Star Fox Let's Play: Taking a Branching Route Through 7 Stages to Defeat Dr. Andross

The protagonist is Fox, leader of the mercenary squadron, whom the narrator introduces as "that mysterious fox who shows up in Smash Bros. and the Mario movie." Early on, the player advances by shooting down enemy fighters with homing shots. Teammates chatter lively over the comms throughout the battle, and a clumsy-looking frog also shows up along the way. The narrator describes this as "a fun workplace where even the trip there is never boring."

At the boss at the end, the Attack Carrier, the player listens to teammates' advice and targets the weak points. Once all the launch bays are destroyed, all that's left is to attack the main body as it flees. The narrator looks back on it as "a surprisingly anticlimactic finish."

Having saved planet Corneria, the team heads to Sector Y to support the Cornerian Defense Force, which is struggling against the enemy's humanoid mechs. Two humanoid mechs appear in the first half, but they explode after just a light graze from the lasers. The narrator wonders whether the enemies are absurdly weak or whether the player's firepower is simply too strong.

Then the real target, Sardes II, appears. The first volley knocks its health down to half; the player then backs off to a comfortable firing distance before closing in again. Finally, a hard brake into a sharp turn sets up the finishing blow.

To investigate suspicious enemy activity, the team goes to scout the water planet Aquas. Here they switch to the Blue Marine, a submarine the frog built as a hobby, to take down a giant bioweapon the enemy army is developing.

What they find after making their way through the dark ocean depths is the boss, Bacoon. According to the narrator, the enemy seems to be polluting the ocean to make the creatures more aggressive. The fight proceeds in stages. First you destroy the barnacles, which seem to be infested with worms, and then the adductor muscles on the left and right inside. This exposes the weak point. The Blue Marine can fire powerful torpedoes at regular intervals, so you deal with the small fry using lasers while landing torpedoes on the boss. The adductor muscles were a bit hard to see, but with teammates' advice, the narrator managed to destroy both. Once the weak point was exposed, the narrator says, it could be defeated by firing torpedoes repeatedly from the center of the screen while shooting down incoming projectiles with lasers.

The next planet, Zoness, was also badly polluted. The boss, the Sarumarine, hurls iron balls by way of greeting. Its armor is thick and lasers don't work on it, so here the player keeps attacking with bombs. Destroying the drainage pipes and repair cranes and wrecking the floats on the left and right strips off the armor, after which the narrator sinks it with lasers.

On the industrial planet Macbeth, the objective is to destroy an enemy train and cut off their supply line. In line with the operation, the player switches to a new ground vehicle and destroys the train's safety devices one by one. Here the friendly pilot Katt joins the fight. The narrator introduces Katt as "Falco's former biker-gang buddy" and is happy that the gloomy battlefield got a little livelier.

The boss, Benjamin, is apparently a cutting-edge experimental weapon the enemy was transporting, but according to the narrator, it barely got any screen time this run. Destroying all the safety devices stops the train and takes the boss down with it. The narrator finishes it off by shooting the track-switching device up ahead.

Getting through here will bring the team to planet Venom, where Dr. Andross awaits. To stop them, the enemy plays its trump card, and the boss Death Ball, equipped with dimensional warping, appears.

The narrator notes that unlike the weak bosses so far, this one turned into a drawn-out fight. In the opening phase, the enemy stalls by appearing and disappearing, so for a while the player can't attack at all. Destroying the energy orbs and tentacles makes the enemy spin and deploy missiles. During that phase, the narrator says, they just spin around in circles too to "kill some time." The second set of energy orbs, all three of them, gets taken out quickly, and then it's on to destroying the tentacles. The tentacles attack quickly and have a wide range, so you'll take more hits than you'd expect if you get careless; the narrator advises watching for the telltale signs and destroying them one at a time.

During the laser attack sequence, the narrator reminisces about playing the 64 version at a friend's house as a kid. They recall that back then the laser was a more eye-straining rainbow color, at least as far as they remember. Destroying the last energy orb brings the boss down.

On arriving at Venom, the destination, an enemy attack comes as expected. It's the rival team, Star Wolf. The teammates start making a racket right from the start of the battle, but the narrator first goes after Wolf, who seems to be the protagonist's assigned opponent. Even when Peppy is about to go down, the narrator puts him off, saying "It should be fine to leave him alone for a while," and shoots Wolf down. Next they take out Andrew, who was flying nearby, and then go to the rescue. They close in on Pigma, who was targeting the nearly dead Peppy, and shoot him down right away.

With one enemy left, the narrator struggles because Falco keeps getting into the line of fire, blocking shots. The narrator praises the game for including things like friendly fire and dedicated dialogue for such moments. With Peppy truly on the verge of death, the narrator shoots down every member of Star Wolf.

Fox heads alone to confront Andross. The first form is a giant face: you shoot its eyes to make it flinch, and use that opening to attack the weak points on its palms. When it attacks, you gain altitude to dodge, then concentrate fire on the palms while it's flinching, destroying both hands. Then you fire bombs into its wide-open mouth. Here the narrator jokes, "I feel like this company's games are always having you put bombs in mouths."

After that, the final boss fight begins in earnest. Andross launches his two eyeballs, so you keep a reasonable distance and use braking and turning to shoot them from behind. Destroying both eyeballs triggers the final form. With no teammates around, neither the enemy's HP nor its weak point is displayed, but the underside of the brain was glowing suspiciously, so the narrator keeps firing lasers at it until it's defeated.

Having defeated Andross, the team restores peace to the galaxy, and the narrator wraps up with "GG." As overall impressions, the narrator says that while the game was hard to get into at first because they weren't used to the controls, once they got the hang of it, the controls—where movement and aiming are one and the same—felt exhilarating. They also mention that every character is goofy, somehow impossible to dislike, and endearing, and that the little exchanges with Fox and the team left a strong impression.