I've been a huge Star Fox fan since 1993, when the SNES game and the comic came out. Continued being a huge fan. Funny thing was, I was never much of a fan of Star Fox 64 (yup, played it, beat it and disliked it)...or Star Fox Adventures...or Star Fox Assault...or Star Fox Command. But I did appreciate some of the Star Fox and Star Wolf characterizations in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and I also liked Star Fox 2.

I felt a long time ago like the Star Fox franchise and fandom left me far behind. The 1993 game was one of the video games most iconic of my young years, and I loved it and its characters and its story to pieces. I still do.

Problem is, you can't continue like that indefinitely. I don't feel a huge drive for it anymore. I would like more of that kind of drive, but the old fond memories are getting older and older in the past, and now there are adults who weren't even born when the game came out. The years have been very unkind to Star Fox, and to F-Zero which I also loved.

At least I know I'm not imagining their stagnation. Even their creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, has confessed to disliking how each franchise has developed after the first couple of games. And the Star Fox fandom has been an acrimonious mess for most of its incarnation, with entire camps of fans who cannot even mutually associate without constant flame wars. Who would have thought that such promising franchises would come to experience such a hell.

I even toyed with the idea of Star Fox fanfiction, working out my fanonical universe (independent from any of the games or comics), and everything. But I realized - with such a fragmented fandom, there would likely be no one else to truly appreciate it. And the last thing I really wanted was to express a particular fandom niche that was likely to attract at least as many hostile rival camp fans as it would appreciative fans. Or - worse - jaded indifference from most people who once considered themselves Star Fox fans. I came to truly loathe spending any time in the Star Fox fandom for the reason that every single subtopic of fandom is a holy war. Entire Star Fox fan sites have been derailed by nonstop fan-dumb, because none of us can agree fundamentally on what Star Fox is anymore. Sometimes it's seemed like there's practically no Star Fox fan in existence today that doesn't reject 50%-75% of the entire franchise.

Eh, just felt like bitching about it. I wish my feelings about Star Fox weren't so complicated. Such nostalgia, and such baggage, going hand in hand.