The Story Of The Super FX Chip - The Chip That Made Star Fox On The Super Nintendo Possible 

I remember playing Starfox in Sears for the first time back in the 90s when FX just came out. I was completely blown away by it and played that demo longer than any other game that ever was featured in those demo setups in Walmart and Sears. After getting the game for Christmas, it inspired me to make a 'simulator' in my room. It was basically a box that was covered with thick blankets to make it dark, with my 34" color CRT TV angled down against one of those low to the ground rocker chairs. Then I combined it with stereo speakers hooked through my radio/tap/CD player head unit. Then I figured a way to split the video from the SNES to an old black and white TV I had so I setup an 'operator' section of the simulator. The operator would flip on and off a flashing red light that was inside the 'cockpit' when you had critical damage, as well as pumping in bursts of smoke and shaking the frame that held everything up to simulate shit blowing up as you took damage (it was just a couple of cans of air freshener that was ducted into the 'cockpit' and a piece of cable tied to the frame that was pulled). We probably killed some brain cells inhaling all the propellant from the air freshener. Between the darkness, the stereo sound, and the TV being so close it took most of your visual field it really go you into the environment and your heart would pump playing. When Starfox 64 came it a few years later, I rebuilt the whole thing and it was even better.

Amazing that the Starfox franchise was essentially started by a couple of teenagers.

I lost my shit when I first saw this game especially when they said, "why go to the next level when you can go light years beyond." Amazing slap in the face to Sega.

Apparently Nintendo didn't really appreciate those guys work.

Doom on snes is quite an achievment.

This is beautifully edited and written and definitely gives you the full picture. I actually learnt quite a lot from this. Nice work man.

I remember LOVING Stunt Race FX as a kid. I tried playing it today and the extremely low framerate actually made me physically ill. It's weird because Star Fox doesn't do that.

The composer Hajime Hirasawa had a falling out with Nintendo as well after Star Fox. Apparently over the ownership of the music he composed. The dude ended up basically inventing the technology for ringtones after getting into it with Nintendo, he's a CEO currently at his own company. Amazing that he came up with the major themes for Star Fox on game one, and dipped afterward with Nintendo obviously still using the music for decades. The design process for Star Fox was really groundbreaking and it seems like a lot can be learned about the industry from that game alone. Great work here, WWG that was enjoyable!

Sadly the Super FX was a transitional chip. Amazing nonetheless but short lived. I still remember trying StarFox on a special ship shaped booth on one Nintendo store. The ship had speakers on each side of the cockpit. I already knew starfox but the experience in the booth with stereo sound and a joystick was mind blowing. The most memorable moment, the selected planet zooming in, and it's wooooough! sound. And the "good luck" delayed on each ear....ahh man! I wish more people coded games like that, 3D but still 2D in a way too due to pixelation. It's an art on itself.

What I find most impressive is that they made the chip cheap enough to include a GPU with every copy of the game

After watching this, Nintendo seems way less like a whimsical factory of magic and rainbows to me. It reminds me a little of their heavy handed policies with 3rd party software publishers in the NES days.

When I was a kid, I lied and told people that they invented the Super FX Chip by dumping a regular chip into apple juice.

Really interesting video. I miss the 16 bit era for this reason; being able to beef up graphics by including additional hardware with the games themselves.

Great video, and mostly accurate. Argonaut was allowed to develop other games while working with Nintendo. Vortex was developed by Argonaut (and the first game I worked on), and published by Electro Brain - as well as a bunch of other SNES/PC games. Brought back some fond memories!

Starfox...ah what memories for my 13 year old self. It was quite an experience playing for the very first time. The graphics of course, but the game play, music, variance of courses, and for the time fast screen rendering was an experience I'll never forget. Today if a teenager showed a company he had hacked their system they would immediately lawsuit him out of existence as the video game industry today is stifled as the indie game developer movement has shown.

I loved the Super FX chip! As a kid I remember being blown away with it when I first played Star Fox. I remember all the adds that were around for it at the time to, the hype was all over the place. I also got Stunt Race FX as a birthday present for my 8th birthday. I loved playing that game and it just so happens to still be one of my all time favorite SNES games. I have the most nostalgia for that game and also the most memories playing it. I remember how impressed my Dad was when I first played Stunt Race FX. He was big into tech back then so he took the controller from me and started driving the buggy slowly around the track just looking at all the polygons and textures in amazement. So many fun memories from the 90's thanks to that little chip.

Very well structured and planned out. I enjoy how you stick to theme and story - keep it up and keep making documentaries and you will have 100k subs!

I hope they get paid after the SNES MINI CLASSIC since full Starfox 2 is on there.

It's kind of sad how things fell apart for Argonaut especially given how talented they were and what they were capable of delivering on.

