Back at Argonaut's first meeting with Miyamoto and company in Japan, Jez's second demonstration was a sample of another 3D title based on his own Starglider, this time running on a NES and accordingly codenamed NesGlider. In response, Nintendo then decided it was time for Jez and Dylan to take a look at their newest project: a very rough prototype of the then-unknown Super Famicom system, running an early sample of Pilotwings. This title, executives said, was Nintendo's first shot at 3D on the future hardware, and could greatly benefit from the young programmers' 3D knowledge.

Argonaut's next step was a shot at trying to port their NesGlider demo to Miyamoto's unfinished 16-bit hardware. Years later, Jez commented in an interview:

Argonaut then hired a team of expert chip designers from Cambridge to make the first ever 3D graphics accelerator and one of the first RISC microprocessors. "The entire 3D acceleration market that NVidia and ATI now dominate, Argonaut was there first...", Jez expresses, "...and we’ve got the patents to prove it."
The poorly-documented Super Famicom prototype had to be reversed-engineered to integrate the chip into the 16-bit hardware as much as possible, in an effort to improve the entire system's performance. They succeeded, but had to settle with mounting the unit on the game cartridge (which would raise the game's price, but not the console's). The result was the "Mathematical, Argonaut, Rotation & Input/Output" or "MARIO" chip, later renamed "Super FX" by Nintendo. "It wasn’t just a graphics chip, though. It was a microprocessor built to run graphics software, but it also did other things (like fast math)", explains Jez.

StarFox

Players: 1 About: 3D Shooter Courtesy of: Argonaut / Nintendo Back in: 1993 Originally on: SNES Also on: N/A

Dylan's work on X happened at the same time the Super FX's development was underway (sometime between 1990 and 1992), with both projects' completion coinciding in 1992. After Argonaut's only monochrome title hit Japanese streets that same year, Dylan joined Giles Goddard and Krister Wombell as a co-programmer in Argonaut's and Nintendo's next joint venture: the first game to utilize the newly developed 3D accelerator chip.

American cover

What is nowadays the well-established Nintendo series known as Starfox began development as Starglider 3, a sequel to the popular Amiga space shooter. As such, Argonaut once again provided the interstellar battleground theme they were by now so fond of. Nintendo's part was, this time around, to present it in a more "arcadey", less simulator-like package than they did with X.
Adding charming characters and a lighthearted script was only half the job. They also did away with complex controls and free-roaming stages characteristic of previous Argonaut titles in favor of more user-friendly, "on-rails" arcade action inspired by Namco's Starblade and Solvalou. These conventions and decisions might have offended some of Argonaut's fans (Dylan himself wishes Starfox's stages weren't linear), but as we all know the final product's gameplay turned out to be close to excellent nonetheless.

Trademarks and copyrights
Starfox was renamed Starwing in Europe by Nintendo. According to Dylan and the British Nintendo Official Magazine, this was to avoid confusing the game with an unrelated European company called Star Vox (the letter "V", in some languages like Dutch and German, is pronounced as the letter "F"). Alternative explainations talk about legal issues concerning a 1983 Atari title trademarked in Europe under the title of Star Fox.

The plot follows the Starfox elite mercenary unit (composed of "Falco" the falcon, "Peppy" the hare, "Slippy" the toad, and the player's character and team leader "Fox" the ...well, fox) on their way to defeat the evil "Andross". Commanded by General Pepper, Fox's team must defend their home planet Corneria and the rest of the Lylat system with their space ships (called "Arwings") by launching a counter attack that will take them through any of 3 selectable routes on their way to the evil planet Venom. Each route (called "levels" in the game) varies both in difficulty and stages, encompassing the system's different planets, asteroid fields, deep-space sectors, and even a mysterious black hole and hidden alternate dimension.

Characters:
	Team leader trained by Peppy, and only playable character. Fox's father disappeared in the mysterious black hole.		Former wingman of Fox's father. The experienced, gentle mentor of the team.
Fox McCloud		Peppy Hare
	The team's best pilot, with the shortest temper. He doesn't need your help.		A timid pilot whose repeated brushes with death bring both comic relief and frustration.
Falco Lombardi		Slippy Toad
	The commander in chief of the Cornerian forces guides the team throughout the whole game.		A scientist gone mad, Andross was exiled to planet Venom by General Pepper, where he amasses an army and tries to take over the system.
General Pepper		Andross

As previously mentioned, the freedom of movement that characterized Starglider and X did not carry over onto Starfox. Instead, the player's Arwing automatically follows a predetermined path through each stage while blasting away enemies and avoiding many obstacles before reaching the correspondent boss. It may sound confining when compared to previous Argonaut titles, but its 3D engine still leaves enough room for the player to dodge and move around while the camera follows panning up, down, and to the sides.
The game starts with a full energy gauge and 3 lives. It's armed with an upgradeable main laser, limited screen-clearing bombs, and can barrel-roll to avoid shots and even break or turbo-boost for a few seconds to navigate through tricky gates and tight spaces.
Enemy variety includes not only the typical space-opera assortment of small fighter ships and huge carriers and destroyers; but also overgrown insects, dragons, water serpents, and maintenance robots among others. The most impressive ones are, of course, the giant end-of-level bosses, which take quick reflexes and sometimes a little bit of thinking to defeat.

European cover

Stages are more varied than any conventional shoot'em-up's, and some of them even feature up to 3 different selectable camera viewpoints (the most interesting one being right inside the Arwing's cockpit). This is because Starfox's gameplay is geared towards a very distinct, continuously shifting balance between skillful steering and fast shooting. You'll be busy infiltrating enemy tunnels, dodging asteroids, and navigating safely through enemy space-stations all while frenetically trying to shoot down as many targets as possible.
You are not alone though. Possibly the best idea Nintendo had for Starfox was having Fox's 3 other teammates constantly guarding his Arwing's rear, following the player in tight formation. They communicate using silly, deformed voice samples (the game's most ridiculed feature), and will even flee while asking Fox for help when their own energy gauges are being depleted by chasing bad guys. This team interaction, although limited, greatly reenforces the feeling of belonging to the squadron, making you care more about them and keeping them around.
If they do fall, though, you'll surely notice the lack of back support.

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The capabilities of the tiny 10.5 MHz Super FX chip are still very impressive despite its limitations being unacceptable by today's standards. Most notable are its incredibly jerky frame rate (not very evident in emulators) and low resolution video output that translates into a black border around the screen. Still, these issues don't affect the gameplay in any serious way.
Interestingly, Starfox's world isn't all about polygons. Backgrounds are beautiful still and animated images, and the Super FX chip also handles vectors and even scales and rotates 2D sprites such as ring lasers, asteroids, and Andross' final form itself.
Sound-wise, the game's great soundtrack was composed by then Nintendo composer Hajime Hirasawa. Strangely, he left Nintendo upon completion of this project and is rumored to never have composed music again despite how well-received his last work for Nintendo was. Hirasawa's only other soundtrack was for the Famicom Disk System title "Time Twist: Rekishi no Katasumi de...".