I've never been a huge fan of the Atari 2600 - my family had an Intellivision thankyouverymuch.  As one might expect, I'm not too familiar with the machine's library save for its mediocre arcade ports.  So I was a bit befuddled when I picked up a 2600 cart labeled as Star Fox.

Hit the link for the full story behind this version of Star Fox with 100% less anthropomorphic foxes, frogs, and hares.

It turns out that Star Fox is a horizontal shooter.  Awesome, right?  No.  No, not so much.  In the world of retro-reviews, it got Fs nearly across the board, and even got an F-minus from one reviewer.  I didn't even know those existed!

Oh, and - small detail - it has nothing to do with Nintendo's Star Fox.

The story is this: It's 4024 and your ship full of Energon cubes crashes on a tiny planet.  Now you have to pick them all up before someone else does.  Oh, and shoot the bad guys because they are bad.

How did Nintendo get away with naming one of their own titles Star Fox, you ask?  Well, the name was only copyrighted by the 2600 game's publisher in the UK (doh!), so Nintendo only had to change the name of the UK release of Star Fox, known as Starwing to Europeans.

Despite Nintendo's efforts, they couldn't get the UK copyright repealed even by the time Star Fox 64 was ready to launch.  Again, they had to rename the game, but this time they went with Lylat Wars.  I'm not sure what a lylat is, so don't ask.

Fortunately for Europeans, Nintendo finally got their way, and the Europeans got their Star Fox without a bastardized name.

So the lesson, kids, is to never ever play Star Fox for the 2600, but always be willing to play Star Fox for SNES and N64.  The Gamecube versions?  Well, that's up to you, but I'd err on the side of caution.

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