Star Fox is about four animals who fly plane-like spaceships and use those to fight aliens and bad guys. There's a fox, a bird, a rabbit, and a toad and they always give you advice and the bad guy is a monkey who is sometimes a face or a brain and every now and then you go toe to toe with your rival team, who is also four animals.
Yep, that's about it.
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"And you thought it would sound crazy," said the bird with the bazooka.
The Star Fox games have you take control of Fox McCloud and fly around shooting things in his spaceship called an Arwing. If you need help figuring out which one Fox is, he's the one in the cool suit. The other obviously named members of the team are Falco Lombardi, the cocky cool guy of the group, Peppy Hare, the wise advice giving one, and Slippy Toad, the technical advisor with the voice of a thousand headaches.
"Hey Slippy, why is your ship crashing?" "My ship isn't--"
As annoying as that damn frog was, part of the charm of the series was the fact that the all of the characters talked to one another over the course of each mission. In the original Super Nintendo game, Star Fox, the characters made speech like noises at one another accompanied with text. It wasn't until Star Fox 64, for the Nintendo 64, that the characters got real voices and, subsequently, actual personality.
If you listen to this with your eyes closed, this neat thing happens where you go insane.
Go google 'Do a barrel roll' right now. Yeah, that's how big it's gotten.
Falco always says something cool but rude, Slippy would whine about something, and Peppy would give you advice whether you cared or not. Peppy's interjections of random advice seemed to stick with a lot of people. In particular, his suggestion to 'do a barrell roll' (0:17 in the above video) has gone on to become a thing all on its own.
As for the games themselves, they're your standard 'fly all over the place and shoot down everything that does the same' genre of game. You fly around different planets, shooting down everything that exists. Sometimes you shoot things on a desert, sometimes you shoot things over lava, sometimes you shoot things underwater, and sometimes you get to have a dog fight, or should I say a FOX fight, with the rival pilot team, Star Wolf.
You will never guess which one of these guys the team is named after.
Almost the entire series stuck to the formula of fly around and shoot things forever. Only one game dared to stray of that path and had Fox explore a planet on foot. The planet in question? DINOSAUR PLANET.
Named after the rich history of paleontology the planet has.
The aptly named Star Fox Adventures, for the Nintendo Gamecube, saw Fox go an adventure without his ship for the first time. The game received generally positive reviews, but longtime fans of the series were upset that the game deviated too far from the classic formula.
As a standalone game, it's pretty solid. You solve puzzles, fight enemies, and collect artifacts. For the most part the game holds up.
As for the voice acting, that's a whole other planet.
You know, I can't imagine why.
Almost all of the voice acting sounds like an American kid who just heard British people for the first time and is trying it out by speaking with an obnoxiously blatant cockney accent.
The only character who doesn't have a weirdly British voice is the character of Prince Tricky, the young dino who follows and helps you on your adventure. What he lacks in tea and crumpets, he more than makes up for it by being an in game reminder as to why you threw your Tamagotchi away.
"Hey Tricky, why are you choking?" "I'm not--"
While Tricky did help you out in a number of ways, he would get all grumpy and not do anything until you fed him. Walking around made him hungry, helping made him hungry, complaining he was hungry made him more hungry. The only thing he would eat were blue mushrooms that, of course, bounced away from you as soon as they spotted you. In order to collect them for your annoying dog, you either had to wait for nightfall, so they would fall asleep, or hit the with your weapon so they would get dazed.
"And, coincidentally, the reason you hate yourself right now."
The game also introduced the character of Krystal into the series. She would go on to be Fox's love interest and later a member of team Star Fox. More importantly, she's the character that gave furries validation for what they believed in.
If you can't guess what a furry is from this picture, don't google it. Seriously, it's weird.
All in all the Star Fox series is great for both serious gamers and those who just want to shoot shit. The characters are all very likable and the locations you visit are all unique.
For Smash Bros. 3DS, the series gave us both Fox and Falco as playable characters as well as Corneria, the first planet you visit in both Star Fox and Star Fox 64, as a stage.
That does not look like regulation flying height, SLIPPY.
There you have it, Star Fox games. Fun for the whole family, but challenging enough that you're not gonna fall asleep. The next series is somewhat like that as well. Cushy at times, but at others, it can be a bit of a nightmare.
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