Starfox 2 devs celebrate release, talk about the game

[NightDragon83]

mZuzek said:

NightDragon83 said:

I still don't buy Nintendo's line of thinking as to why they cancelled a 99% finished game ahead of release. The N64 wouldn't see release for another year, and StarFox was a wildly popular title when it came out for the SNES in '93, so a bonafide sequel just a couple years later would've done very well and further whet gamers' appetites for a 64-bit outing of the franchise.

I mean it's not like Nintendo stopped support of the SNES in '95... they still put out major titles like Earthbound, SMW2, DKC2, and a home port of Killer Instinct that year, and even in '96 you had major titles like SMRPG, Kirby Super Star, Ken Griffey Winning Run and DKC3 alongside the launch of the N64.

The reasoning they gave seems to make sense. EarthBound, Yoshi's Island, Donkey Kong etc. were all 2D games, they weren't revolutionary stuff graphically (well maybe DKC, but it was still a 2D game), but Star Fox being a 3D game at that point in time would look really bad if people used it in comparisons to the PS1 and such.

Still doesn't make much sense from a business perspective because a year earlier Nintendo was beating its chest with the release of the first Donkey Kong Country and a famously aggressive ad campaign that took SEGA and other rivals head on with its "you don't need expensive new hardware to enjoy this amazing game!" messaging.  This helped catapult Nintendo ahead of SEGA for good, and there was no reason to drop that type of advertising in the wake of the release of the Saturn which had gotten off to a terrible start thanks in part to its premature launch.

Nintendo should have simply released the game in spring / summer of '95 like originally planned with an ad campaign along the lines of "you don't need a $400 machine to play this amazing game!".  The game would've been a hit and kept the momentum going for Nintendo into the fall when they released heavy hitters SMW2 and DKC2 to combat Sony's launch of the PS1.