Nicki Tens has been making fast progress. As of today, she's shown off her version 2 of the 3D printed Krystal mask. This one is slightly larger and came out much cleaner. There's also a short timelapse video showing one of the parts being printed.

In all the excitement with the SNES Classic and Star Fox 2, one couldn't be blamed for missing Nicki Tens' progress on her 3D printed Krystal mask. Here is the finished Version 1 print glued together. This was always intended to be a test print, and now she will begin on Version 2. Version 2 will be larger (Version 1 is a bit too small). She might also do some customization to the structure of the mesh at this point and make it her own. In spite of a lot of mis-starts and issues, Version 1 came out really well. I can't wait to see where this goes in the future.

From Nintendo's 77th Annual General Shareholder Meeting, we have this interesting exchange.

Q7: Regarding product video, are there any plans to bring back past content like Kirby anime on BD, or old games on DD for console/mobile?

A7: Miyamoto: We hold the Kirby IP and it’s growing in Europe. It’s selling in Spain; watched in places w/out game hardware. We want to make anime for Pikmin, Star Fox, Yoshi, etc. and distribute it freely, or integrate into games.

This doesn't mean we WILL see a Star Fox anime, but they want to do it and are far enough in the consideration stage to talk about it openly. I, for one, can't wait to see what they can do, after the awesome Star Fox: The Battle Begins short. Of course, this is a fan-translation. Though he is very reliable, I'm told, take this translation with a grain of salt.

Question Translation and Answer Translation provided by Alex Aniel @cvxfreak. Story via GoNintendo.

Update

Ayano Harumaki says that this is a slight mistranslation. According to her translation of the original Japanese transcript from NStyles, Miyamoto was referring to pre-existing Pikmen, Yoshi animations and Star Fox: The Battle Begins, not interest in making new animations. Here's her translation:

Miyamoto: We hold the Kirby IP and it's growing in Europe and it's selling in Spain well. We can sell the visual products even in areas where gaming machines cannot be sold. We made anime of Pikmin, Starfox, Yoshi etc. and distribute it freely, or integrate into games.

I guess we'll have to wait and see with an official translation to be absolutely sure. It all hinges are whether they were talking about the future or the past.

The edited version of the podcast, along with the show notes and MP3 download have been uploaded. It's only been six months since the episode was recorded. Progress!

Seriously though, I've been meaning to clean up the live recording of episode #38 for posting, but my computer was running out of space. That problem is fixed, and so I can begin doing podcasts and other video-heavy projects in the near future. If you never got a chance to see episode #38, check it out right now! We had special guest Lylat-Mobius Adventurer (aka Brian) as our co-host. I talked about my arm surgery, the entirety of 2016's Krystal news, and many upcoming projects that are just now becoming a reality.

Hopefully we'll do our next podcast soon. I have a ton to cover thanks to the one-post-per-day system I've been doing lately.

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Show Notes

We now know that the SNES Classic will be released in Japan as the Super Famicom Mini. The announcement came hours after the US and UK announcements. It will feature a similar design to the original Super Famicom. The game roster will be slightly different as well.

Instead of Super Punch Out, Super Castlevania IV, Final Fantasy III, Kirby's Dream Course, and Earthbound, the Super Famicom Mini includes Legend of the Mystical Ninja, Super Soccer, Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem, Final Fantasy VI, and Panel de Pon. The Japanese system includes a different version of Super Street Fighter II than the US and UK versions.

On the side of the box you can clearly see the HDMI brand symbol. Looks like HDMI output is going to be there, just like the NES Classic had.

We also got to see the Japanese Super Famicom styled boxart for Star Fox 2. It's just a slightly different variation on some of the other imagery we've seen. But it's different enough to know that each of the characters are individually drawn, so we could possibly see separate art for each character in future press releases. Also, we can see their boots now. (Yes, they're just metal boots, not robot legs. Language warning.)

And lastly, I threw in the original Star Fox boxart, which was also in the press release. It is unmodified from the original Japanese boxart, as far as I can tell.

Thanks to Twitter posts by Ayano for the heads up! Images from the Nintendo Japan Press Release.

The Nintendo US SNES Classic page shows a bit of official artwork, but the Nintendo UK SNES Classic page shows even more. We have our first officially released artwork for Miyu and Fay (to my knowledge). With the official release of Star Fox 2, Miyu and Fay are now technically canon characters, to say nothing of story points in the finished game no-one has yet seen. It's going to be an interesting year for Star Fox lore.

