StarFox 64
Throughout the annals of history, humans have dared to dream of the stars — of reaching far-off worlds beyond our own earthly pinprick of existence.
In October 1957, the Soviet Union launched its first Sputnik satellite, kick-starting the race to explore the farthest reaches of the known universe. One month later, the nation followed up with Sputnik 2, which carried a most precious cargo into orbit — Laika, a 3-year-old stray dog that promptly died hours after launch.
In April 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin entered orbit to secure his place as the first man in space. And on July 20, 1969, a trio of red-blooded American heroes orchestrated the first lunar landing, striking a profound space race victory for the U.S.
Yet humanity’s crowning Space Age achievement came not out of Tyuratam, Russia, or Houston, but from Kyoto, Japan. Forty years after the first Soviet satellite exited the Earth’s atmosphere, Japanese videogame giant Nintendo put a ragtag band of four anthropomorphic animals behind the cockpits of Arwing starfighters, and Team Star Fox barrel rolled onto TV screens and into hearts across the globe.
Star Fox 64’s unlikely cadre of protagonists — youthful team leader Fox McCloud, gruff Vietnamese pheasant and former gang member Falco Lombardi, wizened veteran Peppy Hare and bumbling, curiously androgynous Slippy Toad — bantered and blasted its way through the Lylat solar system in a quest to defeat Andross, a scientist-turned-war criminal.
The details of Andross’ nefarious plot remain somewhat murky throughout the game’s progression, but plot holes aside, Star Fox boasted innovative gameplay, a choice multiplayer mode and, of course, quotable advisory and trash-talking lines out the proverbial wazoo.
In the days preceding such titles as Call of Duty and Halo, Star Fox offered a cutting-edge, comical glimpse of prurient violence to come. I single-handedly annihilated hordes of enemy spacecraft and dispatched laughably inept bosses en route to squaring off against Andross.
All the while, I stockpiled quotable material ranging from groundbreaking cutscene repartee (“Say your prayers, Andross!”) to Peppy’s timely nuggets of wisdom (“Use the boost to get through!”) and Falco’s snippy side comments (“Hey, Einstein, I’m on your side!”). I frequently blew away Slippy to avoid witnessing his/her gross displays of incompetence and pleas for assistance.
To date, most of my scientific knowledge is culled from the game, in which Nintendo’s attention to detail was unparalleled. The team threw around the term G-diffuser — an Arwing feature I only can assume stemmed from decades of aeronautic design — with abandon. Flames would erupt along an Arwing’s fuselage after its wings were shot off, even in the depths of space. Players could straight-up repel lasers with their ships by executing roll maneuvers. The space opera played out against backdrops populated by all manner of exotic flora and fauna, both of which typically had a taste for Arwings.
My parents’ iron-fisted rule precluded any chance of N64 play in our home, a last bastion of civility against a tide of videogames sure to incite wonton violence and depraved sexuality (or something along those lines). Fortunately, my grandparents had bought the system as part of their grandchild-spoiling agenda, so my three brothers and I frequently took to their living room floor to get our videogame fix.
Whether by the random products of biology or by divine design, the four of us perfectly matched the console’s four controller outlets. Our multiplayer gameplay developed a complex social hierarchy. Our ages, skill and physical formidability all came into play in determining our player-characters — Fox and Falco were in highest demand, while Peppy and Slippy duked it out for least desirable.
Probably confirming our parents’ fears, threats of physical violence — often carried out — accompanied many a blown lead on Corneria, our preferred multiplayer stage. Nonetheless, there are few moments in my childhood I can recall so vividly and with such fond nostalgia as my siblings and I indiscriminately throttling one another after devastating losses and joyous victories alike.
For a generation of youth who had only known a world in which space travel was extensively perpetrated by anthropomorphic cartoon animals, Star Fox held so much promise. A generation dared to hold N64 cartridges to its collective lips, blow repeatedly, throw its controllers in frustration and finally get the system to turn on. And above all, it dared to voyage among the fuzzily rendered stars.
–Matt Schnabel
Paper Mario
Mario, as a character, started off as a little pixelated man dodging Donkey Kong barrels to save the damsel in distress. He soon earned his own series of level-based platform games in which he squashed Goombas and punched question-mark boxes to save the damsel in distress.
The Super Mario Bros. series was full of fun adventures, and it soon spawned even more level-based Mario games. Dr. Mario, Super Smash Bros. and Super Mario Kart were all entertaining and successful, and they were built off of the same formula of increasingly difficult levels or maps.
One of the best games to lend story to the franchise was Paper Mario on Nintendo 64. In “Paper Mario,” our mustachioed hero is once again charged with saving Princess Peach from Bowser. Mario needs to locate the seven Star Spirits in order to defeat Bowser, and the player gets to explore the game’s cartoony overworld looking for them. The game featured a unique roleplaying game experience, with challenging puzzles and Easter eggs that predated the Internet’s ability to provide the walkthrough to any video game.
Some RPGs can be intimidating, with their seemingly infinite worlds and stories so deep you can drown in them. But Paper Mario was not.
The game had the basic elements of an RPG: non-player characters to keep the story moving, turn-based battling, a system for boosting character skills with experience points, et cetera. But Paper Mario did not bog itself down in the semantics of the prototypical RPG. Players never had to make game-altering decisions that required so much deliberation that the proverbial forest was lost for the trees. Item pickups and experience points offered variability in battles, but the game never hinged on a single decision.
Paper Mario was more of an entry-level RPG, allowing for casual decision making with enough straightforward strategy and puzzle solving to retain its sense of fun. Battles required basic timing to make the most of your turn, and you had to be careful exploring the overworld because items were sometimes hidden in the scenery or in a conversation with an NPC. The game offered challenges, but none too tricky that they came off in a “laughing at you” rather than a “laughing with you” way.
Of course, Paper Mario’s biggest strength was in its name. The game was blessed with the foundation of a successful franchise, with already popular characters with known faces and names. Many of the Mario gang had been household names for years already at the time of the game’s release. In fact, you could even play alongside some of the classic Mario baddies. In a battle style not unlike Pokémon, Mario acquired and teamed up with various enemies-turned-sidekicks, including a Koopa Trooper, a Boo and a Bomb-omb.
The overall (pun intended) goal of the typical Mario game – rescuing the princess from the bad guy – didn’t change with Paper Mario. Our hero was simply given a purposeful adventure, complete with a journey and a means of attaining the goal.
–Leo Traub
