For those of you unaware, Nintendo has suffered its second asset leak this year. The first one in May contained mostly Pokémon games, 3DS games, and the development documents and files for the Nintendo Wii console. Then, a few days ago, there was a second, much larger leak.

I'm just becoming aware of the nature and extent of this large-scale leak. I'm told it contains a tremendous amount of information and outright source code for N64 games, including Star Fox 64, as well as prototypes and development assets for Star Fox 2, which was in development just prior to the N64. From what people are telling me, numerous unused Star Fox 2 characters and sprites are being discovered. And from Star Fox 64, the source code apparently has the original, full-quality audio clips from all the voice acting. Many hackers and fans are pouring over the data right now, looking for secrets.

This would all be very exciting if the data was discovered in legitimately obtained games, like what is done with Star Fox Adventures. However, this code and data is literally stolen. The situation is changing very quickly, and there can be no doubt that those responsible for the leak will be charged if they haven't been charged already. I suspect that other people who download the leaked files, analyze them, and post confidential content might also be subject to legal risk. As a result, the Krystal Archive will not be covering ongoing news of the leak or the data obtained from it for the time being.

Stay safe, don't break the law. Who knows, maybe Nintendo will officially release their source code for ancient games in the spirit of historical preservation, as they sometimes do with development artwork and design sketches.

Picture by Pexels

Ayano has been slowly getting back into cosplay photoshoots and antics lately. Glad to see her recovered from her downtime a while back. Here she is talking about how much fun she was having with Ring Fit Adventure. There's also a quick video.

In the past few months, UndyingNephalim has shifted priorities back towards his Star Fox fangame project, it seems. Recently, we've gotten an in-universe start menu screen. It features a holographic projection of the Lylat system in the middle of the Great Fox's bridge while the various Star Fox team members do work in the background. All of this is accompanied by a chilled out groove based on Star Fox 64's menu music.

Next up, a recent video showcasing a much more polished heads up display UI for the gameplay. It shows with large bars and text what teammates are saying, health, item status, boost status, and more.

Finally, a video from last month, which shows off the mission briefing and weapons loadout screens, along with some ground mission footage.

With less than 24 hours remaining, Ben Hickling's Star Fox-inspired game has already had more than two times the requested funds pledged on Kickstarter. In fact, the Kickstarter has been a tremendous success already, having met his funding goal in the first 24 hours. I personally funded at the highest level, so look forward to a Krystal-related constellation in the final game.

There's also a new free demo available from Steam that fixes some bugs and adds a second demo level. Check them out, and pledge if you haven't already!

View EX Zodiac on Kickstarter

View EX Zodiac on Steam

Since the very beginning, one of the Holy Grails of the Krystal fandom was the desire to play through Star Fox Adventures as Krystal. It was known for a long time that a certain ActionReplay code could allow Krystal to be playable, but it was very glitchy, only some areas could be accessed without crashing the game, and Krystal couldn't use her Staff. In the last few years, research by BvqR zxi5 showed that getting Krystal to appear and be somewhat usable in other parts of the game was possible with some more heavy-duty code modifications. Unfortunately, his research wasn't widely known, and that's partially my fault because I never got around to posting about his work until years after first finding it. In the meantime, several different people independently started working on exploring Star Fox Adventures' code with the goal of getting Krystal playable. It all came to a head with at least three of these researchers joining the Krystal Archive Discord to collaborate in a shared space. A lot of things have been discovered just in the last few months!

Which brings us to the big news. RenaKunisaki has released his mod:

Star Fox Adventures: Amethyst Edition

In addition to allowing Krystal to be playable throughout the game with minimal issues, it offers lots of little quality of life improvements and options. Here's just some of the features:

• Swap between Fox and Krystal
• Climbing ladders and walls is faster
• Option to jump down from walls
• Ability to fast-forward the game with a 3rd controller
• Much more detailed and complete Sound Test Mode
• Map size and transparency controls
• Ability to do free movement anywhere
• Warp between areas, even some test areas
• Auto-saving option
• Increase or decrease game speed
• Increase or decrease camera field of view
• Reduced menu screen voice acting
• Removed confirmation on the manual save option
• And many more features useful for debugging and further development

RenaKunisaki and the others will continue to develop and improve on this mod. If you want to try it yourself, you'll need to either have a legitimately obtained copy of Star Fox Adventures (version 1.00 only, not the Player's Choice version) to use with an emulator, or a modded GameCube system. From there, it's a relatively simple matter to apply the mod patch to the original game's code using software detailed on RenaKunisaki's site.

I want to put extra emphasis on this last point: Do not illegally download or share game software. Do not ask how to do it or help others do it. There are legitimate methods for making your own copies of your own software, so only use those methods with legitimately obtained software.

A musical arrangement of Krystal's first appearance in Star Fox Adventures (the beginning of the game) and her battle with General Scales' Galleon. Very nice music by VGSymphony. Art by Yalsha.

Mentioned previously here, here, and here, NYALICE has been hard at work on the new Krystal fursuit, which made waves initially for its realistic looking mask. The armor, clothing, fingernails, bodysuit, jewelry, mask, tattoos, and shoes are all done, assuming there's no further tweaks desired. The next step will probably be creating Krystal's Staff. Progress has been detailed via twitter:

• Necklace and Fingernails
• Jewelry Prototypes 1
• Jewelry Prototypes 2
• Painting Details 1
• Painting Details 2
• Staff Design 1
• Staff Design 2
• Staff Design 3
• First Full Assembly
• Full Assembly 2
• Full Assembly 3

Looking great, NYALICE!

Over the past 5 days or so, I've been hard at work recreating the Star Fox Adventures logo from scratch. I managed to get it very close using vectors (SVG) to create images that can scale up infinitely in size. These are the highest resolution logos you can get now. I plan to do the other Star Fox logos too, eventually. I also created simplified and flattened (two-color) versions of the logo. Each PNG export version here is 2600 by 768 pixels. (The SVGs were converted to PNGs via saveSvgAsPng by exupero.)

Simplified Version

Flat Version

The vectorized versions are also available: Original (20KB), Simplified (12KB), and Flat (4KB).

You are free to use these images and vectors in your project, but please credit the Krystal Archive and StarFox.org.

Ben Hickling has been hard at work on his new Star Fox inspired retro arcade shooter, EX-Zodiac. The game is about to do a Kickstarter campaign, but before that, you can download and play a demo version right now, for free, thanks to the Steam Game Festival. Check out the game page for the details. Some time later, the full game will go into Early Access, where you can play the game as it is being developed.

I was able to get it and play it just now. It plays very smooth and seems very polished so far. The demo only contains the first level, however I was not able to get past the first level anyway because I only have access to keyboard controls. The game is clearly better suited to a traditional controller, though you can certainly play it with keyboard controls and even remap all the buttons. But put a controller in my hand and I can tell that I would feel right at home. Give the demo a try!

Steam Page

Heads up! I have been working on some large-scale organization projects and some other stuff in the background. I need some time to get everything together. So until that's done, I will be reducing my posts, more-so than I already have been. I will still try and post if there are any really big stories, of course.

Sorry about that, but it will be necessary to continue posting consistently in the future, as well as allowing me to create larger projects. I hope you will enjoy what I have in store. Should be back to normal within a week or two.