Star Fox review: Take your own path again

Nintendo’s beloved N64 on-rails shooter returns with a remake that remembers why we kept renting it in the ‘90s.

The Nintendo 64 was home to a legendary library of first party games focused on quality over quantity. The big hitters became classics that everyone had in their collection, but there was another category close behind: the classics everyone had played, but few seemed to own. Lylat Wars – or Star Fox 64 with revisionist history – was at the top of that list in the schoolyard N64 owners’ club. You mightn’t have had a copy yourself, but chances are you knew the hidden routes to Sector Y and had strong opinions on whether Falco was cool or a pesky rival.  

Nearly 30 years later, Nintendo has brought Star Fox back to Switch 2 with an extremely faithful remake. There’s no reimagining or updating the formula here. This is as pure and direct a remake can be; Star Fox is the same game from 1997 remade in 2026. It treats the Nintendo 64 original with the same reverence that Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 showed to its source material from the same era of early 3D console gaming.

The underlying gameplay remains largely unchanged while the presentation has been rebuilt for the Switch 2. Rare for a remake, its controls are so similar that it feels just as natural to play with the supported Nintendo 64 Switch Online controller as a Switch 2 Pro controller, yet it’s not dated. I’m not sure there’s another game from the late-’90s that could pull this off. 

The original game’s 16 missions return, recreated exactly as you remember them. Corneria still eases players into the action, the asteroid field remains chaotic and the branching routes reward experimentation and a good memory. The level layouts, enemy encounters and progression paths are essentially unchanged.

It looks fantastic, with detailed environments, expressive character models and smooth performance that give the Lylat System and its colourful cast of characters far more personality. Full cinematic cutscenes bring the story and Fox, Falco, Peppy and Slippy to life alongside the dastardly Star Wolf crew, helping flesh out the relationships previously confined to static radio chatter.

Fox McCloud was reintroduced in the Super Mario Galaxy movie with a little more humour, but this is a different interpretation distinct from the head-bopping of the Mushroom Kingdom. It’s a great game for those ready to venture from G-rated Super Mario to PG laser fire. There are space battles, explosions and giant lasers, but it remains entirely suitable for younger players.

It’s aimed at nostalgic millennials reliving their childhood and introducing their own children to the games they grew up with; and the 2-player co-op mode and short playtime make it an ideal family game to play together – both for time poor parents and kids with limited screen time.

Four-player competitive multiplayer rounds out the package, both online and locally, across up to four Switch 1 and 2 consoles with a single copy of the game. GameChat’s novelty allows all players to appear as Star Fox or Star Wolf characters, mimicking your real-life facial expressions, which I found to be a surprisingly useful gimmick. As well as being a more comfortable way to appear online without exposing your scruffy mid-winter bed rotting attire, it’s a handy way to quickly identify which friend is playing as which character; as it’s blue versus purple, I did find myself looking at my own avatar to remember whose side I was on.

There are three multiplayer modes available at launch, with zone capture, object collection and capture the flag options. Each offers enjoyable and fairly quick sessions, and you’ll still tally up points by simply shooting down opponents in all of them, if that’s more of your jam. 

The problem is longevity. With only a single map available for each mode, multiplayer quickly begins to feel limited. The foundations are here, but additional arenas and perhaps a few extra game types would significantly improve its lasting appeal.

It’s compounded by the campaign’s short runtime. Each run consists of seven of the 16 missions and can be completed in an hour – or even less with familiarity and skipped cutscenes. At AUD $85 (USD $50), Star Fox sits below full-priced Switch 2 releases and is almost a budget price point by 2026 standards. Yet it remains more expensive than most Switch 1 releases, while offering the same short campaign that is already available through Nintendo 64 Online.

This creates an unusual dilemma for Nintendo. The crowd most nostalgic for Star Fox – early Switch 2 adopters who grew up glued to a Nintendo 64 – know exactly how much content the game contains but probably don’t have the time or desire to keep replaying the same segments. While newcomers may be surprised by just how quickly they reach the credits (for the first time).

It’s why, as ‘90s kids, Star Fox 64 was the game everyone played but nobody actually owned – you didn’t need to. It was the ideal rental to finish repeatedly over a weekend. Or the game you tried to finish communally at out-of-school-hours care before the older kid, who showed you how to get to unseen levels you pretended to know all about, was picked up for the day. That may still present a sales problem for such a faithful remake that I hope doesn’t tarnish prospects for a new Star Fox game.

There’s plenty of replayability, of course. It’s completely designed around it like a vintage arcade game, with new routes to unlock and higher scores to chase. The remake further encourages repeated playthroughs through Nintendo’s latest attempt at an in-game achievements system. It’s the best one yet, but seriously Nintendo, just rip-off Trophies with Power Stars and Mushrooms and implement it at a system level already. Combined with the addition of an expert difficulty, there’s incentive to return at least a few times after the credits roll.

With The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake following later this year, it feels like the dawn of reliving some of Nintendo’s great hits. And Nintendo is perhaps the only publisher capable of repeatedly revisiting its early 3D catalogue with this level of success. Star Fox provides an excellent blueprint and demonstrates that these games do not necessarily need to be reinvented to feel relevant and renewed on modern hardware. 

Star Fox is a Switch 2 remake that understands exactly what made the Nintendo 64 original the defining game in the series. It remains faithful to the strength of its original design in a way only Nintendo could pull off. That includes the short runtime that made Star Fox 64 the ideal weekend rental. For those willing to embrace replayability and short bursts of family-friendly fun, Star Fox remains one of Nintendo’s most distinctive and rewarding early 3D games, reborn for a new generation of players to take their own path. 

Star Fox was reviewed using a promotional code on Switch 2, as provided by the publisher. Click here to learn more about Stevivor’s scoring scale.

Star Fox 25 June 2026 Switch 2   Buy on Switch 2: Nintendo eShop, Amazon