Language Warning in Video

We've got a bit of a history lesson here, folks. Sit back and enjoy!

UndyingNephalim and Adam Halpin got together on October 20th to talk about their first game project, a long-forgotten fan game called Project Kursed which developed during 2008. If I recall correctly, this was to be the first fangame to star Krystal as the main character. In the end, it turned out that no-one involved in the project actually knew what they were doing, and numerous failures in development led to the whole thing falling apart rather quickly. However, they did manage to produce some concept art, music, voice acting, and a trailer, which the Krystal Archive would help premier.

In this podcast, the two of them go over what it was like working on the project, the absolute levels of cringe involved in the trailer, and how the whole thing has been memory holed by the internet. Later, UndyingNephalim would go on to work professionally in the game industry and then create a Star Fox RTS game and the now nearly complete Star Fox: Event Horizon. (Likewise, I was at DigiPen at the time, studying game programming myself).

For my part, I was approached rather early in the project development to help promote the game. I was on-board and even submitted some voice acting auditions for some of the characters, as there was a call for voice actors at the time. I think I provided repository space on my server so they could host code and track changes. I agreed to help them premier their trailer, which was supposed to be this amazing reveal for the world. Everything was hype. I was ready to promote this game to the ends of the earth!

And then... the trailer appeared. There was an immediate sinking feeling in my stomach. I knew right away that this game was FAR from where it needed to be to be announced, and probably wouldn't ever be finished, if they thought this counted as a suitable trailer. As you'll hear in the podcast, there was almost no content in the trailer, only containing some voice acting and a single render of the 3D Kursed character model.

But, I had promised to premier the trailer, so I did it with gritted teeth and didn't say anything about my misgivings. Most people took it positively, though I don't know why. Maybe they didn't see what I saw. Certainly, from the podcast, it seems that the idea that the trailer was full of cringe wouldn't sink in for a few weeks for even the people working closest on the game!

After that, the project fell apart pretty quickly and I heard less and less from the original team, though lots of people contacted me asking for me to put in a good word for them as aspiring voice actors. Years later, I realized I still had the code repository on my server, but apparently they never used it, so I ended up removing it.

However, never let it be said that Project Kursed didn't have a positive impact on anything. As a matter of fact, because of this debacle, I immediately instituted a policy on the Krystal Archive that I would never agree to promote anything again until I was sure of its quality, AND, I would outright refuse to mention fangames in the future unless they could demonstrate real, working gameplay at the very least. No more "I have this great idea, will you tell people about it?" requests. Let that be a lesson to you up and coming game developers out there. Don't bother showing your game to anyone until you at least have a working prototype.

And here, dear friends, our story ends... but not quite. You see, the two hosts of the post-mortem tried to find copies of the original trailer, but were unable to do so. Apparently the originator of the project went out of his way to remove every trace of the project media from the internet. The hosts had to resort to describing the trailer to the listeners. It's a shame no-one has a copy of that cringe-fest...

...

But this is the KRYSTAL ARCHIVE, son! I have that trailer in my archives. Just pulled it out and watched it, in fact. I even found that they put me in the credits for something, though I don't know what for, maybe "promoted by"? Anyway, I'll have a talk with UndyingNephalim and see if he's cool with an archived re-release of the trailer and maybe a few other things like voice acting clips and concept art. If so, prepare to experience the cringe, all over again!

Tomorrow morning, we get a new (and probably last) Nintendo Direct about Super Smash Bros Ultimate before it launches December 7th. It's going to be 40 minutes long and will be followed by a livestream from Nintendo Treehouse about other holiday games! Rumor has it that there are 7 new characters coming, though I'm extremely dubious about this one.

Watch it at Nintendo's Direct Site at 10AM Eastern (7AM Pacific) on November 1st.

Hopefully we'll get to see our new favorite assist trophy in action.

Sadly, I will be on an airplane during the presentation, so I will have to catch up once I hit the ground.

Well friends! It's time to rock and roll! I know some of you already have your copy. I'm picking up mine later today. Can't wait! Post your experiences in the comments below.

Aiden and Christina of Game & Scotch read one of their comments criticizing Aiden's own harshness towards Krystal being in Smash. Taken to task by GoldenFox2109, Aiden admits he was a bit harsh and he feels the same regret over his own choice not getting in: Waluigi. Christina, on the other hand, is quite the Krystal and Star Fox Adventures supporter.

It's always good to see reason and understanding between potential rivals.

GameXplain was invited to a special presentation of Starlink in New York and got a chance to try out a bunch more of the game. In a series of videos, they talk about what they found. I summarize the interesting tidbits below.

