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Fun Fact: Dylan Cuthbert - The Genre Masher

Posted by Derrick Sanskrit

So you think PixelJunk Eden is a deliciously freeing, genre defying romp through psychadelia but that the whole experience is vaguely familiar somehow? Maybe that's because Eden was designed by the same dude who programmed Star Fox back on the Super Nintendo. In fact, a quick look at Dylan Cuthbert's history in game design shows a pattern of smashing game genre conventions, all the while producing addictive works of beauty.

Way back in 1992, Dylan designed and programmed X, a first person shooter/puzzler that showed off wireframe 3D graphics on the Nintendo Game Boy, a feat that had never been achieved on the clunky grey box before OR after. Based on this exciting new style of gameplay, Nintendo hired Dylan's team at Argonaut Software to develop a 3D arcade shooter for the brand-new Super Nintendo. This led to the production of both Star Fox and the impressive Super FX chip hardware that powered it and many other great SNES games. After designing the unpublished Star Fox 2, a game which was set to mix up the shooting with healthy doses of action and RPG elements, Dylan went to work for Sony, where his prowess for showing off new 3D technology led to memorable tech demos for the Playstation 2, Playstation Portable, and Playstation 3

At his newly-formed Q-Games studio, Dylan and company designed the Playstation 3's XMB user interface, Star Fox Command for the Nintendo DS and Digidrive, an example of twitch-gaming that brilliantly mashed the puzzle and race genres into the must-have game of the Game Boy Advance's bitGenerations series (and the only one not designed by skip ltd.) Of course, Dylan's current work is the PixelJunk series of downloadable Playstation 3 games, including the action/puzzle/racer Racers, the arcade/real-time-strategy Monsters, and the hallucinogenic platform/racer/chill-out Eden, with more on the way.

Dream on, Dylan, you lovable madman.

Related articles:
Fun Fact: Metroid Meets Metronome
Far Out, Man.
Whatcha Playing: How Does Your Garden Grow

The Ten Most Adventurous Sequels in Gaming History, Part 3 (Star Fox 2)


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Comments

9th_Sage said:

It is really sad that StarFox 2 was never published...it is actually a pretty fun little game (a few years ago someone compiled a ROM of it, they had the source code apparently and must have worked on the game...you can find it on the 'net if you look, as well as an english translation patch for it).  It seems simple at first, but as you play on harder difficulties, they throw a lot more obstacles your way.

August 12, 2008 11:44 AM

Derrick Sanskrit said:

Dylan's been interviewed about Star Fox 2 several times over the years, but here's an exchange from one that speaks to the ROM leak:

gc.kombo.com/article.php

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.

August 12, 2008 4:47 PM

Demaar said:

Oh man, I had no idea they did the XMB as well. Sony owes them and Media Molecule for getting so many people to actively want a PS3, if you ask me.

August 17, 2008 11:19 PM

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John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Hooksexup, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

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