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Venom
Shrouded in sickly green mist, Venom is a foreboding rocky giant that is suspected to house Andross's home base. Fox and Team have to battle past elite fighters and dangerous defense mechanisms to get to its inner sanctum.
Instead of two paths you can choose, the version of the final Venom battle you get is determined by which route you took to get here. There are two ways to get to Venom: from Bolse and from Area 6. Depending on the route, the green poison planet will throw different challenges at you. For the Area 6 variant, see Venom II.
Path 1: Arriving from Bolse
Arriving from Bolse, Team Star Fox has to fly through Venom's rocky canyons to get to its main base.
Your first challenge is to avoid colliding with a series of rock barriers. After the third barrier, fly low, grab the Gold Ring and immediately pull a loop to also grab the Laser upgrade above.
You'll soon come up to a fork. You can fly left or right -- and both directions will toss a mix of tanks, Tripod enemies, and Scout Pods at you. But following Falco to the left is recommended as there's a second Laser upgrade on that path.
Both paths split once again. If you followed Falco, you should hang a left again as you'll get a Supply Drop here, as well as a Gold Ring.
If you stuck to the right path, you should take another right, and then a left to get a Bomb upgrade. Then head right to get your Supply Crate on this path, as well as a Gold Ring that you need to boost for to avoid colliding with incoming rock pillars. The next right leads to another Gold Ring, while the other path doesn't, so take that into consideration.
But regardless which way you fly, you'll face more rock pillar and block formations that stand, or in some cases, rise and float, in your way. Use brakes to slow down and safely maneuver your way through this obstacle course.
All paths eventually lead to a series of horizontal spinning columns. Use your laser blasts to see if you can safely clear the narrow passage between them on your current path. You'll hit a Checkpoint Ring and you're off to fight the final boss.
Defeat Golemech
Requirement: Navigate the narrow corridors and defeat Golemech
You'll now fly into the inner sanctum of Venom; namely, narrow corridors filled with traps and a moving boss who is running away from you.
While Golemech is running, it will cause pillars to pop out of all four walls that you have to avoid. Simply follow it and keep firing away at any unarmored part of its stone block body that is taking damage when you hit it. Whenever you've destroyed a part of the rock armor, move on to the next part.
Once all the body armor is gone, fire at the head to take down the mechanized rock menace.
Defeat Andross
Requirement: Defeat Andross
Navigate the corridor to the actual boss showdown and refill your shields and bombs on the way. Lock and and shoot one of the energy beam emitters to get clear passage and rack up some extra hits.
Andross, the final boss, appears as a giant floating head with two equally giant floating hands. The hands have blinking weak spots on them -- but he keeps moving them and will attack you with a lightning attack from the right one and swatting attacks with the left. You'll obviously have to avoid getting hit by the hands, but there's a trick to getting more shots in.
Shoot Andross in his eyes. This will distract him -- his eyes turn red and he shakes his head -- and you can focus your fire on his right hand first as it's the more dangerous one. Repeat this approach for the left hand. His head is now vulnerable, but only when he opens his mouth to laugh, spit rocks, or try to suck you in.
When he tries to suck you in, shoot a single bomb into his mouth and he'll get stunned, letting you fire damaging shots between his eyes.
If you run out of bombs, you'll have to escape instead. Bank and spin to one side (eg: top right or top left) and hit the brakes continuously. If you get sucked in, he'll chew up your Arwing along with all the space rocks and cause damage to your wings, then spit you out again. After escaping the suck attack, fly back to the center of the screen and fire at his mouth and the rocks flying towards you. You can get power-ups -- including more Smart Bombs -- this way.
Cause enough damage and Andross will explode... and reveal that you've been fighting a robot decoy. The chattering machine will try to ram you, so dodge and then return fire to eventually blow it up. As you may have guessed it, the real Andross is at the end of a harder path, accessible only via Area 6.
Mission Accomplished
Despite it not being the "real" Andross, you'll still get a Mission Accomplished award since the other battle isn't an alternate path to this particular mission. You'll have to approach Venom a different way.
Congrats! You've completed the Star Fox 64 campaign on an easy route. There are more stages and secrets left to discover, as well as an alternate Venom battle. See: Venom II.
The ending you got is not the True Ending -- so keep fighting.
Venom Medal Rewards and Requirements
| Venom Achievements | ||
|---|---|---|
| Medal | Score | Achievement |
| 200 | ||
| 200 | ||