I was just about to clock out for the day and Nintendo decided it would shadow-drop a Nintendo Direct on us at the end of random Wednesday. The 15-minute presentation was all about Star Fox. This comes just a month after Fox McCloud made a guest appearance in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, and now the anthropomorphic space pilot is finally making his long-awaited return to video games. Here’s the rundown of what was announced.
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie
First off, we saw the best part of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie in high quality. Fox’s intro has an anime-style look to it and I kinda want a full series using it.
Star Fox
Now, we get to the game we’re here to see. The next Star Fox game will be called…well, Star Fox, but it’s actually a remake of Star Fox 64 for the Switch 2. It stars Fox, Falco, Flippy, and Peppy in a remake of the Nintendo 64 classic with an almost photorealistic art style. It brings back the classic space, land, and underwater combat of the Nintendo 64 game, but with a bigger focus on characters and story, with full-blown cutscenes.
There’s new content here including challenges for different levels, and an updated, objective-based multiplayer mode starring the members of Star Fox and Star Wolf, which will support both online play and local multiplayer using the Gameshare feature. You can also use the Switch 2’s mouse controls for precision flight, and divide flight and weapon controls between two players by sharing a pair of Joy-Cons. If all of that sounds a little modern for your tastes, you can also play Star Fox with the Nintendo 64 controller. The game will also support avatars for the Switch 2’s Game Chat, allowing you to put Fox and friends over your face as a filter. I’m sure that will be used very normally online.
Star Fox 64 has been remade before, both on the 3DS as Star Fox 64 3D, and in the Wii U’s Star Fox Zero, which is more of a “reimagining” of the N64 original. So I’m curious to see how fans react to Nintendo going back to this well for a fourth time. At least we won’t have to wait much longer to see how it plays, as Star Fox is coming to Switch 2 on June 25.
The presentation closed with the game’s prologue, which features Fox’s father, James McCloud, getting into some trouble before the events of the main game.