Nintendo is like the cool kid in school, but he's really a douche towards everybody but he's soo good at sports and everything. Sega is like the friend you had that OD'd

what a fascinating story... It kinda seemed they had genius stroke of luck, but didn't have the experience to negotiate a more promising deal. The lack of success seemed to have made them choose to mostly produce license games - crap options but sure cash flow. Who knows what might have become of them, if Nintendo would have been more fair or more inclusive.

To this day i remember seeing the final boss of Starfox. The giant face still scares the shit right out of me! XD!

I loved StarFox and was very impressed with the 3D graphics when I first loaded up this cartridge into my SNES. I am even more impressed with it now, I always thought the FX chip is something Nintendo made. Thank you for this.

I just discovered this channel, and after watching a couple of videos. . . I'm pretty much a fan of the channel now. Thanks for the content!

Damn i remember that starfox commercial

Nowadays Nintendo would probably just sue anyone that makes a technological breakthrough with their hardware and then steal the idea 2 years later.

6:30... the worlds first GPU? I don't know if it was the first but Silicon Graphics had a chip doing hardware accelerated triangles, transform, and lighting in 1982. They added texture mapping and other advanced features soon after. SGI was built around graphics hardware from day one and they had been producing generations of their chips for 10 years by the time the FX chips came along.

"all it took was putting a little faith in a couple of kids" man, if only the inspirational speakers in highschool were that good.

I remember taking this home from the shop, plugging it in and being blown away by the graphics and gameplay!

That M.A.R.I.O. acronym was a genius on Argonauts' part

Damn ! What a story... Never knew it was that crazy. Great work ! I'm pretty sure it was a long and hard work to go and dig for all those details !

Well, you got a new subscriber. I've watched 2 of your vids now and I'm hooked. Love the history of gaming (both video and tabletop) so I'm happy to have found your channel.

Hey my dude, awesome video but you forgot to mention that when the Nintendo/Argonaut deal ended Nintendo took some of the best people from argonaut with them and screwed them. The head of Argonaut said that he disliked Nintendo from then on in a Eurogamer interview. I would have been pissed as well

Glad to learn about all these technicalities behind the development of some of these outstanding games. Wish parents & primary school science teachers had videos like these back then so they’d fully disregard the hobby of gaming and actually appreciate that it took really intelligent people to make those games that kept us captivated in from our CRT TVs back then.

Have you noticed that many 2D games from the old days have aged much better than early 3D games?

Well done. I only learned a few months ago that the FX chip was built into the cartridge , I always thought it was in the system. Really amazing engineering.

very nice advertisement in spanish, that was on a VHS on the magazine "hobbyconsolas"

It just shows you Nintendo isn't quite as wholesome as you think it is. Very well made and informative video, I enjoyed a lot.

I wonder how the release of Star Fox 2 on the mini retro system went over with those that had been involved.

These series are so great. I hope your channel gets huge. Definitely underrated.

Thanks for this entertaining mini doc. Quite an interesting story around this particular chip and you even covered some of the technical aspects.

This was the most informative video I’ve seen on the SuperFX chip history. You’ve earned another sub Sir. Kudos!

Super interesting! Love learning about the business/technical side behind beloved childhood memories.

i remember being blown away by starfox and out of this world on snes as a kid

Super FX was amazing back then. I remember how it seemed to us when we first played Starfox. There are simply no words to describe the awesomeness of that game. Nice video. Thank you for this.

Starglider 2 for MS-DOS is a childhood favorite of mine. It makes sense that these guys did the SFX and Firefox. It all looks so similar.

This is one of my favorite videos on RU-vid. It's encouraging me to reach out to developers of projects that have influenced mine

Nice work! I'm not even really into video games, but you made this very interesting. I subbed!

Great documentary, all the videos i have watched of yours so far are awesome!

What kind of geniuses were those guys at Argonaut anyway lol. A developer fairy tale.

Damn... I am so upset I've only just now found this channel. Really great video!

I had to sub. Been watching several of your videos recently and I'm like damn this is a great channel

Nintendo should have included the SuperFX co-processor on the SNES mainboard. It'd have been worth a $30 price bump, given that it's inclusion would have really pushed the SNES far above and beyond the capabilites of the Mega Drive/Genesis and the PC-Engine/TurboGrafx

very informative and well edited, you got a new sub

i love your channel. subscribed. this is some interesting video game history. well done man

Thank you, this took a refreshing level of depth, and even if you don't work in 3D graphics you seem to at least understand the terms on a basic level. I don't know about the first GPU though... you'll have to ask someone else but I think it'll be contentious.

Another great video! Didn’t know that the fx chip wasn’t an original Nintendo IP. Maybe Argonaut games leaked the copy of star fox 2 in the internet out of sheer frustration. This is the kind of content you rarely see covered when talking about retro gaming. Good work sir!

Awesome documentary man! I had no idea there were 8 SNES games that used the Super FX chip. That's pretty neat learning about all the details of this chip that I've never knew before.

2:36 - In Europe, there was a game called "Elite" released for the NES in 1991. This predates X in being the first 3D-game on a Nintendo device.

