Original Star Fox staffer tells story of sequel’s shelving, surprise launch

Enlarge / Dylan Cuthbert, in a goofy photo sent to Ars by his current company Q Games. (credit: Q Games)

There's a chance-albeit a slim one, thanks to launch-week sellouts-that you've gotten your hands on Nintendo's brand-new Super NES Classic Edition hardware. If you did get one, there's a significant chance you made a beeline for its most interesting game: Star Fox 2, the company's canceled 1996 space shooter. This game's circumstances are incredibly rare for the game industry: a shelved, completely finished game resurfacing 21 years later as a surprise "from the vault" gem.

If you think you were surprised by Star Fox 2's appearance after all this time, though, you have nothing on the sequel's lead programmer, Dylan Cuthbert.

The former Argonaut Software programmer and eventual founder of Q Games (makers of the delightful Pixeljunk series) says he learned about Star Fox 2's retail release the same way everyone else did: via Twitter. "It was one of the greatest days of my life," he told Ars in an e-mail interview about that surprise discovery. He even slapped an ASCII smiley face onto that sentence to drive the point home. Better late than never!

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