January 31, 2005 | 6:40 PM PST
by: Lucas DeWoody
Chapter 1 - Engage Enemy Fighters, Prepare for Launch
No one in the world doubts the fact that Nintendo single-handedly has the largest collection of in-house video game franchises in the world. Each of of these is unique in it's own way, and the majority of them are household names. Each of these franchises have a unique backstory as to how it was created. In this article, we're going to talk about the Nintendo franchise that almost wasn't: the one and only Star Fox. The original Star Fox was released in 1993, but the events leading up to it's creation begin far earlier than that, more like a generation earlier.
The creation of Star Fox begins with with the talents of two men, Giles Goddard and Dylan Cuthbert. Both of these two men were born and grew up in Britain, and lived through England's technology boom in the 1980's. Giles Goddard got into programming when he was around 10 years old when his mom gave him a Sinclair Spectrum computer for Christmas. Using that, he learned how to program in BASIC. When he was in his teens, he saved up to buy an Amiga. Using his new computer, he spent a lot of time messing around creating 3D tech demos, but tended to stay away from actual game design. Dylan Cuthbert first got into programming when a friend of his lent him an electronic drum kit. He wrote simple games on it just to see what he could do, and managed to teach himself how to program.
The two men both went to college looking for a life in the then-new computer industry. After spending some time in school, Cuthbert was getting bored. Back then, the college courses were nothing like what we have today, and he wasn't learning the things he wanted to do. That's when fate smiled on him when he managed to land a job at Argonaut Software, thanks to Jez San, the current boss and owner of the company. Goddard has also left College and sent a few of his 3D demos to Argonaut hoping to find a job. He was hired. The two men went to work at the company programming for games on the Macintosh like Starglider II, but Argonaut had other plans. They wanted to break into the home video game console market. Their first sad attempt was working on a British system known as the Konix Multi-System. It was a horrible market flop and died before their projects were completed.
Around the time, the NES had been released in limited quantities throughout England. The popularity of consoles was nowhere near the popularity of Personal Computers in England, unlike the rest of the world. But Argonaut wanted a piece of the action. Knowing the power of the console market in other countries, Jez San had the company begin doing 3D graphic experiments on the NES hardware. The most they could accomplish was some simple wireframe models running in real time, but the mere fact that it could be done on the NES got them some attention. By the time that was done, the Game Boy had been released, and so they jumped on that. Cuthbert programmed a game by himself called Eclipse, the first, and one of the extreme few 3D games ever attempted or released on Game Boy. The game was a technical marvel.
Here you had a full 3D shooter running on a monochrome 4MhZ portable. The game was licensed by Mindscape, but Jez had bigger plans. He took the game to the Consumer Electronics Show, and presented it to Nintendo of America. They were so amazed that they flew Jez and Dylan straight to Kyoto, Japan to have a meeting with Shigeru Miyamoto and President Hiroshi Yamauchi. Immediately thereafter, Nintendo utilized its "war chest" of funds, and bought all the rights to the game from Mindscape. They then flew Goddard and his team straight over from England. They joined R&D 1, the team created by Game Boy creator and technical genius, Gunpei Yokoi. The team at Argonaut didn't live in Japan yet, so in the meantime they just flew back and forth across the world as needed on Nintendo's bankroll. Yamauchi had the game's name changed from Eclipse to X, and the game was released for the Game Boy in early 1990. It achieved moderate success, and earned the team their keep at Nintendo. Now it was time for them to start working directly within the company on a project, and thus they're attention was turned to the prototype of Nintendo's upcoming console: the Super Famicom.
Nintendo and Argonaut had begun to work to work together on ways to increase the graphical flair of their games. Shigeru Miyamoto presented the team with prototypes of unfinished Super Famicom games: Super Mario World, Pilotwings, and F-Zero. Each of the three games used the system's Mode 7 effects, some more than others, but there were some problems. Nintendo had managed to accomplish some radically impressive rotation effects in Super Mario World, but Pilotwings and F-Zero were having trouble. Pilotwings had an immensely troublesome problem with the background scrolling effects. The game used Mode 7 to its full potential, but there were problems maintaining the smoothness of the scrolling. When in the air, you couldn't see it, but when you landed, you could see the game jerk one pixel at a time to the left or right as the plane slowed down. It was a very ugly mess, but Nintendo's programmers managed to cover it up as best as they could, and it wasn't as much of an issue because it was a first-generation game. F-Zero, however, was facing a bigger dilemna. Miyamoto wanted to add a two-player split screen option to the game, but the SNES's meager 3.57 Mhz processor was far too weak to support two Mode 7 screens scrolling at 60 FPS by itself, and the game would look poor at any lower framerate. Nintendo asked Argonaut if they could create a chip in a three month window that could do 3D polygons, thus allowing the plane in Pilotwings to rotate in full 3D. Jez and Dylan told them this was possible, but not in just three months. Nintendo couldn't delay the Super Famicom any longer, so that was out, but Jez did say they could talk to their friends at Flair Technology who could create the special 3D chip for the cartridges that would aid the system CPU and allow for much more freedom to do sprite scaling to greater effect in the future. Jez had to pull a few strings, but they got it done. Nintendo wound up developing a DSP chip to aid the scrolling in the mode 7 games on their own.
