![]() I think Star Fox should focus on its strength of characters and music and try other genres. Honestly if it weren't for the endearing characters, awesome music and the fandom it cultivated, Star Fox would've just been another in a long line of forgotten, faceless rail shooters. Star Fox has remained relevant for a lot of reasons other than it being a rail shooter. This is partly why Nintendo keeps trying new things with the series, be it gameplay styles or gimmicky controls. I don't think having an Arwing fly through scripted levels is going to move millions of units and revive the franchise, especially since the Switch is not really a powerhouse system anyway. My feeling is that Star Fox's early success was an anomaly for an otherwise modestly successful genre that mostly relied on technical showcases in the early days of 3D graphics. Even then, the success of rail shooters seems to mostly stem from them being technical showcases, and Star Fox's first two titles are by far the most popular, likely because of their novelty factor for cartridge-based consoles. They are very niche, and are not popular in today's market. Simply put, much like side scrolling shmups from the 80s and 90s, rail shooters just aren't a thing anymore. They are not appealing to enough people to keep a franchise alive. No matter how much gamers harp on about how good those games are, they simply do not sell well. The Sin & Punishment series was never big, and the sequel on Wii sold so poorly it pretty much killed Treasure. ![]() The latter's remake isn't doing great either from the looks of it. Even Sega's own rail shooter franchises like Space Harrier and Panzer Dragoon never got huge. Over time, as graphics improved, this became less of a selling point.Įven Kid Icarus Uprising, the heralded return of a dormant IP, headlined by Sakurai himself, barely scratched a million sales. They often would use the rail system as a way to showcase FMV graphics or impressive scenes. Most of these relied on technical prowess to wow audiences. Some of these did okay, but nothing was a huge hit. Stuff like Iridion 3D or Star X on GBA, Turbo Eclipse Turbo on PS1, Sewer Shark on Sega CD, Nano Assault on 3DS. There were other attempts at rail shooters on different consoles. They got a brief revival with the Wii because of the nature of the Wiimote, but didn't take the world by storm. Rail shooters were fairly popular about this time, especially in arcades with their lightgun game brethern like Area 51 and Time Crisis, but most of them died off. It went on to sell 4 million units.Īnd here is about where I think rail shooters relevance mostly died off. It was the first game to have rumble features, it was a notable for its voice acting, and was another technical show case. Star Fox 64 was like an event, and took heavy cinematic inspiration. It sold just shy of 3 million units and was a technical showcase. Star Fox on SNES was jaw dropping at the time, since polygonal games were just not a common thing, especially on consoles, and especially on the SNES. It's hard to find profit figures for these old games, but they were likely decently popular for being technical showcases, but quickly forgotten about because they weren't terribly deep. Let's take a look at the rail shooter genre in general.īefore Star Fox, you had games like Starglider or Starblade. ![]() In fact, I wonder if it wouldn't certainly sink the chances of the franchise catching on again. I was thinking about how often the future of Star Fox is brought up, and how often the response is "just make it a rail shooter like Star Fox 64, without gimmicks" and I feel like hinging the future of the series on it being a rail shooter is an odd take. Use the text spoiler tag by doing the following: (#s "Insert Spoilers") You can tag a post as a spoiler by pressing the 'tag as a spoiler' button. Submitting a referral link from Otaku Mode will result in post deletion and a possible ban. No advertisements for anything outside of official Star Fox products. Only posts related to Star Fox news, discussion and fan work. Try to use proper grammar when commenting or making self posts. The shrine was accessible through a series of arches, thus inspiring the gameplay. The game concept was inspired by a shrine to a fox god who could fly, and which Shigeru Miyamoto visited regularly. Later sequels added more directional freedom as the series progressed. The original game was a forward-scrolling 3D Sci-Fi rail shooter. Star Fox is a video game series published by Nintendo. ![]()
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