On February 2021, twenty years after the release of Star Fox Adventures, the preservationist group Forest of Illusion announced on Twitter that it had released a build of the cancelled N64 title Dinosaur Planet online. This was the game that Star Fox Adventures was originally going to be before Rare agreed to take on the Star Fox license, changed its name, and moved development over to the GameCube.
As many noticed, this early build was fully-playable but required a little TLC before players could make it to the end on emulators. As a result, fans in the community including MusicalProgrammer, Jeebs2kx, Banjeoin, nuggs, Sabre230, Ren Fuchsfein took it upon themselves to start fixing and restoring the game content, in order to make it the cleanest experience possible. And they haven't stopped since.
Flash forward to this week and it now seems that it's about to become a whole lot easier to keep up to date with all these fixes, as Sabre230 has revealed a new launcher designed specifically with the game in mind.
DinoLauncher, as the app is called, will make it easier than ever to keep the game updated with the latest community tools and patches. All you need is the "rom_crack.z64", which the developers are choosing not to distribute themselves.
If you have this, you'll be able to select the update branch you want, browse for the specific ROM file, and check for new patches. This is, in addition, to actually applying the patch to your game and launching it from a directory. This means even those fearful of hacking their own games will be able to conveniently mod their experience. The launcher is currently in its infancy, but Sabre230 hopes that it will become "more robust with unique features to experience the game in more ways than ever."