Remasters, remakes and re-releases remain at the heart of the current games industry. This year, that feels truer than ever, with mainstream titles like Assassin’s Creed Black Flag and Rayman Legends Retold hoping to find both an old and new audience. Star Fox is Nintendo’s bid for a slice of that nostalgic cake, taking Star Fox 64 – or Lylat Wars depending on where you’re from – and giving it a 2026 makeover.
The original Star Fox was a watershed moment in my gaming life. Powered by the on-board SuperFX chip, the Star Fox cart stands as the first 3D title I ever played, and it, Fox McCloud, and his lovable band of animal crew – well, maybe not Falco – are nestled deep within my heart. That’s important, because as Star Fox games go, we’ve mostly been playing the same one since 1993.
Star Fox 64 was a reboot of the original, Star Fox 3D was then that same game for the 3DS, and the most recent Wii U outing was itself a reimagining of Star Fox 64. The GameCube’s Star Fox Assault is really the only one outside of this original timeline, mostly because Star Fox Guard doesn’t count, and Star Fox 2 wasn’t actually released until the SNES Mini came out. This new Star Fox launches for Switch 2, but if you’ve played any of the other games, especially Star Fox 64, it’s going to feel very, very familiar.
That’s a lot of Star Foxes, and not a great deal of growth or innovation in a series that started out at the forefront of gaming tech. Nintendo do at least acknowledge this with the remaster being priced at a somewhat reasonable £42 or €50, but for all of the great work that’s been done to make it look like a game released in 2026, structurally you can feel the creaks and groans that anyone born in the 90s probably makes when they get out of a chair.
It really does look quite beautiful though. I wasn’t initially sure what I thought about the fully animated, somewhat realistic-looking animal heroes, but after playing through the game multiple times, I’m totally sold on the central cast. It would have been nice to see the same level of detail given to the villains, most of whom you only see in little windows when they’re talking, but throughout the cutscenes the team look amazing, and you get a real sense of their characters, even though you probably know them well enough already.
Similarly, the central gameplay has seen a huge upgrade from the Nintendo 64 era. Whether you’re at the controls of an Arwing, Landmaster tank or Blue Marine submarine, Star Fox looks fantastic, retaining a large degree of the original game’s chunky polygonal art direction, but adding detailed texture and depth at every turn, with vistas that really do disappear off into the distance, and landscapes that look and feel like fully formed places, rather than flat, blank surfaces that you have to rely on your imagination to fill in.
The final key upgrade is the audio, from the fully-voiced cutscenes through to the clearly John Williams-inspired orchestral soundtrack. It sounds like a true blockbuster, and while there are definitely a few cheeky Star Wars trills, and indeed a dose of ‘borrowed’ dialogue, it never feels any less than a premium Star Fox experience. While that can definitely be coloured by the nostalgia I and others will feel about the franchise, I’d say that in terms of art and audio direction the team at Velan Studios have absolutely nailed it.
You might feel that I’m building up to a big ‘BUT’, and you’d be right. For all that Star Fox looks every inch the modern space shooter, structurally and mechanically, this is still a game that is nearly 30 years old. There are one or two structural changes, including a mouse mode using the Joy Con 2, but they do nothing to alter the pervading issues, whether that includes the fact that your Arwing obscures your view when playing in third person, or that the craft feel clunky and slow to manoeuvre at times.
You can muddle your way through sections, bumping your way against enemies and buildings, and when it does take the reins off for the all-range mode, you’ll find this unwieldy too, with some of these sections making it far too easy to crash into scenery and lose a chunk of your health bar. That can really make you suffer, especially when Star Fox can offer a pretty old-school challenge, especially in the final levels where you’ll find that checkpoints are few and far between.
For all that, though, I still found myself having plenty of fun with Star Fox. One of its greatest strengths is the way it has branching pathways, and you can make multiple runs through to the showdown with the villainous Andross while seeing completely different missions. There’s definitely some longevity to be had there, as well as the drive to chase high scores, ace each mission, and keep your entire team alive throughout each run, and there’s Expert mode to really push you to the brink in terms of memorising attack patterns and being painstakingly precise on the controls.
Outside of the main campaign, Challenge Mode aims to give you other things to concentrate on through each level. These might range from completing a level in a set time, through taking out specific groups of enemies, but they do rely a little too much on your own memory, pinging away when you do or don’t achieve certain requirements – a checklist at the side of the screen would work better. Still, it’s another reason to make multiple runs, and they force you to concentrate on things you might otherwise miss.
There’s then multiplayer. I spent a lot of time holed up in my friend’s front room in the 90s, and while Lylat Wars was probably a distant third to GoldenEye and Mario Kart 64 sessions, there was still enough challenge and action to keep us coming back. Battle Mode resurrects and reimagines that for the modern day, letting you take part in 4v4 online battles, four-player local dogfights via GameShare, or online via GameChat, the latter two options only needing one copy of the game.
There’s not a whole heap of games giving you the option of dogfighting action – it’ll be interesting to see how Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve handles it later this year – and there’s definitely plenty of fun to be had here blasting your former friends out of the sky. It really does a good job of making you feel like you’re part of a wider conflict, with AI-controlled ships filling out the forces, and with three different mode types, there’s a bit of variety to these skirmishes, whether you’re fighting off space pirates while making cargo drops, or blasting meteorites and harvesting their energy.
The online modes might be quietly the best addition to Star Fox, though they are, in classic Nintendo style, a little limited. It desperately needs more arenas, more modes – there’s not even a classic team deathmatch mode – and some more long-term goals, even if they’re just skill tiers or medal rankings. You unlock new emblems for your player profile, but that’s currently it.
For some people, the most important addition to the whole thing might just be the GameChat overlays. These take your Switch 2 camera inputs and overlay the Star Fox characters onto them, and they’re surprisingly solid, mirroring your head, mouth and eye movement. It’s a fun little extra, and when you’re used to the talking heads of the original, GameChat is a surprisingly close approximation, really adding to the Star Fox roleplay.