• Once again, you can play as Fox throughout the entire game, not just some missions.
• There are some exclusive Star Fox only missions as well.
• The primary thrust of the Star Fox missions are tracking down Wolf.
• In one mission, they are investigating a dig site that Wolf attacked.
• In another, the team attacks a space outpost under Wolf's control.
• Fox's "Special Ability" in combat is to call in the rest of the Star Fox team to assist him.
• If your ship is shot down, you can restart. Alternatively, you can pop on another ship and continue playing from there, which means having multiple ships gives a small advantage.
• Multiplayer is seamless drop-in-drop-out. A friend can join you on missions just by grabbing a controller and the game goes to splitscreen mode.
• The Star Fox missions are spread out on different planets, not all in one area.
• The Wolf cutscene we saw previously was just part of a larger scene.
• Wolf has some kind of installation at a place named "Tundria", which appears to be an ice planet.
• The Starlink ships have stackable parts, so you can have a wing on a wing on a wing, and so on.
• You can put more weight on one wing than another and it will affect flight.
• Wolf is in Atlas in order to find something called "Electrum", and he has hired a bunch of local goons to be his muscle.
• As far as they know, you cannot play as Falco, Slippy, or Peppy.
• You cannot shoot down Slippy (or any other teammate) when they come to assist you. They tried.
• It appears that some of the slower performance of the Switch version might have been addressed with these more recent builds.
• Wolf seems to be straight up cool in this game. Actually, all the characters seem to be putting their best foot forward. It's nice to see!
• Remixed versions of classic Star Fox song are used in some areas and events.
• The game has multi-part missions. First you're attacking a base turrets, then you attack fighters, then a boss ship, then base recon.

Gameplay

Discussion

In today's Nintendo Direct, we got to see some cool footage and more voice acting from Starlink: Battle for Atlas. Nintendo is really hyping up the Star Fox aspect of this game, which sees the characters integrated throughout the story. Overall, it looks great. Plus, we finally get to see Wolf, who looks a lot like his Super Smash Bros Ultimate form.

Some of you have expressed concern that this isn't a REAL Star Fox game. Is it true? Is this a fake game with fake characters?

Yes. You see, when Fox issues an order, "Star Fox! Form up on me!", Falco replies, "Falco here! I got you covered." Not even a HINT of sarcasm. Pretty sure Falco's been replaced with someone else. :P

As mentioned in today's Nintendo Tweets, the delayed Nintendo Direct is coming tomorrow, September 13th at 3PM Pacific, 6PM Eastern. It's going to feature new Nintendo 3DS and Switch games. Maybe we'll even see more of the Starlink Star Fox cameos and Krystal Assist Trophy from Super Smash Bros Ultimate.

I hope you will all watch it together. I know we on the Discord channel will be.

23 minutes of gameplay

Impressions

Developer Interview

GameExplain was finally able to show off tons of videos about StarLink when they got a chance to demo the game for 2 hours of gameplay. We get two full cutscenes with Fox, Falco, Slippy, and Peppy. Plus, we get to see how the game starts off and how the Star Fox team is integrated into the story. Below are all the important facts I saw and heard.

• Fox McCloud verbally confirms that his home planet is Papetoon.
• The Star Fox team came to the Atlas star system in pursuit of Wolf.
• They, of course, have Peppy saying "Do a Barrel Roll!" to Fox.
• They are using the same voice actors from Star Fox Zero.
• They get caught up in a disaster that forces the two teams to work together until they can part ways, but Fox wants to stick together until all the mysteries are solved.
• Peppy, Slippy, and Falco are the main pilots with Fox. Krystal is no-where to be seen so far.
• The characterizations of the Star Fox team seem to be true to the characters, right down to the campy dialog.
• It looks like they integrated the Star Fox characters pretty well into the cutscenes and gameplay, in some cases, what are clearly brand new cutscenes just for the interactions between the two teams.
• The game has a cipher language that one character uses, though I've already confirmed that it is not Saurian, nor is it a simple shift cipher.
• The toys to life parts, such as the wings and weapons, can be attached backwards if you so choose, meaning you can actually have weapons that shoot backwards if you want.
• The events in the game sometimes happen in real time, so for example, if you receive a distress signal from an outpost, but don't help out, that outpost may be destroyed later on.
• Once you complete the initial part of the game's story, it appears that the game opens up and you can more or less travel to any planet in any order, provided you can survive.
• If you have physical parts for the toys-to-life can be scanned and used for about one week before they expire. After which, you have to scan them again. If you bought the parts digitally, they stay forever. Not sure how it works if you earn the parts in-game.
• At E3 2017, Nintendo approached the StarLink team, and asked for a demo of the game. Then they asked for another demo and another demo, with all of Nintendo's big game designers in the audience. Nintendo seemed to like it, so they reached out and proposed a collaboration to the original Star Fox development team.
• Nintendo was very collaborative with the team to make a nice back and forth development experience.
• The graphics resolution on the Switch version is slightly lower than other versions, but the gameplay is the same.

via GoNintendo

Oh, and it looks like two of the final four character slots are filled on the StarLink website, so the chances of a full playable Star Fox team, even without Krystal, appears to be no longer in the cards. There are two slots left, however.

It's tough, you know? Waiting for Starlink and Super Smash Bros Ultimate to come out and fill the Star Fox-sized hole in all our hearts. But in the meantime, Everspace, the roguelike space sim with freeform dogfights and exploration is out now. It was released during the fanfare of Gamescom last week. This is a port of the PC version that came out a couple years ago on Steam. Reviews seem generally positive.

Check out GreasyMOJO's sped-up Krystal digital drawing process. He originally posted the drawing in real-time, with audio commentary, but the microphone settings were bad and it was very long, so he uploaded this audio-free, speed version. You can also check out the Finished Artwork.