The internet was recently burned by a garbage dump of Nintendo assets known as “Gigaleak”. This bundle includes amazing finds like the first Yoshi prototypes and even Luigi’s files on Super mario 64. But my favorite part has been listening to the Star Fox 64 the cast speaks with crystal clear clarity through new digital audio files.
The sad reality of Nintendo 64 games, most older games, actually, and still some today, is that many of the assets had to be compressed to fit the storage medium, in this case a cartridge . This obviously affected the graphics, but it also made the audio files less clear and less clear than the original recordings. One could argue that this was not a big problem for Star Fox 64, since most of the time the characters were supposed to speak through the radios anyway, but the uncompressed voice files that had just leaked, like clear glass “Do a barrel roll!” from Peppy, they are still a real treat.
Just listen to my beautiful little boy Slippy in all his frog glory.
While I’m still partial to semi-vocal sound effects used to chat characters in Super Nintendo games, it’s hard to argue that there’s nothing special about these Star Fox 64 voices And now it feels like you are right there in the room with the voice actors, which in turn helps make your personality shine more. It probably wouldn’t have been worth including all of these lossless files in the actual game (N64 cartridges were already expensive enough!), But the part of me that is fascinated with the way games are made had a great time. listening to these scattered files and contextless voices in a giant playlist.
Leaks this weekend also included a ton of Star fox 2 assets for unused characters. In addition to a very surprising presence (both because the franchise deals with anthropomorphized animals and the general lack of representation in Nintendo games) a black woman (incredibly cool), the developers also conceived Star Fox crew members such as hippos, cows, bears, sheep and lemurs. There even seems to be a unused version from Fara Phoenix, a fellow pilot and early love interest of Fox McCloud, who only appeared in a rather dark place Nintendo Power comic books.
Other findings abound. People have successfully unearthed a early version of the Star fox 2 title theme in one of at least four prototypes. Another version of the game has a debug menu on a spinning cube, and we’ve also seen assets that contain funny portraits The main cast is very lively about … something.
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Dylan Cuthbert, the lead programmer at Star fox 2, has provided comments on the Star fox leaks At first he was amazed that someone had discovered a text tool they created almost 30 years ago, but then said they felt the leaks were “intruder“As they deal with the private source code developed over the years.
It’s hard to overstate the enormity of the appropriately named Gigaleak. We are learning so much about old school video games and prototypes that, in some cases, it is completely changing the story. Uncompressed Star Fox 64 Voice files may seem like little potatoes among the big revelations that are released regularly, but knowing that these files are still floating around Nintendo somewhere makes one wonder why they haven’t been used in updated versions now that space is up. less important .
In any case, let’s listen to my dear son Slippy and the rest of the Star Fox squad. Your voices are finally, truly, heard.
More Nintendo Gigaleak tidbits:
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