The SNES is still the most recent console I own. I am very happy the Super FX chip was made because it meant I didn't have to buy a new console to play the new 3D games. There are still many games on the SNES I have yet to play. I love it!

This is a beautifully made documentary! Instant sub

I love me some gaming documentary playlists, you won me over easily :D

I'm a big Starfox fan from growing up, the first title (known over here in the UK as Starting) was the first game I ever played and completed. I never actually knew about the importance of the FX chip until a retrospective article I read in Nintendo Official Magazine in 2005, to celebrate the review and release of Starfox Assault, and how it was a group of young English developers that got the chip and the groundwork for the first game going, and then learning about the (then) unreleased sequel. I'm pretty open with the series in terms of loving 64 just as much as Adventures (Rareware fan also) through to Assault and Command, but I always appreciate learning more and more about Argonauts and how they got Starfox up and running :)

How do you not have like 2 million subs already? You're awesome! Fantastically produced video, it was a real pleasure to watch and learn... It sucks that Argonaut didn't achieve the HUGE success they so deserved... they should be up there as one of the big AAA companies like Naughty Dog & Rockstar, setting the trend and pushing the heck out of the consoles and PC hardware...

Amazing how far we've come in the past 25 years.

It's unfortunate that Nintendo didn't just buy out the small Studio and turn them into in-house developers. They seemed to have a lot of really good ideas.

Absolutely love your channel! Have been extremely sick, but the bright side is, I have had the time to binge watch nearly all your videos. Definitely earned a sub and a like on each. Keep up the great work, I look forward to many more!

Awesome work! Learned a bunch!

what a well made video. you deserve much more attention. now start wathcing your other videos :)

How do you not have more subscribers? Great videos

It is amazing how they could make such great games was so very little. Even just a few seconds of this video is bigger than most super nes games.

Your videos are very well done. Thanks for this.

Thanks for uploading. Now I can see what was going on back then.

The Presentation is of this video is Awesome. I was so captivated i forgot that i was not watching a movie. Great job.

I love looking at other people's accomplishments while all I do is watch RU-vid

The lesson here is beware of getting your shit ripped off by large companies.

That Star Fox commercial is wild. What a trip.

Anyone notice the Back to the Future theme music in the Spanish SuperFX promo clip?

I hardly knew any of what the video told. Thank you!

love this channel man! keep it up!

Awesome video, dude!

Very good documentary, well done. I am always amazed at what some kids are doing at age 16 and 18 my goodness.

*Wow! 2 teen made the Supet FX chip!* ⭐️

My teenage mind was blown by Starfox. Now, I look at it and think, "Wuzzat? 10? Maybe 15 FPS?" I love watching emulators outrun the soundtrack in the intro sequence now. Fantastic game, though.

Not to defend Nintendo but a lot of people don't realize that the monopoly Nintendo had on video games in the late 80's and 90's was only a thing in North America. In Europe and other parts of the world Nintendo had MUCH more competition. There was never a video game bubble burst outside of North America that left a void for Nintendo to fill. So all the gaming publishers had strong sales outside of NA which gave Nintendo less leverage.

One of the things I recall from the early 90s with the fx chip was constant reminders of not having to buy an add on for high level graphics. Of course in America we never got anything to expand hardware but in Japan there were all kinds of things out but each one let Nintendo not have complete control on everything how they liked it

brilliant video, man! Congratulations!

I can't express how massively hyped i was for star fox, as a teenager who was dreaming about games looking more real , star fox was that leap forward. The woman at the videogame store must have been tired of me always showing up nearly every day in the store to play the version she had long before it was released here.

WOW! I wasn’t aware that they felt slighted. Thank you!

I'll be hype as ever when I play Starfox 2 on the mini. ^^

Fascinating story, great rendition! Keep going !

I grew up literally around the corner from Argonaut House, a building they bought and were based at in Edgware (North London); had no idea what they did at the time

I'm surprised that Star Fox was a commercial success. Back in the 90s I couldn't tell if anyone actually liked it since they would sneer at the mention of Star Fox or its commercial as well as the announcement of Star Fox 2. I felt as if I was the only one who liked the franchise. A few years ago I was so excited to secure a pre-order for the Super NES Classic so that I could finally try Star Fox 2 after 20 years of waiting and I did not feel disappointed. As dated as that game is I still enjoyed it more than Star Fox Zero. Like Star Fox 64, Star Fox 2 was designed for multiple playthroughs. Shame that Argonaut went under because they developed a great game. I would love a Star Fox 3 to continue with that series instead of its two reboots, Star Fox 64 and Star Fox Zero.

That old star fox tv ad brings back so much memory's

Really well done. Loved it.

Dude youre the John Petrucci of gaming

Great video! Keep up the great work.

Fantastic video. Extremely interesting and masterfully put together. Sub! Thank you.

Very informative i like how u break it down

Yoshis Island is such a beautiful game. And fantastic soundtrack