Star Fox 2026: a refreshing throwback

Star Fox is back! Again. And this time, people, for the most part, actually seem to like it. This is more than can be said for the past attempt to bring it back — which, for the record, I still feel was vastly underrated and completely misunderstood. The most common criticism that has been going around about this new Switch 2 reboot of the classic series is that it’s basically just another retread of the same story that has been (re)told in multiple games at this point — specifically, it’s an almost note-for-note remake of Star Fox 64 (aka Lylat Wars in Europe, due to a trademark dispute that hadn’t yet been resolved by that point) with not a whole lot in the way of “brand new” stuff added. Mind you, Star Fox 64 came out 29 years ago at the time of writing, so although that original version is readily accessible on Switch devices via Nintendo’s subscription-based online service, it’s not the worst idea in the world to give it a 2026-era sheen. In fact, as it turns out, I have, so far, found it to be a thoroughly refreshing game to spend some time with. Hit the jump and let’s talk about that a little more. If you’re reading this, you are almost certainly already familiar with Star Fox in its various incarnations, but just in case, a quick summary: you take on the role of Fox McCloud, leader of a spacefaring mercenary quartet known as Star Fox. Fox’s comrades include veteran Peppy Hare, who was a member of a previous incarnation of Star Fox alongside Fox’s father James; Slippy Toad, the most mechanically minded one of the group; and Falco Lombardi, an arrogant hotshot pilot who puts up a blustering front of not taking Fox seriously as a leader, but nonetheless follows along with him. As the game opens, Star Fox has been recruited by the planet Corneria in the Lylat star system to beat back an invasion by the forces of Dr. Andross, a criminal who was originally sentenced to death, but after the intervention of General Pepper of Corneria’s defensive forces, was simply exiled to the inhospitable planet of Venom. Five years ago, Andross began mustering his forces, and him revealing his hand apparently cost Fox’s father his life; now, Fox has agreed to pick up where James left off… for a price, of course. One immediately interesting thing about the new Star Fox is that the tone has shifted quite a bit. While the core personality traits of all the main characters are all still the same as they always were, a certain amount of the campy, over-the-top nature of the game found in the Nintendo 64 version has been toned down a bit. Slippy, for example, is the least annoying he has been in any Star Fox game, and it’s surprising to see a Nintendo game making explicit references to concepts like capital punishment. Probably the biggest change is seen with Fox, as the lead character. In prior games, he was a bit of a “nothing” personality-wise, presumably in an attempt to get the player to want to project themselves onto him, but in this one, he’s very much a wisecracking mercenary type keen to make a healthy profit out of the situation, even though it’s clear he’s going to do the right thing regardless. He’s keen not to live in the shadow of his father — even if Peppy won’t shut up about him — and prove himself, but not in an insecure way. He exudes a quiet confidence about him, but is willing to take on board suggestions from his team. In short, he is a good leader. Anyway, Star Fox is not really a game that most people play for the story, as the overall narrative is very simple and short: Star Fox saves Corneria, then fights its way through various key locations in the Lylat system, eventually culminating in a confrontation against Andross on Venom, which will either deal with him temporarily or, seemingly, for good, depending on the route you take and your overall performance. That said, Star Fox does make a lot more effort with narrative than prior entries, with cutscenes showing the characters hanging out aboard the Great Fox between missions, and introducing your options for the next level you can take on if you have a choice. Crucially, though, these story scenes are short and straight to the point, plus they can be easily skipped on replays. This is a good way to do things, as it means you can enjoy the full “cinematic” experience of the game if that’s what you’re in the mood for, but if you’re just here to chase some high scores, medals or other objectives, you can easily focus on that, too. Herein lies what is, for me, one of the most interesting things about Star Fox: it unashamedly takes the core structure of a game from 1997 and very deliberately doesn’t add too much to it. That’s not to say it doesn’t add anything — the new Challenge mode adds some difficult objectives to each individual level in the game, and the multiplayer Battle mode has a lot more depth than the N64 version’s split-screen mode — but this is still a game that you can “beat” and roll credits on in less than an hour. I’m actually genuinely quite interested to see what the overall reaction is to this, because Star Fox games have always been short. They are, at their heart, arcade-style shoot ’em ups, and your average arcade shoot ’em up is generally no longer than about 20-30 minutes, maximum; these are games designed to be replayed, with each new playthrough providing the potential for a new high score, the discovery of new secrets, a different route through the levels, or the accomplishment of optional objectives. People familiar with how the shoot ’em up genre has evolved over the