Argonaut managed to get around this by developing a chip inserted onto game cartridges which dramatically augmented the console’s processing power. The Super Nintendo Entertainment System had been designed with only 2D titles in mind, and the Game Boy could not even display colors. Unfortunately, development of 3D games for consoles in the early 1990s seemed to be something of a pipe dream. A still from 1992’s X, highly reminiscent of Argonaut’s work the following year on Star Fox. Humorously, this only came to Nintendo’s attention because Jez San showed it to the most senior manager present at Nintendo’s Consumer Electronic Show booth amazing the company with his knowledge of programming and effectively convincing them that Argonaut could develop 3D games for the characteristically reserved Nintendo, San’s company was awarded a contract. Argonaut had been founded in 1982 by Jez San and developed games throughout the 1980s before coming to Nintendo’s attention by ingeniously defeating the formerly unbreakable copyright protection on the Game Boy portable console. The franchise was born of a rare (for the time) collaboration between Japanese tech giant Nintendo and a small British game developer called Argonaut. The story of Star Fox is paradoxically one of innovation and an unwillingness to move away from the series’ early successes. Sources include USGamer ’s series retrospective, The Gaming Historian’s series of brief documentaries on each entry, and a few interesting features by Retro Gamer, Nintendo Life, Unseen64 and Reading Between. Year of release indicates the North American version. This week we’ll be using the boost to chase down the history of Star Fox. Welcome back to Franchise Festival, where we explore and discuss noteworthy franchises from the last several decades of gaming history.
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