Super Nintendo World is an collaboration between Nintendo and Universal studios to open up a series of Nintendo theme parks. The first is planned to open in Universal Studios Tokyo to coincide with the Tokyo Summer Olympics in 2020. Future parks will also open in Hollywood and Florida inside renovated portions of Universal Studios parks at those locations.

Staffers working with on the park programming announced several planned attractions today. In addition to the previously leaked Mario Kart racing track, there are plans for a Donkey Kong barrel-themed roller coaster and a sort of forest-like maze with moving rooms to simulate the Lost Woods from various Zelda games.

Nintendo will also be focusing heavily on virtual reality technology in the park, which is why I'm posting this here. The existing Mario Kart VR experience will be brought in and expanded upon, but more importantly to us, they also are working on a Star Fox VR experience. Details are scarce, but it seems that they are reworking some of the technology and levels from Star Fox Zero to work in a VR space, where aiming is done with head motions, and flight is handled with a joystick. Riders will be elevated in a flight simulator-style enclosure that will visually mimic the real cockpit of an Arwing, and move around and shake in time with the gameplay in the goggles. Also cool: the mockup images show the line to the attraction will wrap around a 1-1 scale replica of an Arwing, and the entire attraction takes place inside an area designed to look like the Great Fox's hangar bay.

Other details are few and far between, but we did get a look at an artist's animated mockup of the Star Fox attraction.

Update: False alarm people! Sorry about that. It seems that this news story was a fake! No doubt the devious, intelligent, yet handsome individual responsible for this report was able to pull a fast one on us, and on April Fools' Day no less! How could I have been so deceived?

The Krystal Lovers Association is a Krystal-focused forum that's been around in one form or another since (I think) before Star Fox Adventures launched in 2002, created during the hype surrounding the announcement of the yet unreleased game Dinosaur Planet. Eggman9713, the admin of the site since BEFORE THE KRYSTAL ARCHIVE EVEN EXISTED, just announced that the site would be shutdown one week from today on March 16th, 2018. The forum has been relatively inactive for quite a while, and the release of Star Fox Zero did not see a revival of the fandom that we hoped for. Plus, technology has moved on. No longer do people get their news and community through forums. Now it's all about blogs, social media, and dedicated chat apps like Discord.

The forum has been running for at least 15 years. I joined it prior to creating the Krystal Archive, and many of the initial contacts and assets I discovered were thanks to the conversations and people I met through the KLA. Though I haven't been visiting the KLA much in the last few years, it holds a very special place in my heart, and was somewhat of an unofficial Krystal Archive forum for a while.

Goodnight sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. The KLA will continue to live on in the hearts of Krystal fans everywhere.

We were expecting something simple and fun for today's Nintendo Direct. We got a lot of cool announcements, but we ALSO got the totally unexpected announcement of the long desired Super Smash Bros for Switch. At the very end, they had a teaser trailer for the game to announce that it was in development.

About the only thing we can say for sure is that it looks like Splatoon's Inklings will become fully playable characters with their ink mechanics intact. Also, the Breath of the Wild version of Link was shown, so there definitely changes to the existing characters. Does this mean a port with additional functionality like in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, or is this a new game entirely? We don't know at this point. But, I'm sure the speculation will go even wilder now than there's something to look forward to.

As usual, Krystal has historically been a popular request, especially among female character choices. However, I would advise against getting your hopes too high, in spite of the parody art I made for this post (based on Smashified Krystal artwork).

In health news, I am sometimes better, sometimes worse with recovery. However, I have some good news in that I'm quickly learning how to type and program with my voice instead of my hands. This will be instrumental in allowing me to continue working on the site and other things. In the meantime, please join our Discord (invite link), if you want to see ongoing Krystal news and discussion with other site visitors and Krystal fans.

Some recent events have caused a sudden, worsening effect on my health conditions. As a result, the Krystal Archive will not be updated for the foreseeable future, with the exception of official Star Fox news or otherwise very important news items. You are certainly welcome to join our Discord channel (invite link) to keep up-to-date with the latest news and fan projects, however I will not be participating very much in the coming days and possibly weeks. Hopefully I get better soon.

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.