years are already familiar with this sort of thing, of course, but for those who are accustomed to modern games that are, at the very least, designed to be “RPG length” (i.e. 40-50+ hours) and, in the most extreme cases, positioned as a single “lifestyle game” that you play pretty much forever, I do wonder how they will react when the credits roll for the first time on Star Fox. Personally, I very much welcome this. The sheer number of epic-length games that come out these days is honestly quite wearisome at times, and I often find myself wondering exactly how many people ever see the endings of these titles. From my own personal perspective, I find it hard to juggle more than one “big game” at any one time; attempting to do so inevitably means that I either end up leaving one by the wayside after a certain amount of time, or end up feeling fatigued with everything I’m attempting to play at once — and the amount of time it’s taking to get anywhere in any of them — if I’ve taken on too much at once. Games like Star Fox are ideal palate-cleansers in this scenario; if I don’t feel like making progress on whatever “big game” I have on the go at the time (Final Fantasy XI at the time of writing) then I can boot up Star Fox, play it for an hour or two and feel like I have had a meaningful, worthwhile and completely self-contained experience, rather than feeling like I have made a tiny, barely visible chip in a gigantic monolith. It’s all very well saying “this game is so big you can play it forever“… but do you actually want to play one thing forever…? Anyway, this is all talking in general terms about the overall structure and feel of the game, so let’s talk specifics. It’s good! Mechanically speaking, it doesn’t stray far from Star Fox 64. You have your basic lasers, a lock-on attack that can explode in a blast and take out surrounding enemies (with bonus points on offer for hitting multiple enemies simultaneously with one of these) and bombs that blast a wide area. You can use the shoulder buttons or triggers to roll to either side in order to get through tight vertical gaps or turn more tightly, or a double-tap on either shoulder or trigger will do a “barrel roll” (which still actually isn’t a barrel roll, it’s an aileron roll, and yes, that still annoys me after all these years) to deflect incoming shots. You can brake, boost or perform a somersault using the recharging “G-Diffuser” bar, and in the open-plan “All-Range Mode” sections, you can also perform a half-loop U-turn. Most stages take the rail shooter format, where you fly on a set path through the level’s scenery and enemy encounters, though there are a number of situations where you can take alternative routes and unlock special shortcuts. Many stages also offer a “branching point” of some description, where fulfilling a particular objective will cause you to take an alternative route, sometimes with a completely different boss at the conclusion of the level, and often with the opportunity to score a significantly higher score. If you take one of these branching paths, you will be given a choice as to which stage you take on next: either the stage the branch unlocks (which is usually harder), or the “usual” path you would take without taking any of these diversions. Rather helpfully, Star Fox features a screen that tracks your progress through all the levels, including whether you have visited that level at all, whether you have achieved a “Medal” score on Normal and Expert difficulty (with the latter only unlocking once you have all the Normal medals) and whether or not you have taken the branching paths available. While playing a level, pausing the game also reveals a gauge that shows your target score for achieving a medal on the stage, which eliminates guesswork; you will still have to play skilfully enough to achieve this score, however, which is not always easy, particularly as you also need to ensure none of Fox’s wingmates get shot down either. Experienced rail shooter veterans — and particularly Star Fox pros — will breeze through the game, even on its hardest route, on the Normal difficulty level, though attaining the Medal scores on some stages is a significantly stiffer challenge. For these players, the bulk of the game’s longevity will likely come from a combination of the Expert difficulty level and the Challenge Mode, which tasks you with picking an individual stage and completing six objectives. It can be helpful to dip into Challenge Mode even if you’re not particularly chasing a “full completion” of the game, because many of these objectives highlight some of the ways you can take different paths through levels, or unlock access to additional stages. At the other end of the spectrum, inexperienced players are well catered to with an “Easy” mode, which always gives you fully powered weapons and less intense enemy attacks to have to deal with. Easy mode does not record your scores, but it does serve as a good training ground for inexperienced rail shooters to get to grips with the controls and basic mechanics before tackling the still pretty accessible Normal difficulty. You can also play the game using the Switch 2’s mouse controls for targeting, though in practice this actually makes things a tad more difficult than anything — and the same is true for the “cooperative” mode, too, where one player flies the ship and the other takes care of aiming and shooting. They’re fun ways to play, to be sure — but if you’re aiming to take the game seriously and complete as much of it as you can, you’ll likely want to stick