I really like this comic-like drawn style of the Star Fox characters. Now, who wants to volunteer to do Krystal in this style?

As a side note, it looks like Nintendo of Japan has not yet announced that the SNES Classic will be released in their region. Curious.

I honestly never thought I'd see the day! Nintendo just announced the long-rumored Super NES Classic. Included among the games is the original Star Fox and, believe it not, Star Fox 2. Star Fox 2 was never officially released. An unfinished developer preview of the game was leaked years ago, but as Dylan Cuthbert mentioned in an interview, the leaked game was missing significant content from the finished version. Fortunately for us now, the final game was indeed finished, even after cancellation of the project, because the developers were so close to the end of development. My guess is that this is the real, final version of the game, not the internet-leaked incomplete version.

Also nice is to have the first official re-release of the original Star Fox. Star Fox for the Super NES has never been re-released to any virtual console or official remake, likely due to the complexities of emulating the Super FX chip that made the early 3D graphics possible.

Of course, there are lots of other great games it includes:

• Contra III: The Alien Wars
• Donkey Kong Country
• EarthBound
• Final Fantasy III
• F-ZERO
• Kirby Super Star
• Kirby's Dream Course
• The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
• Mega Man X
• Secret of Mana
• Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting
• Super Castlevania IV
• Super Ghouls ’n Ghosts
• Super Mario Kart
• Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars
• Super Mario World
• Super Metroid
• Super Punch-Out!!
• Yoshi's Island

The Super NES Classic will release September 29th for $79.99. I just called my local GameStop and they said they don't even have it in the system yet. So no idea when or how to get a reserve, but you can bet that I will be getting my hands on a copy as soon as possible! To my great shame, I've never actually played through the original Star Fox, so I'm looking forward to correcting that mistake.

I somehow missed the announcement of Starlink: Battle for Atlas during E3 a couple weeks ago. Starlink is a Toys-To-Life game published by Ubisoft that will allow customizable spaceships, features, and weapons. In the absence of a new Star Fox game, I think this game might be worth checking out. It will be available on XBOX ONE, PS4, and Nintendo Switch in Fall 2018.

Let's break it down:

• Story-driven gameplay
• All-range mode space battles
• Planet-side shooting via a low-level flight mechanic that lets you move around the surface almost like a mech
• Numerous, varied characters
• And perhaps most importantly, no features or story points are limited only to those who purchase additional pieces. Apparently, everything can be obtained in the game with enough effort. Buying the collectables serves only to speed up the process and give you something to physically interact with or display on your shelf.

We have a while until the game is released, which should give us plenty of time to find out more about it. For now, though, this looks like an interesting distraction while we wait for Nintendo to make the next big Star Fox game.

A long-running unofficial Smash Ballot for future character DLC in Super Smash Bros has ended. The poll, run by fansite nintendolife, featured a large list of potential characters to vote for, including a place to enter custom requests. Yesterday, the poll closed and the votes were tallied. The results were very interesting.

According to the initial count, Krystal outpaced every other character by several thousand votes! Huge win, right? Except, hold on. Apparently most of them were bot-generated votes by a single IP address. Some Krystal fan out there has been very naughty. Once the fake votes were removed, Krystal actually ranked at about #20 to #25. A great showing for a older character in my opinion, especially considering that this was a relatively small, unofficial fan poll.

The poll organizer was in good spirits about it. Jordan "Unofficial Krystal-in-Smash Promotional Manager" Sweeto contacted the poll organizers to find out some details. Apparently the organizers at nintendolife are interested in the #teamKRYSTAL promotional project and may help promote Krystal in the future.

Vote rigging, even for a fan poll, is NOT ok. Got it? At worst, it can lead to blowback and delegitimizing legitimate fans. At best, it's dishonest and Krystal would not approve. That said, it's an online poll. Those at nintendolife have now learned firsthand why online polls are hard to take seriously.

Thanks to Mr. Brownstone for the heads up.

There are so many little glitches in Star Fox Adventures. Some of them are pretty hilarious. This first video features a bunch of Krystal-related glitches. It's by SUPER SAOS, a speedrunner who's investing a lot of time trying to figure out how to exploit the game. The second video below is by MobianAngel. I had no idea Tricky's following code was so quirky!