This comes out for the 3DS next week, and I’m more excited for it than I was for the Zelda remake. I’ve got fonder childhood memories of Star Fox 64:

1. I HAVE A PROMOTIONAL VIDEO ABOUT IT FROM NINTENDO.
Nintendo was telling me that this game was SO IMPORTANT that it basically required its own movie. I know it was a long commercial, but I must have watched that video more times than most actual movies I had (READ: Zeus and Roxanne). There was even a plot about Sega agents capturing a Nintendo guy. It was pretty crazy. This video brought the following thing to my attention:

2. THE RUMBLE PAK.
I was, at this point, a Nintendo Power subscriber (I only stopped last year because I made a conscious decision to not get magazines in the mail anymore. I say this as a now reluctant subscriber of Game Informer) and I knew OF the Rumble Pak, but the video really highlighted how much the Rumble Pak would improve my life. And it came with the game! AND GAMING WAS FOREVER CHANGED.

3. THE VIDEO GAME SECTION AT BEST BUY ON LAUNCH DAY.
I don’t know if you’re old enough to have this be a nostalgia thing, but there once was a time when the video game section was like a monument to gaming. They had giant displays built out of nine (!!!) TVs each, hanging from the ceiling, showing the entire store just how bad you were at Crash Bandicoot. However, not on the launch of Star Fox 64, because the game on display that day was STAR FOX 64, and it is an image burned into my mind. It’s one of my greatest video game memories, right up there with the first time I played a PC game on a color monitor (!!!) (it was Commander Keen [!!!]). I remember playing the demo station for 10 seconds and then realizing I had to get it. I know this because I literally told people “I played it for ten seconds and then I knew I had to get it”.

And also the game was pretty amazing! So buy it.