At the age of seven, Star Fox 64 was the coolest game I owned. GoldenEye 007 could get the blood flowing like nothing else, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time put an entire world at my feet to save, but Star Fox 64's intergalactic war – war! – felt adult, while the aerial rail shooter's dramatic battlegrounds delivered action at a scale I'd never seen before. Fast-forward 22 years, and although it's been a long time since I thought of Fox McCloud, Nintendo's impromptu Star Fox reveal for the Switch 2 proves I'm as impressionable as ever.
Truth be told, I didn't know I still carried a flame for Star Fox 64 until seeing the Switch 2 remake in action – specifically, Fox McCloud and co. corkscrewing towards Corneria City and the last-ditch defense that kicks off their system-spanning mission. Then it all came rushing back: the barrel rolls, rivalries, dogfights in asteroid belts, barrel rolls; and it was like I'd never left the cockpit.
One of the biggest talking points around Star Fox is that it's (yet another) re-release of Star Fox 64, rather than an original addition to the series. I've got no stakes in the controversial character redesigns – I've only ever known Fox's entourage as anthropomorphic squibbles on a tiny CRT television – but the fresh visuals look fantastic on the levels we've seen, and frankly, Star Fox 64 remains one of the tightest action games around and I'll take any excuse to play it without the boxiness of Nintendo Switch Online's emulation.
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I don't believe the value of remasters and remakes lies entirely in the light touch-ups they offer existing fans, and there are too many instances where the terms have been used to slap premium price tags on old hits. Done right, re-releases should keep classics contemporary. Think 2025's The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered, which (ongoing technical issues aside) kept mechanical tweaks to a minimum and instead focused on giving Cyrodiil the visual parity of a modern release. I also accept the business logic behind remakes: you're taking a demonstrably good game and bringing it to a new audience, rather than hoping they stumble upon the original in their own time.
With The Super Mario Galaxy Movie introducing Fox McCloud to new generations, Nintendo has a golden opportunity to reintroduce Star Fox to the mainstream as it did for Donkey Kong in Donkey Kong Bananza. Does a remake play it safe? Yes – but unlike Donkey Kong Bananza, which could build from more contemporary touchstones like Super Mario Odyssey, it's hard to see Star Fox's next steps working as naturally.
By remaking Star Fox 64, Nintendo is putting its best foot forward. It remains the best Star Fox game, despite a number of successors: there's nothing quite like facing down Star Fox's rival pilots in a free-flying dogfight above Fortuna, or skimming oceans of lava on Solar. Each stage is tight – you're either cut loose with very specific targets or kept on-rails; the latter forcing you to fly creatively to survive with limited screen space. Even today, shooting down foes is sublime – somersaulting to escape their own sights, before sinking them in a blur of lasers and crunchy explosions.
Likewise, the game's stage-based progression was mind-blowing for its time. The levels you played were determined by the route you plotted each run, with certain paths hidden unless they were unlocked by hitting specific criteria in prior missions. At seven years old, it was the first game to truly feel reactive, and even now, Star Fox 64 feels prescient to the run-based structure of modern roguelikes.
I'm still fortunate enough to be able to play the original Star Fox 64, but that's not the case for everyone. There's a physical component – again, Star Fox 64 feels rather clunky in its Nintendo Switch Online version – but speaking broadly, it can be tricky to get into any game you didn't play at its peak. Generations of shifting design philosophies and controller norms mean not all players can approach older games from the angle or expectations they were designed for (more power to you if you can!), and if we don't acknowledge that, we risk relegating classics to footnotes in the medium's legacy.
Here are all of the upcoming Switch 2 games we know about, including Star Fox
