Star Fox 64, a game I loved in my childhood, is returning – but I have mixed feelings
The Nintendo 64 was not my first video game console, but it was my formative one. Getting to grips with 3D movement in Super Mario
The Nintendo 64 was not my first video game console, but it was my formative one. Getting to grips with 3D movement in Super Mario 64 with that weird three-pronged controller is one of my most visceral childhood memories; the long, long wait for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was the background noise to a huge chunk of my youth. But back in the 1990s (in the UK at least), it felt as if nobody had an N64. When everybody had a PlayStation instead, I felt I was the only kid in my whole city who cared more about Banjo-Kazooie than Crash Bandicoot. If even Zelda seemed comparatively niche in Europe in the 90s, Lylat Wars (known elsewhere as Star Fox 64) was a real deep cut. It’s a 1997 space-flight shooter starring Fox McCloud and his squad of animal pilots laser-blasting across different planets in nimble crafts called Arwings. I played this game to absolute death in 1998, when I got it for my birthday alongside the fabled Rumble Pak, which made your controller vibrate and shudder whenever something cool was happening on screen (fun fact: Lylat Wars was the first console game to feature controller rumble). But I really hadn’t thought about it much since. Then, last week, Nintendo announced a Switch 2 remake. The Star Fox series has been dormant for a good decade, but there have been rumours a new game was in the works for a while now. The moment Fox McCloud appeared for an otherwise inexplicable cameo in the newly released Mario Galaxy movie, I knew that Nintendo must be planning to announce something. I did not for one second expect that game to be a straight-up rework of Lylat Wars, though. It’s a strange choice. View image in fullscreen Back from the 90s … Nintendo’s Star Fox 64. Photograph: ArcadeImages/Alamy The Star Fox series has an interesting history. The first game began as a technological experiment to see if it was possible to generate polygonal 3D graphics on a Snes – Nintendo flew a group of young British coders to Japan to help develop it (in itself a fascinating story that’s well worth reading).
For that reason, it’s an on-rails shooter: you fly along a set path, moving the craft around the screen, rather than being in full control of where you’re going. Lylat Wars had the same limitations – all its levels are on rails, apart from a few small arenas where you have full freedom of movement. It was designed to show off the then-new Rumble Pak technology as well as the Nintendo 64’s 3D chops; the whole thing is just over an hour long (though there are several different routes through the game, taking you through variably hostile and challenging planets). It is very much a product of technical limitation. Why not, then, make a new Star Fox game free of such limitation? Why remake a game that is so obviously an artefact of the late 90s? A more free-form and ambitious Star Fox game would be worth getting excited about – space dogfighting games are in much shorter supply now than they were in the 90s. Obviously, not everything is the same. Beyond the level layouts, which are identical, the new game’s visuals and character designs are totally different – sparking some spirited debate on exactly how players want an anthropomorphic toad to look in 2026. It’s a strange feeling, watching a fly-though of stages I remember in detail. On the opening planet, Corneria, there are strange stone towers jutting up from water that you skate just above, the Arwings’s wingtips throwing up spray. I remember the cheesy dialogue word for word, but in place of the N64’s fuzzy squad-mate mugshots and muffled sound samples are uncannily realistic-looking animal faces and newly-voiced lines. Everything about the game looks better now than it ever did, even in my imagination, 30-ish years ago, and I know I will enjoy revisiting it. Still, I would have preferred to see an entirely new game. There is a slightly troubling retreat to nostalgia across the gaming world: Sega is prepping new entries in long-abandoned series like Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio, and remaking/rereleasing Resident Evil and Final Fantasy games from the 90s has proved very fruitful for Capcom and Square Enix in recent years.
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