Recently as part of our weeklong Star Fox Assault special, AMN sat down with Dylan Cuthbert. Dylan is the man who led the production of the original technological groundbreaking Star Fox for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, as well as the long-lost Star Fox 2 that was canned after completion. Now sit back and enjoy hearing from the man that gave us the reason for this weeklong special.

Advanced Media Network - How did you originally get into the gaming industry?

Dylan Cuthbert - I had been programming in assembler since I was about 11, learning from books bought with pocket money, etc. Then, when I was about 16, I decided I would leave school after asking a teacher how to a rotate a point in 3D and having the teacher look flummoxed (because teachers have never had to apply math to practical applications). It was then I realised that for practical applications my schooling was going to have no use.

So I quit and applied as a programmer at a number of game companies in London, got rejected by Argonaut at first but then a month later got a call from Jez San saying he had a job for me...wage 6000 pounds a year. I took it!

AMN - What was it like working with Nintendo? Was it a positive or negative experience overall? (If positive) Would you consider working with Nintendo again in the future?

Dylan - Extremely positive. I always enjoyed fiddling with stuff when making a game and Nintendo taught me how to fiddle with even more precision and self-criticism. Yes, I would definitely work with Nintendo again, and perhaps we already are... ;-)

AMN - How difficult was Star Fox to develop given that it pioneered 3D on home consoles?

Dylan - Very, and not just because of the 3D; we didn't even have a decent assembler. Back then we used DOS with the old 640k memory limit and towards the 2nd half of the project our source code was getting so large it couldn't compile all in one go and we had no "linker" to allow us to compile the files separately.

So we wrote our own assembler and linker in two months, approximately four months from the end of Star Fox. This smoothed out and sped up our development and contributed a lot behind the scenes to what Star Fox became.

From the 3D point of view, we had been programming 3D on much worse machines for years; for example, I had made a wire-frame 3D game called "X" on the Game Boy (only released in Japan, unfortunately). The FX chip was cutting edge at the time, so it was actually quite good fun programming it.

AMN - How was Shigeru Miyamoto involved? Did his involvement contribute to the project, and if so, how? Was he ever difficult to work with?

Dylan - Mr Miyamoto was directly hands on for most of the project, with his main contribution being to the player's controls and camera. (which he personally refined) Well, we were only about 20 years old at the time, we were pretty much in awe of him, he could have told us to work with one leg tied to the desk and we would have done it.

AMN - How did you feel about the cancellation of the Star Fox 2 project so close to completion? Do you have any favourite ideas from it?

Dylan - It was a shame, but 3D technology was advancing so fast around that time - the Playstation had been released which of course trounced all other 3D technologies and the FX-chip's power was really beginning to look a little shabby.

AMN - Do you feel that yourself, Argonaut, and the other members of the team recieved enough credit publicly for the creation of the game?

Dylan - I think Giles, Krister and I got enough credit, but perhaps Argonaut deserved a little more; Jez really pulled a lot of strings to get the FX chip made, and it gave the Super Famicom that extra edge it needed against the Megadrive (Genesis). Then again, Argonaut probably made a few million out of the deal.

AMN - Do you know how Star Fox 2 was leaked out onto the Internet?

Dylan - No idea, but I didn't clean out my hard drive when I left Argonaut, so someone could easily have half-inched it from there at some point over the years.

AMN - Why are there two known betas of Star Fox 2?

Dylan - No idea again, probably different stages of development - the first beta seems to be from the Winter CES version we made. There were probably a number of ROM images on archive at Argonaut.

AMN - Do you feel Nintendo did a good job utilizing the ideas from Star Fox 2 in Star Fox 64?

Dylan - Yes, they pulled most of the good ideas and the characters too (Star Wolf etc).

AMN - Today, games are made by large teams rather than small groups - what are the major differences and do you prefer one or the other?

Dylan - The team was fairly large for the time; there were two engine support programmers in England, the three of us in Japan, three designers, two directors and, of course, Mr. Miyamoto.

I think teams shouldn't get so large that they lose team cohesion, so I'd say I'd prefer to develop using teams of 20 people or less. As teams get larger, products do get "glossier" but they also lose a certain raw edge, and it was that raw edge that brought me into gaming. In the movie industry it would be the difference between watching True Lies and deciding to be a director, or watching something like Kubrick's The Shining and being inspired. (Kubrick was notorious for using tight numbers of crews and actors.)

Unfortunately, of course, it means it can take longer but I think you get an edgier product.

AMN - What are your feelings on the evolution of the series on the Gamecube with Star Fox Adventures and the upcoming Star Fox Assault?

Dylan - The graphics are top-notch, but Star Fox Adventures was beginning to veer off course, I think. Star Fox Assault seems to be trying to return the series back to its roots, and the E3 [2004] demo was very impressive.

AMN - What are the reasons for choosing Kyoto for your current venture rather than any place in the West? What are the advantages and disadvantages to developing games in Japan?

Dylan - Kyoto impressed me when I first came here with its slightly bohemian, high technology, friendly and culturally rich way of life. I tried living England and California but always found myself yearning to work here with mountains on all sides and lots of things going on all the time.

AMN - What kind of games do you enjoy playing?

Dylan - Various, but this year my gaming has been dominated by Half-Life 2, Battlefield 1942 (especially with the EOD patch), Command 'n' Conquer: Generals and Battle for Middle Earth. As for console gaming, Katamari Damaci was great for a while, and the new BioHazard [Resident Evil 4 in the U.S.] on the GameCube is absolutely excellent.

AMN - Last but not least, is there anything else you'd like to say to our readers at AMN?

Dylan - Erm.. please buy our games! We're putting a hell of a lot of effort into them to make them new experiences even for the most jaded of gamers. "What games are we making?" - ah well, that's a secret for now... watch this space.

Dylan Cuthbert now currently heads his own development house called Q-Games in Kyoto, Japan. He and his team are currently in development of games for the next generation of consoles. We at AMN are all looking forward to what wonders they will accomplish in the future.

Thanks to Lucas DeWoody for conducting the interview. Special thanks to Zanthy Zae for interview coordination. Questions credited to Lucas DeWoody, Jeff Kennedy, Zanthy Zae, Casey Ayers, and Ken Cauley.