Star Fox 64 has been remade again for Nintendo Switch 2, and it says a lot about just how deep Nintendo’s back catalog goes. Few companies in games can reach this far back and still find series people genuinely care about, series they remember with real affection. Over decades, Nintendo has built a lineup so stacked that it can keep pulling old favorites back into view whenever it feels like it. The company really doesn’t run short on options.
That’s a big reason Nintendo fans stick around: there’s almost always something in that catalog worth getting excited about. The catch is obvious enough. A lot of fans end up on the outside looking in, because Nintendo can’t keep every series active all the time. Some franchises are always going to disappear for long stretches.
A few Nintendo names were never in danger of being ignored, Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda most of all. Others have still been looked after even without ever turning into full mainstream giants, like Fire Emblem and Metroid. Then there are the ones that haven’t been nearly so lucky.
So when something like Star Fox gets dragged back into the spotlight, it lands like an occasion. Star Fox has always been one of those series.
An on-rails shooter
Star Fox first showed up on the Super Nintendo in 1993, and its job was pretty straightforward: prove the system could do 3D graphics. It did that, no question, though it had to give up quite a bit along the way.
The game could run rough. The frame rate dropped hard in places, and the visuals were about as bare-bones as you’d expect from early console 3D. Yes, it was 3D, but it was also obviously straining against the hardware. Even with all that, it mattered for a very simple reason. It was great.
That original game laid down the basic shape of the whole series. You played as Fox McCloud, piloting a ship from planet to planet, choosing the next destination from two or three possible routes, blowing enemy craft out of the sky, slipping past hazards, and squaring off against huge bosses.
Even with the Super Nintendo’s clunky precision and rough-looking polygons, there was something special about it. Flying through space, pulling off barrel rolls, looping through danger, it just felt good. Really good. And in the sequel, that feeling got even stronger.
Star Fox 64 took the same idea and tightened every part of it. It was bigger, better-looking, and much more cinematic. Star Fox 64 felt like the version the first game had been trying to become from the start.
In a lot of ways, Star Fox 64 was the first game’s full vision, the one the original could only partly reach. It still slowed down at times, and the controls weren’t flawless, but it was thrilling, fast, and honestly felt ahead of its moment. Players responded to it too. It was a big hit and pulled in a huge fanbase.
So big, in fact, that Star Fox 64 later got remade on Nintendo 3DS. Now it’s happened again on Nintendo Switch 2.
A stunning remake, with a few caveats
The first thing you notice in this new version of Star Fox 64 is how much cleaner it looks. The whole game is sharper, tidier, and much more polished than before.
The water, the particle effects, and especially the character models have been improved so much that some of them barely resemble their older versions, and that alone makes Star Fox 64 a joy to revisit. More important than the graphics, though, is how the game runs.
That was one of the main things holding the older home-console versions back. On Super Nintendo, performance was fairly steady, but never all that smooth. On Nintendo 64, the frame rate could really sag.
On Nintendo Switch 2, Star Fox 64 finally plays the way people always wanted it to, smooth, responsive, and reliably fun, which makes this one of the strongest ways to revisit a real classic.
The issue is that this remake can feel a little thin on content. At the end of the day, it’s still basically the original game, and that means a player can finish a run in around an hour.
Fair is fair, though: there are multiple routes, and anyone who wants to really pick the game apart will probably chase every path and every challenge Star Fox 64 has, which can push the total time into dozens of hours. It’s a satisfying remake, easy to recommend, and it gives fresh life to a fantastic game that has more going on than it seems to at first glance.
Still, anyone coming in just wanting one clean, straightforward playthrough may leave feeling like there isn’t quite enough here to justify the remake. The online mode doesn’t do much to change that, since it never feels especially inspired.
That doesn’t make Star Fox any less excellent. It just means people should know what sort of game they’re getting into.
It’s an arcade-style game built for a particular kind of player. The kind who wants to learn the systems, master them, and squeeze every last bit out of the game, not someone who’s only looking for more content to chew through.
If somebody already likes Star Fox, arcade games, or flight shooters, they’ll probably settle in immediately. If a Nintendo fan is expecting every stage to constantly throw out brand-new ideas and never repeat itself, though, Star Fox probably isn’t going to give them what they’re looking for.
