Cover to Starfox: Command for the Nintendo DS:
http://media.ds.ign.com/media/826/826993/img_3697717.html

See anything familiar? The blue starfighter on the lower left hand side of the cover looks just like the Jedi Starfighter from Attack of the Clones, only with wings added.

For those of you not familiar with the Starfox game series, it was created by Shigeru Miyamoto, the same man who brought us Mario, Zelda, among other great game series. Starfox is a scrolling shooter game with humanoid animals as characters, who fly through space and different planets in starfighters called Arwings (pronounced R-wings).

I'm not sure whether Miyamoto or Nintendo has ever stated this before, but I'm pretty sure that the gameplay of Starfox is inspired by the space dogfighting scenes from Star Wars. The Arwings are named just that as a nod to Star Wars for being its inspiration, in the same way that one of the characters in the Metroid series (also from Nintendo) is called Ridley, as a nod to Ridley Scott, and his Alien movie, from which Metroid drew its inspiration from.

Now I'm cool with all that, I love that Starfox is inspired by Star Wars, but that starfighter on the cover of Command is just a cheap ripoff of Star Wars.

By the way, I'm quite the fan of the Starfox series, I think it's great. I'm going to get Command as soon as it comes out. Hopefully, those ripoff fighters are not in the actual game itself, and if they are, let them be enemy fighters, so I can destroy them.

The Starfox series, if you ask me, has the best scroller shooting gameplay of any scroller shooting games. If only the Star Wars scroller shooters had the gameplay of Starfox.

Update: I've bought the game. And guess what, the ripoff fighter is one of the main fighters in the game which you can control and it belongs to Slippy Toad. After having played the game, I have to say that I don't find it to be such a bother to me anymore.