Star Fox 64 / Lylat Wars
Written by Galvatron with additions from myself, just about everything from IGN, mostly, including videos.
| Screenshots | Video 1 | Video 2 | Video 3 | Video 4 | Video 5 | Shoshinkai 1995 | Corneria beta video |
With this horribly small and badly compressed image we can see the radically different design for the shield system. Instead of a bar, it's a circle with colours which change from yellow to pink, as seen with Peppy's shield. The thing in the top right corner is new, I take it the red circles mean the number of bombs you have, and the thing underneath that is your boost/slow down bar. You can barely see it, but the lives counters is in a different place than usual: the bottom right hand corner. In the final game it's above the boost bar in the top right corner.
More small pictures ahoy, this time with the Land Master tank. Shield/bomb/boost bars are different again. Life counter is in a different place.
Hooray, an image that doesn't completely suck. Here we seem to be in the Area 6 level, and I'm pretty sure those enemies are different. Also, we finally get a decent look at those new shield/boost bars. It says "SHIELD", the two above images don't have that though. Also, the red circle things (bombs?) are missing from this image, but are in the other two. Instead, the word "BOOST" replaces them. Also, the life counter is still in a different place.
Back to shitty quality images again, here we have a shot of the prototype 4 player mode. Since it's so small I can't really tell anything different.
Hurrah, another image that doesn't suck. This time Fox is up against the boss from the Asteroid Field level. The only thing really different here (other than the stuff I've already covered several times like the life bar) is that the planet you can see in the background at the bottom of the screen is much different. In the final, the planet is smaller and grey in colour.
We get to see the first boss here. Those odd barrel roll lines are back, and the area this boss battle is taking place in is different to the final.
How they managed to get this angle I'll never know.
A preview I found from Arwing Landing. Shows a very early version of Corneria and has a couple of pictures of the first boss. Fox doesn't seem to be in all-range mode (there isn't a map) plus his health bar is in a different place (in later versions, the circle health bar moves upward) plus the boss doesn't have a health bar on screen.
I found this image here. It seems to be a very, very early shot of the game (that site refers to it as "Super Star Fox 64"), and you can tell. The picture of Fox looks very basic, and I don't even get what it's doing there in the first place. The shield bar is completely different, the game looks less detailed, and that robot enemy never appears in the final game.
Early version of Corneria. The ball circle thing was almost definitely an early version of the checkpoint circles you can fly through in the final.
Beta title screen. The only real differences are at the bottom, the copyright year is 1996 instead of 1997, and the fonts are different.
From Nintendo Power, they seemed to have gotten some images from the same beta the Nintendo 64's Player Guide magazine had. More early Corneria, the shield is once again different, as are the colours of the robot.
That level 1 boss is back. I think he has different colours than usual here. Also, you can see his life bar at the near top centre of the image, it's much different to the final version.
The Asteroid Field boss. Earlier in this article this boss was shown. Here, the boss is in a different location again, with no planet in the background. Also, this boss doesn't seem to have a life bar.
Old HUD.
Old HUD, and the enemies seem slightly different to my foggy memory.
Old HUD.
The Arwings are ludicrously shadowed to almost pitch black shapes.
Old HUD.
Old HUD.
This is a screenshot from Computer & Video Games (issue 187), showing where the Asteroid Field boss would usually be fought, but there's only a strange box there. The magazine also noted that the game was 90% complete, making this even stranger.
From the same magazine and issue, this is the same as the final, apart from the fact that the hit counter is orange. The hit counter only goes orange when you've got enough hits to receive a medal, and in Corneria, you need 150 to get one.
Same dealio here.
And again.
(all these videos are also on the IGN page just for the sake of preservation)
This video begins by showing the 4 player mode. I don't think the level is in the final game, plus the character's have pink colours in their life bars. The map is also notably different.
It then cuts to the boss of Titania. All of these videos have the prototype HUDs, so I don't take note of them.
The boss of Corneria is shown. Note the pink lasers, which appear in all of the videos.
