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Weird Bosses: The Slot Machine
Star Fox, or Starwing as the original game was called in Europe, on the SNES. The concept of the game is weird when you think about it, a group of animals jumping in a spaceship and shooting, dodging and barrel rolling in the vast reaches of space! Fox McCloud, leader of the brigade, his frog pal Slippy and a whole host more of other animals ready to fight beings like Andross or a giant floating Slot Machine...
Think you beat Star Fox to completion? You beat Andross, you saved the universe! What more can you do? What about taking a trip out of time and space as we know it, into a world where animals flying spaceships in intergalactic struggles is weird, a crazy place. A dimension where the planets have evil faces, think Majora's Mask Moon sort of evil (if you don't know the moon look at the picture used for the BEN Drowned saga) which warp into weird positions as Fox flies through this universe! Missed that bit? The secret level of this 1993 classic holds a very weird boss but also a distressing thought for the player, a more sobering moment in a game where you're constantly on the move.
How do we get to this secret level I hear you ask as you dust off your SNES and put Star Fox, or rather Starwing, in and getting ready to fight this oddity among bosses! First of all you must finish Corneria on Level 3, this will take you to the Level 3 asteroid belt, our access to this secret level. Next, destroy the second large asteroid you see in the level, this will produce a giant Pheonix-like bird flying through space! Lastly plough your ship straight into the bird and you'll be taken back to the hub menu for selecting levels and you may notice you're not actually connected to the map. You will be above a spiral of a distant galaxy with the level name reading Out of this Dimension. Playing this level will bring up messages from Star Fox's team, but we'll llok back at these once we get into the level.
The screen and planets around Fox's ship warp around you, Paper Planes begin to attack Fox which seems a little bit lame compared to the rest of the enemies in the game. As you play through the level, however, you eventually meet the dreaded Slot Machine! This boss is also a bit lame really, to start the "fight" you must shoot the handle to move the three sections. If you get an Andross image the Slot Machine will fire a missile, however, other combinations can release things to heal the Airwing (Fox's ship). Once you get three 7's the Slot Machine is defeated but gives the player the letters to spell "THE END". As this boss is based purely off of luck you may be sitting there for a while trying to defeat it, it may be the first shot or you might still be trying to beat it since the game was released in 1993! Once the Slot Machine is defeated the screen warping stops and enemies from the rest of the game begin to attack Fox (but that's if you shoot the letters for "THE END" into the right place and sit through the credits.
From this point you realise two things: the first is that the Slot Machine must have had some influence over the physics of this dimension. Universal warping ending with it's destruction suggests that the Slot Machine was causing it. The second is what the Star Fox team meant in the text before you start the mission and why this battle doesn't matter, not really anyway. The Star Fox team elude to to Fox being pulled into this dimension, contact was lost and Andross (the bad guy) has taken over the Lylat System which you've spent the entire game trying to prevent. What was supposed to be the final battle ended in defeat as Fox is trapped in another universe. What makes me sure he is trapped forever? This level never ends. You can spend forever flying through this dimension, filled with planets with faces. Fox may have failed one universe but he saved another from the Slot Machine, he made the ultimate sacrifice by being trapped there. It's strange and almost uncomfortable to think of a quirky game like Star Fox to have a sad ending, our hero doen't save his world, evil triumphs over good. But maybe this begins something new for Fox, maybe, one day, he'll fly over Termina and see Majora's Moon crashing into the planet. Maybe that universe is where Majora's Mask is set! It can't be, right? It would be a way for the Offiical Zelda Timeline. The Timeline? The thing that doesn't make sense at all? It will be covered soon but for now, the Slot Machine is weird!
