What’s On The Shelf | Games, Music & Culture

Star Fox 64 has a brand “new” release and has now been unleashed upon an entirely new group of unsuspecting players. Meanwhile, the trials and tribulations of the intrepid crew of the Great Fox have been left mostly in limbo since a weird little Wii U release back in 2016. And even that was more on-rail shooter than free-range space adventure.

Before then, Fox went through some strange adaptations with Star Fox Adventures and Star Fox Assault. I’ll still go to bat for both of those titles, but they were certainly vast departures from the original formula. Sometimes Fox McCloud was flying an Arwing. Sometimes he was hitting dinosaurs with a stick. It was a confusing time for everyone involved.

I don’t have much desire to play a remastered edition on the Switch—not while I still own my Star Fox 64 cartridge and have a shiny new Analogue 3D sitting nearby. Playing through it today elicits the same reaction deep within my viscera as it did when I was a wee babe. It was great then, and it holds up shockingly well now.

There are some issues, particularly when attempting to translate the original N64 controls onto a modern controller like an 8BitDo. Even so, the central gameplay loop remains as satisfying today as it was in 1997. You climb into your Arwing with one simple goal: defeat Andross, the Big Bad of the Lylat System, while shooting down as many enemy ships as physically possible.

You play as Fox McCloud, current lead pilot of the Star Fox team and the latest member of the family to enter the dangerous business of freelance space warfare. His father, James McCloud, led the original crew before him. Fox’s current team of freaks and weirdos includes Slippy Toad, chief mechanic and pilot extraordinaire; Falco Lombardi, the loudmouth asshole of the squad; and Peppy Hare, a holdover from James’ original team who remains mostly useful for yelling instructions at you.

An interesting addition to the flight-shooter formula is that your squad flies alongside you throughout each mission. Most of the time, they’re screaming for help after allowing an enemy ship to settle directly behind them. Occasionally, however, they return the favor and help keep you alive. If one of them takes too much damage, they’ll be forced to sit out the next mission, leaving you with one fewer person to rescue from their own incompetence.

Each campaign is designed to be completed in a single session. There’s no saving halfway through or stopping to come back later. You either save the Lylat System now or you abandon everyone and go make dinner. It’s a relic of a very different era of video games.

Piloting the Arwing remains an interesting and surprisingly involved experience. You can fire lasers, launch bombs, boost, brake, perform loops, charge shots, and, of course, do a barrel roll. Flying through space while steadily increasing your score feels fantastic, especially during the brief moments when the game allows you to appreciate the destruction you’ve caused.

Those breaks rarely last long. Soon enough, a massive boss fills the screen, covered in flashing weak points and shouting aggressive nonsense in your general direction.

Even when Star Fox 64 trips over its own landing gear, none of its issues are large enough to ruin the experience. There is still an enormous amount of enjoyment inside this little cartridge, whether you grew up with Fox and company or you’re only now climbing into the cockpit.