16-bit Star Fox 2 3D visuals would be compared to the superior 3D capabilities of competing consoles. Cuthbert said that Star Fox 2 would be "compared directly against games such as Ridge Racer, which felt like you finally had an arcade machine's power in your home". Nintendo decided to prioritize its upcoming Nintendo 64 console, including a new Star Fox game, Star Fox 64. According to Cuthbert, Miyamoto wanted a clear break between 3D games on the SNES and Nintendo 64. The Super FX 2 chip also raised the cost of production, which would have made Star Fox 2 an expensive release. Star Fox 2 was canceled in mid-1995, when it was about 95% complete. Nintendo still wanted the game finished after cancellation, so took it through full localization and QA testing. Cuthbert said there may have been no official announcement of cancellation, and there was confusion about the game's status in the media. The August issue of GamePro printed that it had been delayed to 1996, while Electronic Gaming Monthly wrote that had been canceled in their September issue. Nintendo Power wrote in their September issue that "rumors of the demise of Star Fox 2 have been greatly exaggerated", with a release most likely coming in the first half of 1996. Release For many years, the completed version of Star Fox 2 remained in Nintendo's archives. Super FX games were not considered for Nintendo's Virtual Console content distribution service because Nintendo had difficulty emulating the chip. In 2015, Miyamoto told journalists: "In my memory, I enjoyed [Star Fox 2] but I'm not sure I would release it, [...] I'd rather have people play a new game". Beta leaks In the years following cancellation, ROM images of incomplete builds of Star Fox 2 were leaked anonymously onto the internet. Cuthbert denied he had leaked it and suspected the ROMs had been taken from his hard drive after he left Argonaut. The first ROMs leaked in the late 1990s were early test builds with numerous software bugs. These versions mostly consist of debug menus and sparsely populated landscapes; one version includes a 2-player mode. A few years later, an anonymous person reached out to the emulation community, saying that they had a non-working copy of the final beta ROM. The community determined that an internal header was missing and were able to add the header to get it functioning. The ROM