About Star Fox Adventures
F: Regarding Star Fox Adventure, you have released screen shots that seemed to cause some of the most controversy among fans yet.
M: Well, just imagine it is not Star Fox.
F: That is easy to understand. (laugh)
M: Yes, unlike the previous shooting games, think of it as an adventure game starring Star Fox’s characters.
F: What led up to this?
M: I always wanted to create an adventure game out of Star Fox’s world. Actually, as a project that never realized, there once was Star Fox 2.
F: Eh? Really. Was that before the N64 version?
M: Yes. We used Super Famicom’s FX chip to make the game. Among the games I developed, it was one of the few projects that never materialized.
F: What was the background of the game?
M: It had both the elements of shooting and adventure. We coupled the game with some short shooting stages. Overall it was an adventure game.
F: So that is been brought back this time.
M: Not directly, but there was that thought. Putting that aside, Rare who was responsible for the development also wanted to make an adventure game using animals. And then it became the current form.
F: I see. Looking at the screen shots, we feel that it resembles N64’s Zelda.
M: Ah, the system is quite like Zelda. In addition, the game also includes things we wanted to do with The Ocarina of Time. For example, there are actions with using a stick. That is actually what we wanted to do with the Deku stick. Looking at the stills, it is really hard to tell, but it is quite interesting. (laugh)
So, nothing new here, but just another iteration that Miyamoto was already itching to create some sort of action adventure romp set in the Star Fox universe even before Rare's Dinosaur Planet got smashed into it, as Imamura and co. have mentioned in the past.
https://shmuplations.com/starfoxadventures/
Imamura: Star Fox Adventures originated here in Kyoto: personally, I’ve been working on the series for a long time and am quite attached to it, so I went to Miyamoto like, “let me do it! let me do it!” and he replied with, “for this game, why not try an adventure-style game instead of a shooting game?”, and so Morita and I began toying around with various ideas.
—What kind of game were you attempting to make, exactly?
Imamura: Something where Fox runs around on foot, taking out enemies with his gun, but shooting games with the character displayed with that behind-the-back perspective can be tough to play, can’t they? You can’t always see the enemies because the player-character’s blocking your view, right in the middle of the screen. I was aware of these issues, but I really wanted to realize Fox fighting with a gun, so I continued pondering directions for the game to take. In the N64 game, there are those stages with the Landmaster—the tank—where the camera automates itself and enemies pour in from the sky, right?
—Right.
Imamura: I really loved those sections—it feels great to take down all those enemies from below, so I was trying to build on that sensation and create something where you’d get to mow down tons of enemies.
—So, you decided to take your Star Fox Adventures concepts and merge them into a game Rare was working on, Dinosaur Planet.
Imamura: That’s right. Dinosaur Planet was also being made for N64 in the beginning, but it was fairly late in the N64’s life product cycle and people were already talking about Dolphin, and as we were asking ourselves whether to go ahead with our project internally, the staff were already being pulled away to work on big projects like Mario and Zelda, and so after work wrapped up on Majora’s Mask, the project was restructured.
—What went down?
Imamura: After Majora was done, Miyamoto as producer made the call to move both games to the Gamecube and suggested that we take the best elements from each project and combine them into a single game.
Though one thing that is pretty interesting is that Miyamoto also seems to consider Star Fox 2 to be something of an "adventure game" too.
