Battleship: The Lost Star Fox 64 Level

Comments · 562

• DI

  @DillyzThe1 · 1 year ago

  seeing people nerd out about starfox 64 makes me happy

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• FG

  @fgfhjfhjfbhfghf5771 · 1 year ago

  It's wild to think this probably hasn't been seen by anyone in 27 years

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• ZU

  @ZuzNewsReviews · 1 year ago

  Think of all the classic dialogue we missed out on!

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• CA

  @CappnRob · 1 year ago

  A friend of mine and I were having a conversation regarding Battleship and its position in the beta level map, and came with the possible theory that perhaps the battleship itself wasn't the boss, but was an all in need of protection. The modular damage zones thus can be seen as an indicator of how well you're doing, and given in the final game Star Wolf appears to interfere on Bolse, which the same music is used here on, and also appears on Fichina to disrupt the main objective, and the fact that the missile attack was at the end of the hard route, you can see the Battleship as a sort of training wheels mission for all these things: objectives can be failed, Star Wolf can interfere with levels depending on the route you take, and sometimes you have to protect allies. Given the beta level map also lacks Katina (which in the final game also fulfills this role of having an allied objective you need to protect), and Katina and Fichina are both all-range-mode only levels, I think there's some merit to this theory. There's also the fact that while the battleship does resemble, to a degree, the Cannon Betrayer/Salvadora from SF2/Zero, it doesn't really resemble any of the other Venom battleships we see in the final game like Harlocks or Zerams. It could just be that it's using placeholder textures, but in doing so it looks a lot more like the Cornerian battleships you see in the background of the final game's Sector Y.

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• JA

  @JayEm1325 · 9 months ago

  As a kid I always thought that playing the training mission long enough would send me to something exactly like this

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• TH

  @TheRoyalSkies · 1 year ago

  As a game dev for 14 years and super fan of Starfox 64, here&apos;s my hunch. The textures resembling or being borrowed from the Arwing, and Cornerian fighters and the look make it look very similar to the Great-Fox or Cornerian designs in general. I imagine this was intended to function like the equivalent of a &quot;Bad-Guy GreatFox&quot; mothership. It very easily could have been the ship that Star Wolf&apos;s team was meant to launch from, and if you look at the double pointed mirror shape of the ship in general, it even resembles the type of shape of the Wolfen and Wolfen 2 are known for. <br><br>I think this was meant to be the first encounter with Starwolf&apos;s team. Phase 1 would have been taking out the exterior defenses. Once you did that, Phase 2 would have been Wolf&apos;s team launching out from the ship and engaging yours in a dog fight. And, I think they probably even might have had Great fox in the background shooting at it exchanging fire from a far while this was happening.<br><br>But obviously, that&apos;s a lot to handle for the N64, they probably got time crunched and in the end just didn&apos;t have time to fit it in, or make it make sense. Would have been cool though :)

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• NO

  @NovaXP · 1 year ago

  The idea of flying around a big ship like that reminds me of the Great Fox multiplayer level in Star Fox Assault

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• FE

  @ferretlord7051 · 1 year ago (edited)

  I have a few theories <br>1. It was a predecessor to sector z. With you escorting a cornerian battleship. The lose condition being obvious here<br>2. Like you mentioned it could have been similar to Salvadora. <br>3. It might have been inspired by the Great Commander from the snes game and it was a reimagined version of that fight.<br><br>On 2 or 3 the fail objectives could have been a simple timer, or perhaps it would would have been a massive battle between corneria and venom forces. With you need to protect the cornerian fleet from the battleship. <br><br>If that last idea was the original plan it was probably scrapped due to being too demanding for the hardware. Which would suck as I really wished we saw more of the cornerian military actually doing something. Make it feel more like an actual war.

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• EN

  @enigmatico6209 · 1 year ago

  It&apos;s possible that since Corneria is under attack, this was probably the mothership of the forces deployed by Andross near Corneria, and the general wanted Star Fox to destroy it in order to protect Corneria. If you succeeded you would go to Zoness, if not then Fortuna. Very similar to the release storyline but instead of taking place in Sector Y and fighting the entire Andross forces, it takes place in the high orbit of Corneria and you fight their mothership in a long-range mode battle, in a mission similar to Katina. In fact, if you see the Lylat system in the beta version, you can notice that there are levels related to each other that were rearranged or changed. Like Fortuna was were Katina is in the release. It&apos;s likely that the level might have been scrapped because it was very similar to these levels and in order to add variety to the game, they decided to change it with Sector Y, and rearranged the levels in such a way their mechanics don&apos;t repeat themselves too much. Imagine Battleship was similar to Katina or Fortuna, and then you end on Fortuna and it&apos;s the same thing, but there is a bomb instead. In fact, Katina doesn&apos;t even appear in the beta map. I suppose &quot;Satellite City&quot; is just Sector 6 and not Katina despite the KT in the name. Sector Z must have also been very similar to X and Y, and in the release it became the missile mission (A6 in the beta map) for variety reasons.

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• CA

  @Cadence_Squirrel · 1 year ago

  Call it dev&apos;s intuition but it sounds like they wanted you to be able to destroy pieces of the ship and perhaps it proved too intense for the hardware.

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• EI

  @Eichro · 1 year ago

  are you telling me Fortuna and Bolse are at the &quot;same difficulty&quot;? What were the devs thinking?

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• MI

  @Mirokuofnite · 1 year ago

  Given its color I feel like this is a defense map. The battleship is under attack and you must defend it. Probably similar to the missile defense stage. First wave is probably enemy ships, then the second wave is missiles.

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