'Star Fox' Development Started When a British Teenager Hacked the Game Boy

“Star Fox” is one of Nintendo’s classic, groundbreaking titles, and a recent YouTube video narrated that its development actually started from British teenagers hacking the Game Boy console.

YouTube channel People Make Games recently posted a video telling a very interesting story behind the making of “Star Fox” — the first-ever title from Nintendo rendered in real-time 3D imaging.

According to the video, it all began when Dylan Cuthbert of United Kingdom-based Argonaut Software was tasked to hack the Nintendo Game Boy, tweak its hardware, and then develop a game that would render 3D in real-time and run on the Game Boy. Obviously, Cuthbert was successful in those tasks and the result was impressive enough for Argonaut founder Jez San to bring the demo game to the Consumer Electronics Show in the United States.

At CES, San was able to secure a meeting with a Nintendo representative to show that running a 3D game on the Game Boy was possible and, in fact, was already done. Though Cuthbert had technically bypassed Nintendo’s copyright by hacking the Game Boy, his unprecedented work earned him and San an invitation to visit the Nintendo headquarters in Japan.

In Japan, Cuthbert and San presented the unofficial and first 3D game on the Game Boy to a panel of top Nintendo developers, including Shigeru Miyamoto and Game Boy lead designer Gunpei Yokoi. People Make Games noted that what happened was basically Argonaut teaching Nintendo how to use its console in its full hardware potential.

Later on, Nintendo asked Cuthbert and two other developers, Giles Goddard and Krister Wombell, to work full-time at Nintendo’s Kyoto-based headquarters, where they would be developing what is now known as the “Star Fox” video game.

The story of what led to the development of “Star Fox” is very interesting and unconventional. But reports also find it amusing to picture Miyamoto on his cigarette break helping Cuthbert’s team in designing the first “Star Fox” game.” All in all, the young British developers took the lead in the technical aspect of making the game while Nintendo developers pitched a lot in terms of the game’s design and how it would stand out in a growing list of shooter games in the early ‘90s.