Nintendo realized just how helpful Argonaut could be to the company, so they decided to sign a contract with them to work exclusively. The contract bound Argonaut to a three game condition, meaning that Argonaut had to stay partners with Nintendo until three full projects had been completed. The DSP2 Chip was created in 1992, and was effectively a cheaper version of the SNES's CPU that could be packaged into the cartridge and act as a co-processor to further extend the hardware's abilities. The first game from Nintendo to use the chip came from Shigeru Miyamoto's team. You'd know it as the famous Super Mario Kart. It featured two player split screen racing and smoother scrolling than any game before. The game would have been impossible on SNES without the chip. If you'd like a comparison of how Mode 7 looks with and without a DSP chip, then compare systems. Super Mario Kart on the SNES used the DSP chip to create added smoothness to the scrolling and have more moving objects on screen. Chips could be added to aid the games because it used the cartridge format. The Sega CD, on the other hand, used disc-based media. As a result, the hardware was non-upgradeable. This meant that its scaling and rotation effects were limited to that of the Super NES without the DSP chip. Compare the scaling smoothness of Sonic CD and Super Mario Kart to see the difference. Sonic CD is noticeably more jerky in movements and the floating UFO's tend to "pop" up faster and more unnaturally than how the karts in Super Mario Kart tend to smoothly move towards the screen. But Argonaut had another little trick up their sleeve. They were still working with Flair Technology to fulfill Nintendo's desire of full 3D on the SNES. But how would that work out, and was it even possible?
No one in the world doubts the fact that Nintendo single-handedly has the largest collection of in-house video game franchises in the world. Each of of these is unique in it's own way, and the majority of them are household names. Each of these franchises have a unique backstory as to how it was created. In this article, we're going to talk about the Nintendo franchise that almost wasn't: the one and only Star Fox. The original Star Fox was released in 1993, but the events leading up to it's creation begin far earlier than that, more like a generation earlier.
The creation of Star Fox begins with with the talents of two men, Giles Goddard and Dylan Cuthbert. Both of these two men were born and grew up in Britain, and lived through England's technology boom in the 1980's. Giles Goddard got into programming when he was around 10 years old when his mom gave him a Sinclair Spectrum computer for Christmas. Using that, he learned how to program in BASIC. When he was in his teens, he saved up to buy an Amiga. Using his new computer, he spent a lot of time messing around creating 3D tech demos, but tended to stay away from actual game design. Dylan Cuthbert first got into programming when a friend of his lent him an electronic drum kit. He wrote simple games on it just to see what he could do, and managed to teach himself how to program.
The two men both went to college looking for a life in the then-new computer industry. After spending some time in school, Cuthbert was getting bored. Back then, the college courses were nothing like what we have today, and he wasn't learning the things he wanted to do. That's when fate smiled on him when he managed to land a job at Argonaut Software, thanks to Jez San, the current boss and owner of the company. Goddard has also left College and sent a few of his 3D demos to Argonaut hoping to find a job. He was hired. The two men went to work at the company programming for games on the Macintosh like Starglider II, but Argonaut had other plans. They wanted to break into the home video game console market. Their first sad attempt was working on a British system known as the Konix Multi-System. It was a horrible market flop and died before their projects were completed.
Around the time, the NES had been released in limited quantities throughout England. The popularity of consoles was nowhere near the popularity of Personal Computers in England, unlike the rest of the world. But Argonaut wanted a piece of the action. Knowing the power of the console market in other countries, Jez San had the company begin doing 3D graphic experiments on the NES hardware. The most they could accomplish was some simple wireframe models running in real time, but the mere fact that it could be done on the NES got them some attention. By the time that was done, the Game Boy had been released, and so they jumped on that. Cuthbert programmed a game by himself called Eclipse, the first, and one of the extreme few 3D games ever attempted or released on Game Boy. The game was a technical marvel.
