A Super Smash Bros. movie is suddenly looking a lot more likely now that Fox McCloud is popping up in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.
We’re less than a week away from The Super Mario Galaxy Movie arriving in cinemas, on Wednesday, April 1, and it’s set to be quite the rollercoaster, with the trailers showing off characters not just from Super Mario Galaxy but several other games too.
You’d think the biggest surprise would be the inclusion of Wart, a villain who hasn’t made a proper appearance in any Super Mario media since Super Mario Bros. 2 in 1988.
Turns out that’s not the case, as Nintendo has casually announced that Fox McCloud, the star of the Star Fox series, is making an appearance, and he’s even got his own movie poster.
We initially assumed it was fan-made, but the poster was shared on the official X account for The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, with Fox posing dramatically in front of an Arwing, the ship he pilots in the games.
Expert, exclusive gaming analysis
Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning.
Unless this is an early and elaborately cruel April Fool’s joke, this raises a number of puzzling questions, least of all why Nintendo and Illumination opted to spoil what would’ve been a neat surprise for fans just a week before the movie’s launch.
It’s not as if Fox made a cameo in either of the Super Mario Galaxy games, although his appearance makes some sense in that the movie and the Star Fox games share an outer space setting.
But if Nintendo wanted a character from outside of the Mario universe to make a cameo, it’s still odd that it would pick Fox when the Star Fox series has very much fallen from the spotlight in recent years.
The last Star Fox game was 2016’s Star Fox Zero for the Wii U, which was a huge sales flop and never even saw a Switch port, unlike other Wii U exclusives.
A lot of Nintendo fans likely only know Fox from his frequent appearances in the Super Smash Bros. games and now a whole new generation of fans stands to view him as a Super Mario adjacent character, thanks to the movie.
Perhaps this a sign that Nintendo wants to try and build up Fox’s profile ahead of a new game, although there hasn’t been so much as a whisper that a new Star Fox is in development for Switch 2.
Or maybe this is sowing the seeds for a Super Smash Bros. crossover movie. Pikmin are already known to be in the film, thanks to one of the recent trailers, so maybe there’ll be cameos from other Nintendo franchises too, such as Samus from Metroid, since that would suit the space theme of the movie too.
Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter.
To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.
For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.