A shot of the Zoness boss. The level itself is set at day, and the water is blue, this is different in the final. Also, I think the picture of the pirate talking to Fox is different, but I can't remember for sure.
A shot of the alternative boss you can fight on the first level. You don't get to see all the boss on the video, but he looks the same. However, there is some strange metal thing in the bottom right corner you can see for less than a second, I have no idea what it is.
From the same video, here we have some madness against the boss of the first
level, complete with crazy camera angles. You don't actually ever get to see the
boss, but his life bar is there. The camera angles are really odd here: Fox's
ship completely turns around, and flies straight past the 4th wall. You can't
ever do that in the final game. Also note that at one point, Fox blasts off a
pair of twin lasers, which are pink in colour. In the final game, you can only
ever get green or blue twin lasers (in the single player mode at least). Also,
the area Fox is in is very different to the final version.
More pink lasers, more different life/boost bars, and even more horrendous image quality. Note that the map is in a entirely different place, and looks rather obstructing. Also, the lines around Fox's Arwing are shown whenever he does a barrel roll, and look completely different than the final version.
This could be Zoness in it's early state, without the poisoned ocean and dark skies, but it's so drastically different it's hard to tell. It's interesting to point out that someone is contacting Fox, but their image is only static. Could it be Kat?
Taking on an enemy fleet in Sector Y. You have to see the video to really understand this, but the laser cannons on the ship behind the robot enemy fire really weirdly -they have weedy range and seem to fire at absolutely nothing. This also occurs at the end of the fourth video.
Fox flies through Sector X (which has a different layout from what I can tell and saw on this video), only to find this green ball. He flies straight at it and seems to collect it, so I take it that it is a power up of some kind, but I don't know what it does. Whatever that thing is, there are no green balls in the final game.
Using the Land Master tank on Titania. The level layout seems to be different, and lacks detail compared to the final version.
In this video, here we have a very different part from the introduction sequence. The camera rolls over the four Arwings, then you see them blast off from behind, with the camera scrolling right to show them all launching. A short clip of this is seen in the fifth video.
Fox in the Asteroid Field, where the layout for this level is different. You don't face two of those annoying ball dragon enemies here in the final game, that's for sure.
The only notable difference here is this text which overlaps the running of the characters.
This is actually three different videos, showcasing the "Ultra 64" and it's games at some Japanese place.
The first video begins showing clips at 1:58, starting with footage of beta Corneria, as well as a brief clip of space and a fight with Corneria's alternate boss. The design of the white level features a lot of elements from Corneria, but is drastically different, as expected. At 5:19, a short clip of a space battle is shown, showcasing the totally different cockpit, and the fact you can barely see what's going on. Amusingly, there's some guy with a Northern accent narrating throughout, and admits he never liked the SNES game.
The second video, at the 2:34 mark shows the beginning of the beta Corneria, but there don't appear to be any enemies; at least, visible ones. Note the title (Star Fox 96), and how the communications box is aligned to the right.
And the third video starts showing Star Fox at the 2 minute mark, but jumps between that and a test video of Zelda 64. It's just clips from the first video, minus that obscuring banner thing.
A YouTube video shows a early version of the first level, Corneria.
This appears to be a very early version of the map screen. The layout is completely different, with a ring of planets surrounding a
centred one (I'd guess the one is the centre is Venom), but more noticeable is the complete lack of text or anything.
This is what the first level, Corneria, looked like. It basically had a white coloured floor throughout (probably snow but I have no idea).
The level layout is completely different to the final version though. One trivia piece for long-time
Star Fox fans is that in this video, at one point, Slippy radios Fox and then flies under a
couple of bridges. This also happens in the first
Star Fox game on the SNES.
More early Corneria with it's completely different buildings.
In this video, when the boss shows up, there isn't a cutscene showing Fox's arwing changing to "all-range mode" it just happens as he flies towards the boss. Another note is that Fox's twin blasters are orange, they aren't in the final. Finally, this boss appears to have a new attack which it didn't have in the final which involved it spewing snow everywhere.
