It's that time again! This week's Star Fox Assault cutscene. It's the second pre-rendered cutscene in the game. After being briefed on the situation by General Pepper, the Star Fox team sprints to their Arwings to enter the massive fray in orbit over Fortuna.

This is the Waifu2x-enhanced version of the tiny pre-rendered frames to bring this video all the way up to 4K resolution. We get to see Krystal jump into her Arwing as the rest of the team does the same, which I think is far cooler than characters just standing around, interesting dialog notwithstanding.

We also have the "original resolution version," which has the subtitles.

Lastly, if you're into the original Japanese, there's the Japanese 4K Version and the Japanese Original Resolution Verion too, for your viewing pleasure.

Over at OCRemix.org, the massive video game remixing community, the amazing musicians are hard at work on a new Star Fox album called Lylat System Clear. It's going to feature most memorable Star Fox themes and will include several character-specific themes. Yes, Krystal's getting her own song! There will be voice acting, singing, and genres of every kind. With about 50 tracks, it's a huge undertaking.

When will it be released? Well, all tracks are due by July 1st, 2018, after which they will compile and edit the tracks into the final album. The expected launch date for the album was planned for July, but it may get pushed to September 2018 or even January 2019. You can follow the progress on the Organization Topic and the Project Document.

Today marks the 25th anniversary of Star Fox. On February 21st, 1993, Star Fox for the SNES was released in Japan. It was a pivotal moment: the first polygonal game by Nintendo. The research learned in this game, and its sequel Star Fox 2 (recently released for the first time), would go on to help build such other classics as Super Mario 64. This was not the first 3D game by any means, but it was in important one, and certainly the most popular 3D console game of its era. The Star Fox series would go on to sell millions of games, with many variations in gameplay, technology, and developer, for better or worse.

Here's to you Star Fox! You have had a rough time recently, but we know you have amazing potential if utilized well. I think I speak for most when I say that I hope for a brighter future for Lylat. Bring on the next chapter in the Star Fox story.

Feel old yet? On this day, 13 years ago, Star Fox Assault was launched for the first time in America. The states got the game before the other regions, even Japan. It also happens to be Valentine's Day. How fitting that a game with Fox and Krystal being awkward around each other while a third interloper, Panther, tries to steal her affection.

As with the Honeymoon cutscene before, this is a pre-rendered cutscene. Star Fox Assault stored it as a badly compressed 640 by 336 pixel 30 frame per second video that was then stretched vertically. I used the amazing waifu2x-caffe to upscale the frames to 4K resolution, along with other improvements. This is the best you're going to see!

This is the first cutscene of the entire game, where the Star Fox team is called into action during a massive battle above Fortuna. Since we have finished showing off in-game cutscenes that feature Krystal with the Queen Escapes cutscene last week, the only Krystal-related cutscenes remaining are the pre-rendered cutscenes. As before, I plan to release a new one once per week.

I also included an "original resolution" version (above) that features the subtitles. In my exploration, I found that YouTube actually over-compresses these lower resolution videos due to their 4:3 aspect ratio. Eventually, I will release the original files for viewing off YouTube, so you can see them at exactly their native resolution.

As for the Japanese versions, there are no major differences in visuals in this cutscene over the English version. The only difference I spotted was the relative volume of the "incoming message alert" noise is much louder in the English version than the Japanese version. However, as we start going into other cutscenes, there will be some significant visual differences between the two versions.

Check out the Fortuna Intro - Japanese 4K and Fortuna Intro - Japanese Original Resolution to see.

SchattenKitsune666 posted a new video last night showing off his improvements to the rig, adding hair physics, a non-textured bra, and a changed fur effect. She has plans to further improve the rig before releasing a new version. For now, enjoy the video. It features the song Hear Me by Kelly Clarkson.

Sorry for missing last Friday's post. I'm posting another thing right after this to make up for it.

Someone on the Discord server mentioned that the original Assault Model by Nanogrrr was different than the other ones ripped from the multiplayer version of Krystal. This model appeared to have been the one used in cutscenes, and it was known that the legs had odd missing features back before Nanogrrr corrected them. That lead to the question of whether or not the characters have any legs during the Star Fox Assault Briefing scenes.

While the whole theory that the Star Fox team voluntarily amputated their legs to help with handling high g environments has been conclusively busted (language warning), I did a little research and found that most characters during the briefing cutscenes do not have legs. Some don't even have their pelvis! It's obviously to save time animating and perhaps improve performance during those scenes, since the developers knew those parts of the characters wouldn't be seen anyway. At least, not without emulator tools. Check out the video to see what you can do with the Free Look mode in the Dolphin emulator. I also included more images of characters below that were not in the video.

The Toad family suffers from a rare genetic disorder.

The real reason why General Pepper retired.

ROB seems fine.

The Ruffian is having a rough day.

Legless Lovers

Wow! It's been a really long time since I've seen a traditional Krystal fanfilm appearing on YouTube. Once a staple of YouTube, they're now supplanted by the new stuff like MMD videos. Anyway, enjoy the effect filled, electronic music video titled "Krystal McCloud Tribute 2018".

This Krystal tribute video is by Jilver Stiven Guerrero GonzalesNCS, who sent in the video directly. The music used was Arrow by Jim Yosef.

Here's another maintenance-type update. I mentioned in the announcement post that KingJion would be allowing the Krystal Archive to host the Krystal and Fox VRChat rigs once some corrections to the download files were made. They have been made, and now the much smaller downloads are also available on this new page for his mods. The page also includes a gallery and other links.

Check out the page!

Remember the project to get all Star Fox Assault cutscenes in 4K? Yeah, it's been a while. After Christmas, it got shifted down in priority thanks to all the other interesting news items. But now, it's time to finish it!

Here we have both the English and Japanese versions of this scene. Fox fires the self-destruct program into the Aparoid Queen, only for her to suppress it and try to escape. The Star Fox team follow her even deeper into the planet in this final showdown. As before, this is in better-than-4K resolution!

This is the last Star Fox Assault cutscene in the game featuring Krystal that isn't pre-rendered. After this, I will go back and do the pre-rendered cutscenes and the credits. Pre-rendered cutscenes are much harder to prepare, and not just due to the cost of processing. I have to edit them together very carefully from multiple sources. The credits cutscene is similarly difficult.

Another interesting fact: YouTube can't correctly handle the "Original Resolution" pre-rendered Star Fox Assault cutscenes. It resizes them smaller than they should be. As a result, I'll eventually be uploading those versions somewhere on the site in addition to YouTube.

Sorry there were no posts on Thursday and Friday last week. Real life hit me pretty hard last week, but I hope that's taken care of now.