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So I found this Japanese SNES Star Fox promo tape on YouTube....


Patch93

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It just shows how serious Miyamoto was about his puppet show ideas for Star Fox. I think those are actually the same puppets from the boxart. Nice to see they were fully functional.

Interestingly, they use the term "smart bomb" earlier in the video. "Nova Bomb" must be an NOA-created term.

Nice find, there.

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Yeah "Nova Bomb" was definitely made by Nintendo of America, like how they changed Andorf to Andross. They started using "Smart Bomb" here in the states when SF64 came out. (Personally, I wish they kept calling it "Nova Bomb", "Smart Bomb" doesn't sound nearly as unique and cool to me.)

 

While I do like the whole puppet character idea, the way they pulled it off back in 1993 wasn't so great IMO, though that was mostly due to the limitations they were restricted to at the time. If they were to do it again for the upcoming game, it would likely look much better.

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Between this and the Thunderbirds tapes I found at a local junk shop, all I can say is kill it with fire! I could see the puppet-style working as a possible homage, like an opening cinematic in the style of the Thunderbirds intro (maybe even with those old puppets, if they still exist), but as the style for an entire game I think it might actually just kill it for me. Maybe it's because I didn't grow up with those shows, and was instead exposed to Chucky, but the whole thing just bothers me on levels I didn't even know existed. That being said, I'd say the same thing for hyper-realistic CG (how's about that new Sly Cooper movie, eh? Christ on a pogo stick...). 

 

Now, if they're gonna do it Team America style, I'd be down with that in a heartbeat 8)

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Interesting that you dislike the Thunderbirds, but liked Team America. The puppets weren't all that different.

I like these kinds of things. Probably because I got hooked old-school Thomas the Tank Engine when I was little. You know, the old ones based on the books that were filmed on a G scale model railway. The new ones suck, though. The stories are run-of-the-mill kid's show fodder and the model railway was replaced with 3D graphics. Totally ruined the character of the show.

BTW, the original Thomas books are excellent. Yeah, the TV show was based on many of the stories, but the books went deeper and touched on things like one of the railway owners getting killed in WWII.

As far as the SF puppets, I have a feeling that if Nintendo decided not to keep them that they ended up in Miyamoto's personal collection. I'd like to see them put on display, maybe to hype the new game.

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Ah, this is cool. I'm also pretty sure I heard (from Fred or someone?) that this is why the puppets had wonky feet--they were mostly just supposed to be shown in the radio portraits there, and the fullbody shots for the boxart were sort of an improvisation.

 

I like the style, I think it can work in a game. Reminds me of The Dark Crystal a bit, for whatever reason I really like that mood applied to Star Fox.

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I think the puppets are pretty cool. They have a certain look that most video game characters don't have, and I wonder what the newer games would be like if they used these puppets.

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I dunno. I guess it's because Team America did it as sort of a joke, while Thunderbirds tried way too hard to be realistic. Or maybe it's because I didn't grow up with the old puppet shows, so I tend to associate "puppets" with crappy Sunday school/kindergarten fairy tales, and not as just another way of telling a story like live-action, CG, or animation/claymation. I certainly don't mind puppets/animatronics/claymation in movies like King Kong or Gremlins, but those were just for things they couldn't possibly have done IRL (like gigantic monkeys climbing buildings or little monsters) and not for everything in the film.

 

In stuff like Team America, Paper Mario, The Lego Movie, or Toy Story, the stories themselves are well-done enough to make you look past the strange appearance, and they generally are somewhat self-aware. Some of the visual humor in Team America stems from how awkwardly the puppets do basic tasks; a lot of the gameplay and visual motifs in Paper Mario (especially TTYD) are based on folding/warping/peeling; and the characters in Toy Story and The Lego Movie knowing that they are toys and that they can't do anything around humans basically sets up the plot. If they don't really do anything special with it, you might as well have gone with normal characters/styles. Speaking of Paper Mario, isn't it interesting how the Mario franchise can get away with all these crazy experimental ideas and still earn critical and financial acclaim? If there's any deviation in a Starfox game, people act like the producers personally insulted them. 

 

That being said, I do wonder if it's not just ol' 'moto getting kinda senile. The leaked images certainly don't look any more puppet-like than the other Starfox games (although that would explain a lot about the terrible Assault models), at least to my eyes. Did Miyamoto specifically say that the art style was Thunderbirds-inspired, or just the general story?

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Woah woah woah! Leaked images? Where can I see these? Or are you talking about the E3 build? If you were, then please note that the E3 build was confirmed to be using placeholder assets.

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Yeah, I was talking about the E3 stuff.

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This is fuckin' cool. 

 

Also I love Thunderbirds, that shit was awesome for its time.

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