to playing solo. The multiplayer modes are streets ahead of those found in the Nintendo 64 version. While only three stages are available at launch, each features its own unique set of mechanics and objectives to accomplish, making it more than a simple “deathmatch” — though you can actually also turn off each stage’s “events” and play as a straightforward dogfighter if you prefer, too. Pleasingly, there’s also the option to play multiplayer battles against bots, so those who are hesitant or unable to jump online can still enjoy these game modes. Watch out, though; the bots are surprisingly challenging opponents! Presentation-wise, Star Fox is absolutely lovely. The character models in the cutscenes are incredibly expressive, and the art style works well for the tonal shift the series has undergone since Star Fox 64. Cutscenes run at 30fps to allow for greater graphical detail, but there’s a near-seamless shift to 60fps for actual gameplay, and that 60fps appears to be rock solid throughout the entire game, even when things are getting extremely busy. Each stage has its own very distinctive look and feel, and there are some absolutely stunning graphical effects throughout — and yet at the same time, the whole thing feels very authentic to its N64 source material. This may be a remake and the umpteenth “reboot” of the series, but it clearly holds Star Fox 64 in particular with a great deal of reverence. Probably the biggest upgrade over Star Fox 64 is in the music department. Star Fox 64 suffered from a common issue first-party N64 games had, which was that their soundtracks were beautifully composed, but completely hamstrung by being played back on a truly terrible-sounding MIDI synthesiser that, in many cases (including Star Fox 64), actually sounded worse than the wavetable sounds of the 16-bit Super NES. No such issue in the new Star Fox, mind; we have a fully orchestrated, properly recorded soundtrack here, but one which still uses the core themes, motifs and possibly even exact same compositions as the Nintendo 64 original. Truly the one real upgrade to Star Fox 64 that I’ve been hankering for all these years. That said, I do think it’s a bit of a shame that the new Star Fox only really pays substantial homage to Star Fox 64. I’ve always been a bit of an outlier in that I’ve always actually kind of preferred the original Super NES Star Fox (or Starwing, as it was known to us back in the day). A big part of this preference was down to the music, as I feel SNES Star Fox’s soundtrack is vastly more memorable than that of Star Fox 64, but even with its shonky (by modern standards) framerate, there’s just something about the overall vibe and feel of the original Star Fox that I’ve always preferred; I think it’s how, for me, it felt very much like an actual arcade game on my TV. Lots of little things contributed to that — and when I say “little things” I mean little things, like the “biddlybing” noise it makes when you press Start on the title screen — but, over the years, it’s meant that I have replayed SNES Star Fox a lot more than Lylat Wars. But I digress; my point is, it would have been super-nice to see some more homages to SNES-era Star Fox in the new Star Fox, whether that be some secret levels that feature flat-shaded polygons, the return of the “Black Hole” and “Other Dimension” secret levels (new Star Fox does have two optional “wormholes”, but they just act as transitions between routes) or just a reorchestration of that banging original Corneria theme. That’s not to say there’s no references to the original SNES Star Fox in new Star Fox: the new Arwings have a mention of the Super FX chip on their wings; a sequence in the training mission where the voiceover becomes distorted and corrupted culminates in the original SNES voice for General Pepper saying “GOOD LUCK!”; one of the optional avatars you can attach to your multiplayer profile card is low-poly Andross from SNES Star Fox. It would just be nice to see a bit more made of the series’ complete heritage, rather than just paying homage to the one singular game. Still, in the grand scheme of things, this is a minor nitpick. Mostly, it’s just great to be playing Star Fox again. Sure, it might have been nice to have a new story told in this universe rather than the same one we must have experienced at least five times at this point, but equally, there are people out there today who, for whatever reason, do not find the earlier entries in the series to be accessible or palatable — and thus a reboot, remake or however you want to look at this makes sense. If there’s any justice, this will do well enough to make Nintendo want to make a new Star Fox of some description in the not-too-distant future. I’d be happy with a second attempt at Star Fox 2. That’s a really solid, thoroughly interesting game that is somewhat hamstrung by its own technology; I would pay good money for just that game with modernised graphics, sound and performance. Will it happen? That remains to be seen at the time of writing; in the meantime, I’m going to spend several very happy hours chasing medals in the Lylat system all over again. More about Star Fox (2026) Want more Pete? Check my personal blog I’m Not Doctor Who, and my YouTube channel ThisIsPete. If you enjoy what you read here, please consider buying me a coffee. Did you know you can subscribe to MoeGamer as a newsletter and get new posts delivered right to you? Just pop your email address in below and subscribe for free. Your address will not be used for anything else. Type your email… Subscribe