- Emulator: Snes9x 1.43 with WIP timing
- ROM: "Star Fox 2 (Beta TD).smc" with patch "sf2-e-final.ips" available here.
This is an unreleased game by Nintendo, the sequel to the original Star Fox. The game was completely finished but never released. Instead, several elements from the game were reused in Star Fox 64, such as all-range mode and the Star Wolf team. It's a pretty fun game; I recommend playing it if you like Star Fox games.
Andross is back with some new tricks up his sleeve. Not only has he hired Star Wolf to combat Fox and friends, but he has also changed his attack strategy. Instead of taking over the Lylat system linearly as in the last game, Andross sends his forces all over the map and launches missiles from several directions at once. This forces Star Fox to fly around and take down the enemy bases strategically. Of course, since this is a TAS, everything is dispatched speedily with no damage taken to Corneria or the Arwings.
I used Miyu in this run because she has the fastest ship and the shortest time to charge shots. Fox is picked as backup, but he and everyone else in Star Fox turns out to be completely useless.
Individual level notes
Titania
- Outside is not too hard. It's nice that you get vacuumed into the base once you get close, no matter what your speed or direction.
- It is faster to rapid-fire charge shots when in flying form, because normal twin blasters do 2 damage and charge shots do 10 damage to enemies. The more powerful kind of twin blasters do 4 damage, so it is better to fire uncharged shots when in walking form. This is why I beat Tal Kong with four charged shots, then use normal shots against the core.
- Game Time: 014 (+1.7)
Battleship 1
- Changing the angle of approach to a battleship allows saving a few frames because of different lag.
- The enemies in a room only spawn a second or so after you enter the room. This is annoying because it forces me to slow down to wait for that first wall-crawler. Also, the second wall-crawler was impervious to a second charged shot, which is why I shoot it with normal twin blasters.
- Game Time: 017 (+1.5)
Macbeth
- The satellite shot down the other missile shortly after I entered the stage. Pepper tries to tell you, but Fox rudely interrupts him with some useless advice to "Avoid the magma!"
- If you get close to Knight Nack, he will raise a shield to block your attacks. However, I found that if I fired charged shots from a distance he would not raise his shield and still take damage.
- These kind of cores are annoying because there is not really an efficient way to hit all four corners quickly. I'm pretty sure the method I chose is the best.
- Game Time: 024 (+1.5)
Venom
- It's hard to notice, but one of the little mantis babies killed itself outside after I destroyed its mother. I find this to be quite hilarious.
- I used a "special weapon" shield to block an enemy shot from hitting me as I landed on a switch. There were other ways to avoid getting hit, e.g. slow down a little, but the shield looks too cool not to use.
- Game Time: 031 (+2.7)
Battleship 2
- Those two pop-up enemies caused more than a few desyncs. They also have a ridiculous amount of health (50 each). On the other hand, they were just about perfectly placed; where they appear is random depending on when you enter the room.
- Game Time: 033 (+1.5)
Meteor
- Pigma required exactly 176 frames of input to defeat (frames 35072 to 35248).
- The outside of this world is weird. The Arwing needs to be within a certain distance of the switches for them to activate, which is why I hit the brake for a bit after the first switch. Also, after the base opened the Arwing realigned itself to head towards the door.
- Game Time: 047 (+1.9)
Fortuna
- Poor Leon, he never had a chance with those bloodshot eyes. I blame it on video games.
- The Queen Dioray can only be hit the first time from below the water's surface, and only subsequently from above the surface. This results in a bit of acrobatics.
- On entering the base, the Arwing fires a shot completely on its own with no input from me.
- The Kick Gunner refuses to be hit by non-charged shots while in the air. That's why I fire two charged shots at him instead of one.
- Game Time: 053 (+2.1)
Eladard
- The cursor is spelling "YbJ", for those who can't tell. I thought spelling "YtterbiJum" might take too long. Earlier in the movie it spelled "SAM".
- For some reason Andrew stuck around for a while after losing all his health, resulting in a time of 0.6 instead of 0.5 like I got for Pigma and Leon.
- The inside of the base is supposed to be done by going into another room and stepping on another switch to deactivate the columns of fire. However, I just flew right through them with Miyu's impenetrable shield.
- Game Time: 061 (+1.6)
Battleship 3
- Destroying most of the invasion force is cause for thanks?
- A new kind of core, now with 20 health on each of the four spots and ~60 health on top.
- Game Time: 065 (+1.8)
Battleship 4
- Miyu shows us again what kind of maneuvers a superhuman (superlynx?) pilot can perform in the "maze" room.
- Game Time: 076 (+1.8)
Astropolis
- The Mirage Dragon and the H Fantron went down no trouble.
- Wolf, on the other hand, gave me some grief by deflecting a bunch of shots. He barrel rolls more than his teammates, so a few shots were used to force him to roll, after which I would hit him. On another note, he is the only Star Wolf member to not explode; perhaps we will see him again?
- I picked up some nova bombs from one of the enemies inside. This came in handy for the fight against Andross.
- During the fight when Andross has a mask with two eyes, it doesn't matter how much damage you do to the eyes, it only matters how many times they are hit (5 times each). During the rest of the fight, he takes damage normally.
- Game Time: 082 (+3.1)
And that's it! Enjoy the credits with some enemies that we never saw!
Thanks
There are several people I should thank for various things. In no particular order:
- Ferret Warlord, for making me rethink the route and showing interest.
- bkDJ, for encoding my latest WIP before Wolf.
- TheNewerGuy, for having a full-game run on Youtube to use as a reference.
- Bisqwit, for having a great site.
- Everyone in the forum topic, for making me happy.
- You, for reading this.
adelikat: Approving this hack for publication and accepting this movie for publication. However, due to the nature of the fixes, it will be classified as a hack and will go into the hacks (concept/demos) category.