NJFox has been hard at work on his Krystal-focused games for a while now using off-the-shelf game engines and teaching himself game development from scratch. He truly took to heart the idea of making the games he wanted to see.

His previous work on the demo for Star Fox Adventures 2 has been available for a while. He released a new trailer for it a few weeks back.

Learning from that experience, he's been frantically completing his first demo for Star Fox Adventures Zero: Krystal's Story. This new demo offers the following new features over his previous demos:

• Full controller support
• Better graphics
• Open environments for exploration
• More models
• Up to 4 items swapable with the R-stick
• Swapping between Tricky and Kyte
• Mini-map
• Remade locations based on official in-game models from Star Fox Adventures
• Multiple enemy types
• Usable SharpClaw Cannon
• Gold bars can be dug up in Cape Claw and exchanged for expensive items
• A day-and-night cycle, allowing for sneaking up on SharpClaw when they sleep at night, and other time-sensitive events

Because this is only a demo, there are still some major limitations:

• Some of the areas are restricted from deep exploration
• No dungeons yet
• Number of items and spells are limited
• Scarab count (currency) is limited to 10 for now

NJFox's future plans for different locations include:

• Explorable dungeon with the Red Eye King boss chamber
• Underground laboratory for Dragon Rock's Great Tower
• Extended treasure rooms and mines in CloudRunner Fortress

You can download and play the game now. It's a single executable made with the Unity game engine.

Download from Google Drive

With the release of this demo, NJFox will be taking a break from these Krystal game projects to work on other, bigger projects using the experiences he's gained here. He doesn't know when he'll come back to this, but he plans to come back to it eventually.

Fearch 93 shows off his custom Krystal characters using the character creation tools of Soul Calibur 6. There's both an Adventures Tribal outfit and an Assault Jumpsuit outfit in here. Both are staff users.

For the second GameplayReviewUK community challenge, the participants were challenged to recreate the Arwing from Star Fox. Only one entry was entered, by Commie_Killer76, but he did a fantastic job. As you can see in the video, the ship is capable of VTOL, can shoot missiles, and has multiple configurations for its engines and wings. Very cool.

As you can see from this video by RenaKunisaki, work on the Krystal mod of Star Fox Adventures continues very quickly. As of now, I believe Krystal is playable in all areas of the game, with some minor hiccups. This is actually using Krystal's game object, not replacing Fox's model with Krystal's. As a result, Krystal keeps her sound effects where they exist. As of now, there are still some visual glitches, such as Krystal being too tall for some areas due to the slight difference in height between her and Fox, as well as lack of animations for parts of her and some things she was never intended to do. We'll see how much those can be improved in the future. Replacement of voice samples and sound effects might be relatively straight-forward.

You can find the full Gecko code to do this yourself (with your legitimately ripped, personal copy of Star Fox Adventures!) in the video description. Additional codes, information, and tools can be found at the Github project page. In case you were wondering, the audio desync issues are related to the video editing process, not because of the mod.

Research and continued work are discussed on the Krystal Archive Discord. For instance, they've figured out how to spawn almost any object they want. Check out this picture by Nightcast!

As rumored for a long time, Nintendo has recently added Star Fox 2 to Nintendo Online, free to download if you've paid for the service. This is the second release of the legendary game after the SNES Mini. I guess this means that Star Fox 2 is now in the category of regular releases for Nintendo, which means that there are only two Star Fox games that have never been re-released or made available digitally: Star Fox Adventures and Star Fox Assault. Hope that changes soon!

Just to confirm in case you're wondering, the Krystal Archive will be taking a break for Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday, to resume posting on Monday. Take this time to be with your family and friends, think about what you're thankful for, and enjoy the blessings you have. I'll see you all on Monday.

Oh, actually one thing: I've been hearing that Best Buy (and maybe other retailers) plan to offload their Starlink Switch starter packs with the Arwing and Fox McCloud for $10 each. I went by my local Best Buy today and found that, although they are all still listed for $60, they had several dozen on the shelf, and they looked like a recent shipment. So, if you haven't picked up the game yet, or if you wanted to make your own Godwing, see what your local Best Buy has to offer. Thanks to memer55 for the heads up and photo.

TechnicolorCosplay, a Krystal Kigurumi cosplayer, has recently started work on creating a Krystal Staff. One of the interesting aspects about this one, however, is that it actually will glow. The shaft is made of a clear acrylic tube and gold vinyl wrap, cut to resemble the actual staff markings from the game (using my Staff Texture image as reference). A blue LED will shine down the tube into a white diffuser material to create the blue glowing effect. In upcoming steps, the shaft head and end will be built, though I don't have info on how those will be built. Looking forward to more progress.

On that note, TechnicolorCosplay now has a Twitter Account. You can follow the cosplay and Staff updates there.

After the Fox, Falco, Slippy, Krystal Mario 64 Mod two months ago, this new mod has appeared. This one features their designs from Super Smash Bros Melee. They are much faster, have better movement, and can even do the reflector shine move to attack enemies. They've got sound effects and everything. Fantastic mod!

Thanks to Nightcast for finding this.

It took a while, but Nintendo has responded to the mailed copy of VixenVotaries' Krystal artbook. If you were unaware, the artbook project was an effort started in April to gather various Krystal artists together to create new Krystal artwork, which would then be compiled into a book and sent to Nintendo with a note about how special Krystal is to her fans. They wanted to show their support for Krystal being made playable in Super Smash Bros by creating a physical, tangible work of love. Later, after the book was sent to Nintendo, the project was released to the public so all Krystal fans could print their own copy.

The letter that VixenVotaries received from Nintendo expresses delight at the devotion we Krystal fans have for our beloved blue vixen. They acknowledged both the individual effort and the passion of the whole Krystal fan community. Art projects and other fan works like this that Nintendo receives are shared around the office to be enjoyed by the employees, and the book may even show up at Nintendo events in the future. As for the request to make Krystal playable, Nintendo's representative, Adam Kuta promised to pass the sentiment along. No confirmation, but we weren't really expecting one.

All in all, a good effort by everyone and a happy ending for this project. Well, ending for now. We'll see what surprising the future holds.

My fellow Krystal fans. I apologize for the distinct lack of updates this week. It wasn't a planned absence, but travel and health issues have prevented me from posting. I have things to post, but no time to do it. Please understand.

I hope to get back to it next week, but if I don't, HAPPY THANKSGIVING! Give your family and friends a hug and appreciate them and everything else you've been blessed with.