The Star Of Star Fox On Switch 2 Is Its Multiplayer
I have never played the original Star Fox, nor any of its myriad remasters and remakes. Steve Watts, our All-Things Nintendo™ editor, was unfortunately, at the last minute, unable to attend our appointment to go hands-on with the game. As such, the responsibility of writing up preview impressions for the upcoming title fell to me, someone whose familiarity with its world and characters starts and ends with Super Smash Bros. After playing about an hour of this latest iteration of the game, and then testing out the Nintendo 64 edition via Switch Online after the fact, I was surprised by what impressed me and where I found the remake to be lacking.
The first thing we jumped into was the game's opening mission on Fox McCloud's home planet of Corneria. Mechanically, Star Fox operates identically to 1997's Star Fox 64. The opening portion of the mission has you flying forward like a typical rail shooter, and able to boost, brake, summersault, and yes, do a barrel roll. You have your main attack--laser beams that fire from the nose of the Arwing, Fox's ship--which you can also charge up and fire as a homing blast. In addition, you can pick up and deploy bombs as needed. There are also different rings to fly through; silver rings fill up the Arwing's health, while picking up three gold rings increases its total shield capacity.
At points, you can take enough damage to lose a wing, causing your ship to drag to one side or the other, depending on which wing is lost. To repair it, you need to find a kit that you can fly through, but I found the effect of the drag to be incredibly minimal; a minor annoyance rather than a substantial handicap.
It's not just the systems that are identical to Star Fox 64; the game also feels the same to play. Even if I had never known that this was a remake of a title from nearly 30 years ago, I would have been able to tell from after a few minutes into my hands-on time, as the gameplay felt dated. Maneuvering the Arwing lacks the precision I was looking for, my lack of experience with the original taking a moment to get used to. As such, I overly relied on the charged homing shot to take out the various flying enemies, as simultaneously trying to aim and dodge incoming enemy attacks was missing a level of finesse you'd expect from a modern game.
The debate around how much a remake should adhere to the design of the original versus what it should improve upon is a conversation that has basically been around for as long as games have been getting remade. I'm personally of the mind that remade titles should feel as contemporary as possible, but for those hoping that Star Fox controls just like the game from your childhood, have no fear; that's exactly what you're getting.
From a visual standpoint, the game is receiving a massive 4K overhaul. While I, like many, initially found the modern character models to be a little offputting--particularly with how great I thought Fox McCloud looked in the Super Mario Galaxy movie--that initial distaste quickly subsided, thanks in large part to some great voice acting.
Visually, the Arwing is the star of the show, looking at times like a Gundam-esque gunpla model kit on screen. Environmentally, there's a lot more going on than in Star Fox 64, with added details and terrain to fill out the world and actually make it feel like a planet where people live. The water looks fantastic. The flat, repetitive grassy fields, not so much, but it's not something you're going to be paying much attention to as you play, eyes focused on the Arwing and the various enemies you have to face.
The level ends with a boss battle that occurs in an arena featuring Star Fox's All-Range mode, where the player can now fly in three dimensions. This new freedom of movement really helps with the control of the Arwing, something I also found when experiencing the same moment in Star Fox 64 via Switch Online after the hands-on event.
After the mission, we are given a full on cutscene with the Star Fox crew. This is by far the biggest new addition to the game, as Star Fox 64's story predominantly occurs via the comms chatter between the characters. Whereas in that game, you only get a little taste of each of the members of Star Fox, this remake seems poised to fully flesh them out.
For example, in the cutscene I saw, Falco's rivalry with Fox is taken a step further than what's in the original game. Falco doesn't seem to actually trust Fox to lead the team, feeling Fox's skills are not up to the task--he pointedly makes his distaste of Fox known to General Pepper while Fox is in a debrief with the commander. In talks with some others in attendance who are big fans of the Nintendo 64 game, it seems there's more narrative in the handful of cutscenes we saw during our hands-on than in the entirety of the '97 title, leaving me interested to see where its story and characters go.
Before hopping into the game's multiplayer, we experienced the same opening mission again, but this time, in co-op, with one person taking control of the Arwing, and the other operating its weapons systems using a single Joy-Con 2 in mouse mode. This took a little while to get used to, as both myself on weapons and my partner flying were still expecting to have to worry about the other's systems. As enemies fired upon us, I would instinctively jerk the Joy-Con to the side in an attempt to avoid the attack, despite such an action only dictating the placement of the Arwing's reticle. Once you rewire your brain a little, it's a novel experience, but without engaging with both halves of Star Fox's gameplay, it feels equivalently diminished.
After playing some more missions solo, both the Meteo Asteroid Field and the alternative second mission, Sector Y, we jumped into some multiplayer, which for me, is where I had the most fun with Star Fox.
The multiplayer Battle Mode offerings for Star Fox are far more robust than the split-screen experiences included in Star Fox 64. Each of the three arenas offers a different mode, with the Sector Y space map we hopped into requiring players on opposing teams (up to four on each; we played 2v2) to snatch cargo from space pirates and deliver it to the team's respective drop off. While doing this successfully netted teams a large amount of points with each deposit, players could also acquire points by taking out pirate bots, as well as opposing players.
This space arena, much larger than the boss encounter at the end of the Corneria, offered a ton of freedom not only with the game's controls, but also in how players could go about winning. At first, I was focused on snatching and delivering cargo, but as the match progressed, I saw that the opposing team was able to offset losing out on said cargo by racking up many more enemy takedowns than myself and my partner, bringing them within spitting distance of victory. If I hadn't pulled off a last second cargo delivery before the timer ran out, they were poised to win.
We played the same mode again, and this time, I moved between deposits and going on the offensive, both against bots and opposing players. We managed to eke out a win again, but it was still close, with only a single cargo drop-off or a handful of bot takedowns separating the two teams.
In this multiplayer portion, we also got to test out Star Fox avatars, where a 3D model of one of the characters is mapped V-tuber style to the player via a camera feed. There are actually more options than just having the characters, including the ability to have a scouter headpiece overlaid on top of your actual head, or the primary animalistic features of the cast, such as Peppy's ears and Falco's beak.
While this was fun to mess around with ahead of the match, it was absolutely useless during it, as we were all laser focused on the gameplay, rather than the row of avatars in the Game Chat bar underneath, all of which may as well have been jpegs. Each player was deathly still as they locked in on the game. As Switch 2 owners know, that Game Chat bar also takes up a substantial amount of screen real-estate, and if it were up to me while we were playing, I would have instantly turned it off to allow the match itself to take up the whole TV.
I think fans of Star Fox 64 are going to be very happy with this remake. It seems incredibly faithful, perhaps to a fault, with significant upgrades in both its visuals and cutscenes that bring the franchise into the modern era, even if its gameplay isn't doing the same. While as a newcomer to the series, I felt mixed on the campaign, I left our session eager to experience more of its multiplayer, despite finding its Game Chat avatars to be little more than a momentary amusement.
Star Fox releases for Nintendo Switch 2 on June 25, 2026; $50 digital and $60 physical.
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