| “ | The price was high and the timing of the release was awkward, so we decided to cancel it and start from scratch with a new Star Fox game for Nintendo 64.
— Shigeru Miyamoto
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Star Fox 2 was a rail shooter and sequel to Star Fox developed in collaboration between Nintendo and Argonaut Software in 1995. The game was intended for release on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and though it was largely completed, the close proximity to the release of the Nintendo 64 and the expensive chips that would have been required to produce the carts lead to the game's cancellation. It was followed up by Star Fox 64, which adapted many of the ideas created for 2.
Despite not getting a formal release at the time, the game's cancellation came late enough that full playable builds had been made available at press events such as CES. Working backwards through some of these preserved builds, ROMs of Star Fox 2 were leaked out on the internet, allowing fans to burn the game onto chips and play on original hardware, or on emulators.
22 years after the game's original cancellation, Star Fox 2 was officially released by Nintendo as a bonus unlockable title on the Super NES Classic Edition.