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Published Jun 24, 2026, 8:00 AM EDT
Flashier visuals and cinematic cutscenes don't move the needle for an already great game
Star Fox can't outfly an all-time Nintendo classic
Image: Nintendo
Fox McCloud has sky-high expectations to live up to in Star Fox, the Nintendo Switch 2’s glitzy remake of 1997’s Star Fox 64 (itself a glitzy remake of the 1993 SNES Star Fox). No matter how many successful missions he leads, he’s always left chasing his father’s tail. See, James McCloud was a war hero — an ace pilot who sacrificed everything to save his squad. That’s what a real star looks like, not some brash hotshot retracing his pop’s flight path. Who does McCloud Jr. think he is, anyway?
While this generational anxiety made for a light backdrop to Star Fox 64’s interstellar dogfights, developer Velan Studios places it front-and-center in its less subtle remake. Cinematic cutscenes lay it on thick between dazzling shoot-‘em-up missions, as Fox’s squad mates are eager to remind him (and you) that James’ boots aren’t easy to fill.
The family drama is made more explicit than it was in the Nintendo 64 version, but is the quality of a story proportional to the length of the script? Do cutscenes that are as carefully staged and shot as The Super Mario Galaxy Movie make a game better? Questions like that hang over Star Fox, a fine remake that’s overeager to live up to an all-time great. In its attempt to soar beyond an ironclad classic, Star Fox at times confuses modernity for maturity. It’s more polished and silver screen-ready, but big woof, pal! A whiter smile doesn’t make you the better pilot.
Like its predecessor, what’s impressive about Star Fox is that it doesn’t suck you in by dangling carrots in front of you. There are no meta progression hooks, and the only tangible incentive to play a level again is to gain its high score medals or try it in Expert difficulty. It’s simply a pleasure to play, like a reliable action movie that you’re happy to rewatch any time if it happens to be on cable. It’s Top Gun for gamers — in multiple ways. For one, it fulfills that same dogfighting fantasy without requiring a ton of technical execution. Barrel rolling to dodge incoming shots, tilting your ship on its side to cut through narrow passages, and performing somersaults to get pilots off your tail are accomplished through quick button presses, thanks to lightly streamlined controls. There are just enough evasive maneuvers to infuse a standard shoot-’em-up with Hollywood drama.
Image: Velan Studios/Nintendo
Everything that worked in Star Fox 64 still works today. Corneria, faithfully reconstructed with glossy visuals and grander explosions, remains a thrilling opening level that takes Fox and his crew through a city under siege; ducking under bridges and squeezing between burning buildings is as exciting as ever. Stages like Sector X and Meteo bring Star Fox even closer to its Star Wars inspiration, sending you zipping around meteor storms and industrial debris fields. Conversely, anything that didn’t work on Nintendo 64 is still a low point here. The remake’s All-Range levels, where Fox can freely fly around a circular arena, can still be a frustrating drag, even with useful evasive actions. The submarine and tank levels control a bit better than they used to, but the aerial action still flies circles around them.
That’s one small cut, but one that underlines the remake’s broader philosophical shift. Compare Star Fox to its 1997 counterpart, and you’ll find a tangible document of how what we value in big-budget games has changed over 30 years. Bragging rights aren’t enough of a selling point for tentpole blockbusters anymore; Star Fox has to be more substantive to capture a modern audience. How do you solve that and bring in more players? Velan Studios’ answer is to dial the cinematic undertones of the earlier games all the way up.
Few of the attempts to get today’s players to label Star Fox as “cinema” make the base game any better or worse.
The redesigns come with new voice acting, too. These performances toss aside the exaggerated tooniness of the original cast for something that presents as slightly more refined. Slippy’s memorably annoying high-pitched wail, something that communicates that he is an egghead who truly needs your protection, is replaced by less exaggerated line readings that sand the mechanic’s character down to “capable pilot.” Falco is similarly flat, dialing down the thick sarcasm until lines like “Gee, I’ve been saved by Fox” just leave him sounding bored. Maybe that’s what some players need to take these characters “seriously,” but it’s a shame to see those playful dynamics tossed aside.
Image: Nintendo
Then there are the new cutscenes, which is where Star Fox tries too hard to create something mature. It’s not that these newly added sequences don’t look great; watching Arwings weave through laser fire and explosions, complete with lens flares and widescreen bars, makes it feel like you’re playing through movie setpieces. But are they actually additive? Take the game’s new opening. Rather than setting up the story with a Star Wars-style text crawl, we’re treated to a short cinematic that actually shows James McCloud’s ill-fated Venom mission. It doesn’t tell us anything new or add nuance to the story; it’s just the action scene you always pictured placed in front of you. Would A New Hope be better if it replaced its iconic opening with a scene showing the birth of the galactic civil war? If anything, George Lucas’ retroactive attempts to fill in the gaps only dented our imaginations.
Image: Velan Studios/Nintendo
The problem with that approach is that the familiar story of Star Fox isn’t all that rich once you start stretching it out to fill cutscenes. That’s part of what makes it such an easy target for remakes, like a vague folk legend meant to be passed down between generations. There’s a war raging in the Lylat System, and Star Fox’s crew has been hired to join the fight against the nefarious Andross. The pilots have a set of barely developed foils in Star Wolf, but evildoers like Leon have about as much depth as Wario in a Mario Tennis game. The only kernel of substance we get is the detail that Fox wants to live up to his father’s legacy, something that is delivered just enough in the original game to give our star some motivation. The expanded version of all this just amounts to longer explanations of each planet’s terrain and more “your fathers.” It’s a Disney movie with extra lore.
Image: Velan Studios/Nintendo
It’s a shame, because that’s where it feels like Velan Studios can really leave its mark on a series going forward. It has the fundamentals of ship piloting, and it knows how to make environments that give you enough opportunities to outmaneuver your opponent. I can see a future where Star Fox could be reinvented as a strong multiplayer game. (Even the co-op support, which lets one player fire using Switch 2’s mouse controls, offers a refreshingly novel way to play a shoot-’em-up with your kids.) It’s just going to take some confidence on Nintendo’s part to steer the ship in an exciting new direction rather than reversing course again.
Star Fox is another good excuse to revisit one of Nintendo’s best games, but it doesn’t meaningfully build on it. Fox McCloud is left in the same stasis he’s been in for decades now: surviving the Lylat Wars to show that he can walk in his father’s footsteps. I get it. How many more times will he have to prove he’s his own fox before he’s allowed to fight his own battles? Give his future cubs a war story that’s worth feeling insecure about.
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