Here you had a full 3D shooter running on a monochrome 4MhZ portable. The game was licensed by Mindscape, but Jez had bigger plans. He took the game to the Consumer Electronics Show, and presented it to Nintendo of America. They were so amazed that they flew Jez and Dylan straight to Kyoto, Japan to have a meeting with Shigeru Miyamoto and President Hiroshi Yamauchi. Immediately thereafter, Nintendo utilized its "war chest" of funds, and bought all the rights to the game from Mindscape. They then flew Goddard and his team straight over from England. They joined R&D 1, the team created by Game Boy creator and technical genius, Gunpei Yokoi. The team at Argonaut didn't live in Japan yet, so in the meantime they just flew back and forth across the world as needed on Nintendo's bankroll. Yamauchi had the game's name changed from Eclipse to X, and the game was released for the Game Boy in early 1990. It achieved moderate success, and earned the team their keep at Nintendo. Now it was time for them to start working directly within the company on a project, and thus they're attention was turned to the prototype of Nintendo's upcoming console: the Super Famicom.
Nintendo and Argonaut had begun to work to work together on ways to increase the graphical flair of their games. Shigeru Miyamoto presented the team with prototypes of unfinished Super Famicom games: Super Mario World, Pilotwings, and F-Zero. Each of the three games used the system's Mode 7 effects, some more than others, but there were some problems. Nintendo had managed to accomplish some radically impressive rotation effects in Super Mario World, but Pilotwings and F-Zero were having trouble. Pilotwings had an immensely troublesome problem with the background scrolling effects. The game used Mode 7 to its full potential, but there were problems maintaining the smoothness of the scrolling. When in the air, you couldn't see it, but when you landed, you could see the game jerk one pixel at a time to the left or right as the plane slowed down. It was a very ugly mess, but Nintendo's programmers managed to cover it up as best as they could, and it wasn't as much of an issue because it was a first-generation game. F-Zero, however, was facing a bigger dilemna. Miyamoto wanted to add a two-player split screen option to the game, but the SNES's meager 3.57 Mhz processor was far too weak to support two Mode 7 screens scrolling at 60 FPS by itself, and the game would look poor at any lower framerate. Nintendo asked Argonaut if they could create a chip in a three month window that could do 3D polygons, thus allowing the plane in Pilotwings to rotate in full 3D. Jez and Dylan told them this was possible, but not in just three months. Nintendo couldn't delay the Super Famicom any longer, so that was out, but Jez did say they could talk to their friends at Flair Technology who could create the special 3D chip for the cartridges that would aid the system CPU and allow for much more freedom to do sprite scaling to greater effect in the future. Jez had to pull a few strings, but they got it done. Nintendo wound up developing a DSP chip to aid the scrolling in the mode 7 games on their own.
Nintendo realized just how helpful Argonaut could be to the company, so they decided to sign a contract with them to work exclusively. The contract bound Argonaut to a three game condition, meaning that Argonaut had to stay partners with Nintendo until three full projects had been completed. The DSP2 Chip was created in 1992, and was effectively a cheaper version of the SNES's CPU that could be packaged into the cartridge and act as a co-processor to further extend the hardware's abilities. The first game from Nintendo to use the chip came from Shigeru Miyamoto's team. You'd know it as the famous Super Mario Kart. It featured two player split screen racing and smoother scrolling than any game before. The game would have been impossible on SNES without the chip. If you'd like a comparison of how Mode 7 looks with and without a DSP chip, then compare systems. Super Mario Kart on the SNES used the DSP chip to create added smoothness to the scrolling and have more moving objects on screen. Chips could be added to aid the games because it used the cartridge format. The Sega CD, on the other hand, used disc-based media. As a result, the hardware was non-upgradeable. This meant that its scaling and rotation effects were limited to that of the Super NES without the DSP chip. Compare the scaling smoothness of Sonic CD and Super Mario Kart to see the difference. Sonic CD is noticeably more jerky in movements and the floating UFO's tend to "pop" up faster and more unnaturally than how the karts in Super Mario Kart tend to smoothly move towards the screen. But Argonaut had another little trick up their sleeve. They were still working with Flair Technology to fulfill Nintendo's desire of full 3D on the SNES. But how would that work out, and was it even possible?
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