E3: Starfox Adventures footage hits the Web

[05.16.01] » Fox McCloud, Slippy, Peppy to star in the former Dinosaur Planet.

   Nintendo has not yet released its E3 media, but IGNCube has already obtained the first video of Rare's Starfox Adventures: Dinosaur Planet in action. Formerly Dinosaur Planet on the Nintendo 64, the Zelda-style adventure game has undergone an extensive revision for the GameCube and is now centered around the Starfox characters.

   The video begins with Fox McCloud's Arwing landing on a blue platform. Fox hops out of the vehicle, and we see brief cutscenes of his crewmates Peppy the hare and Slippy the frog. (Falco, the fourth member of the team, is nowhere to be seen.) A new robotic character is also seen briefly; it's not yet known whether it will be part of Fox's crew.

   A dark mission select screen appears and cycles through what appear to be several planets. Slippy comments on the chosen mission, warning that Fox and his dinosaur sidekick Tricky must face the Dark Ice Mines Boss. Fox, of course, accepts anyway.

   The video then depicts a montage of scenes in which Fox traverses tropical and subterranean areas. He fights with some sort of staff-like weapon, which he also uses to vault up a cliff and pry a heavy boulder off the ground. Later, Fox is caught in a column of blue light and transforms into a bipedal orange dinosaur. The dinosaur heads towards a temple, then the footage cuts back to Fox in the jungle. He discovers a Magic Plant that offers "magical energy" and then seems to use the magic energy to fire off several green energy blasts.

   The final scenes of the clip depict a large blue creature, which appears to be some sort of enemy, and Fox discovering a dinosaur locked in a cage.

   A T-shaped indicator floats in the upper-right corner of the screen during gameplay. The three icons displayed on this indicator appear to be different actions that can be tacked by pressing left, right, or down on the the C Button. In some of the shots, a more detailed menu is also seen on the left-hand side of the screen, displaying Fox's health and his supply of several key items. The game also appears to use a Zelda-style Z-Targeting system: at several points in the footage, a pointer hovers on an object and Fox rotates around it.

   Look for more on StarFox Adventures soon.