Nintendo has announced a new Star Fox game for Nintendo Switch 2, simply titled ‘Star Fox’, which will release on June 25.
In a surprise Nintendo Direct streamed on Wednesday, Star Fox creator Shigeru Miyamoto and Nintendo producer Yoshiaki Koizumi introduced the new game, which they revealed is a remake of Star Fox 64 for the Nintendo 64.
According to the Direct, while stage layouts have been kept the same as in the N64 game, visuals have received a “complete visual overhaul”.
“Star Fox is a cinematic take on the Star Fox 64 game, featuring newly overhauled character designs, freshly revamped looks for each stage, plus detailed cutscenes, fully voiced dialogue, and a sweeping orchestral soundtrack,” Nintendo said in an announcement.
In terms of new content, the Switch 2 version introduces a prologue mission featuring Fox’s father, new cinematic cutscenes that allow players to discover more about the Star Fox team, a Challenge Mode, and a suite of multiplayer scenarios, including online play.
Star Fox’s different modes are (in Nintendo’s words):
- Campaign Mode: Travel to a wide variety of planets, navigate through asteroid fields and engage in free-flying dogfights. Choose between Easy or Normal difficulty at the start and hone your skills to earn all the medals needed to unlock the Expert setting. The objectives you complete, foes you defeat and other actions you take can alter your route and what you do in each stage. Taking different routes can also affect the stages you encounter on your path through the system, so there’s always a reason to revisit each mission.
- Challenge Mode: Replay stages you’ve cleared and take on a variety of new objectives and challenges, some of which you won’t find in Campaign Mode. Challenges are available in either Normal or Expert difficulty settings.
- Battle Mode: Gather up your crew to compete in all-new 4-vs-4 dogfights, with up to eight players divided between Team Star Fox and Team Star Wolf. This mode features three stages with different objectives: secure control of a designated zone on Corneria, collect energy crystals on Fichina, or retrieve cargo from space pirates in Sector Y. Join team battles online via private matches, or match with players from near and far. With GameShare3, up to four players can take to the skies locally or online through GameChat. While GameShare online is only available for Nintendo Switch 2 systems, local GameShare allows sharing of compatible games with both Nintendo Switch 2 and Nintendo Switch systems.
Star Fox will also feature mouse controls with the Switch 2 Joy-Con and a co-op mode that lets a second player control a gunner. If they choose, players can also play using the Switch Online Nintendo 64 controller, Koizumi said.
In a first for Switch 2, Star Fox will also let players choose avatars to embody Star Fox characters in GameChat via an AR filter.
The Star Fox announcement follows reports last month that a new Star Fox was being planned for this year, as claimed by prominent Nintendo insider ‘Nate the Hate’, matching what VGC had heard from our own sources.
Star Fox for Switch 2 marks the first time in ten years that Nintendo has released a new Star Fox game, the last being Star Fox Zero on Wii U (and tower defense spin-off Star Fox Guard, which was released alongside it).
The series started in 1993 with the original Star Fox (known in Europe as Starwing), and was notable for being the first SNES game to use the Super FX chip, which allowed for basic polygonal graphics.
It was followed by Star Fox 64 (Lylat Wars in Europe) in 1997, Rare‘s Star Fox Adventures on the GameCube in 2002, Namco’s Star Fox: Assault on the GameCube in 2005, and Q-Games‘ Star Fox Command on the DS in 2006. Star Fox 64 also received a 3DS remake in 2011.
Star Fox’s return provides a likely explanation for Fox McCloud’s prominent inclusion in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, which was released last month.
Rather than playing a cameo role, Fox – voiced by Top Gun Maverick star Glen Powell – is a major character in the film’s second half, joining Mario and his friends on their mission.
Takaya Imamura, the original artist behind Star Fox who left Nintendo in 2021, has stated publicly numerous times that he’d like to see the return of the series.
In 2022, on the sixth anniversary of Star Fox Zero, Imamura posted a tweet saying he hoped the Wii U exclusive would get a Switch port one day. Then, last year, he posted that he would love to see Star Fox Assault come to Switch 2.
