox 64 for the 3DS serving as director of the project. This means that at least one of the games on the SNES Classic is actually a brand new game no one has played. Cuthbert was surprised to see his long cancelled game turn up on the play list for the new Nintendo console. He tweeted saying, “We mastered Star Fox 2 [22] years ago and it’s finally getting a release. Guinness World record?”