It’s not often I find myself in a position to experience a gaming legacy entirely fresh. My many years on this Earth, helped by my keen interest in gaming, have afforded me a great many instances to see a ton of iconic characters (and franchises) both grow and sadly wither away. I feel I could hold my own in a trivia battle spanning at least the last three decades.
But Star Fox always eluded me in the oddest ways.
At one point, I had witnessed Star Fox Adventures first hand and reached the conclusion that the game series must firmly be a Zelda-like adventure outing with bikini-clad blue fox people. That, and I think the release of Lylat Wars in Australia had done me no favours in cluing me in to what Star Fox and his posse were supposed to be about.
It may have taken a long-arse time (and an invite from Nintendo Australia to sit down with Star Fox for the Nintendo Switch 2) but I have finally been onboarded in a gentle manner and can now share thoughts. I learned what an Arwing was, realised why people say DO A BARREL ROLL in online forums and finally had the chance to personally question what the hell was the deal with Slippy Toad.
Oh, OH! He said THE THING!
My preview was a full course to get up to speed on Star Fox’ing properly, with the game’s full tutorial guiding me through the delicate nature of flying and shooting with my Arwing. I found myself quite impressed that the mechanics of the game are quite unchanged from yesteryear – ye old Star Fox must have been far ahead of its time. Big wing tilts help you turn sharply, a boost and a break allow you to quickly match the pace of foes – add lasers and bombs to flavour. It’s a moreish loop that is quick to grasp, but offers a wide gulf of screws to tighten as you master your magnificent flying machine. With my tutorial completed, I was then told to dive into the game proper and get amongst it.
From the very first frame of the opening cinematic, the leap in hardware capability is breath taking. I have complimented the power of the Switch 2 before, but there really is something magic going on here. The iconic Arwing fighters are rendered with crisp, hyper-detailed metallic textures that catch the glare of distant stars, and the environments do a magnificent job of framing the chaos of fighter combat. I was tearing through the cloud-swept valleys of Corneria, deep in the midst of Andross’ war efforts, realising that maybe the reason Nintendo keeps remaking this game is because they know each time it just gets even better. The ingredients that make up the experience are exceptional, even if I was left wondering why one of the characters got lumped with the name Andrew amongst a cast of spectacular space people.
And the game is far from easy – with proper enemies on the field, I started to feel the challenge of it all. There is a fine balancing act involved with keeping your Arwing in tip top shape while also addressing the problems at hand, with a steep difficulty curve that definitely humbled me. People have been playing this game for decades, and I refuse to let it make a fool out of me (that’s something I need no help in doing) so I buckled in and managed to smash through both Corneria and Meteos to a satisfactory extent, even if my Arwing was looking a tad worn.
Any mission you can walk away from… Even if the Arwing is looking a bit rough
Next up was something a little newer, and altogether a very different flavour – a new co-op mode where one player controls the Arwing’s movements while the other acts as the gunner using mouse-style controls. Hooking up with CoverGeek’s big KV, we set out together to see if being a two-headed individual was just a Tasmanian thing.
You know what? It’s magnificent. The stress I felt as a novice pilot, desperately trying to steer and duck and shoot and weave was immediately halved when you don’t have to do literally half that stuff. I took the mouse-mode JoyCon and waved it across the table top like a bespoke space-targeting tool, point-and-clicking away the gnats of Andross’ forces. Similarly, piloting the craft felt more like an exercise in meditated positioning – preparing for upcoming obstacles and making sure that sight lines to enemies were clear. I genuinely feel this is more than just a two-player mode to get your bored girlfriend or hyperactive child involved with your game, it is a chill way to blast through a level with a mate and see how well you can do.
With co-operation done and dusted, attention was then to be turned to competitive team deathmatch – but not before we were unleashed upon the game’s avatar features. You may have seen them in the trailer, the game will ship with a live v-tuber mode to use a Switch 2 camera to turn you into one of the animal pilots within the game or to add some accessories to your normal webcam feed for a bit of fun. I spent a good 15 minutes goofing around with this mode, opening my mouth and flopping out my tongue to great success across all the major characters I could access. I must have looked like I was suffering from severe mania, but the truth of it all was that I was having fun. Yes, your tongue is motion tracked. Yes, you should give it a go.
After locking in our furry (or scaly) personas, we then united into two teams of four to take the battle to the skies. Team Star Wolf and Team Star Fox would battle it out for zone control, with a shrinking area that team members must inhabit to score points. It’s an entirely different kettle of fish when you are dealing with human enemies, because they have a habit of being a great deal more duplicitous and cunning – helped in no small part by the weird and wonderful power-ups unique to this mode. Dropping a decay on someone, to somersault behind them and lock on a charged laser shot is an immaculate feeling, especially when you hear someone in the same room as you say “OH…what was THAT!?”
A bit more room to move in deep space
I walked away from my time with Star Fox with a solid understanding of the appeal of the game – but more so, the desire from so many people for more of it. I now understand the cries for more, the wails of those who are tired of remakes… but also perhaps the reasoning for why Nintendo may have visited the well one more time. Is this the launching point for more Star Fox? Have the Arwings finally aligned to get the Star Fox brand back on track? Perhaps a remake on the Nintendo Wii U couldn’t grab the data. Maybe the Nintendo 3DS version was a fun experiment. But this, this incarnation, feels special. I daresay it didn’t hurt our fuzzy friend to have a nice chunky cameo in the Super Mario Galaxy film.
For me, my earliest notable introduction to Star Fox was when I saw the poster on my stepbrother’s wall. It was the classic puppet incarnation of the Star Fox crew, looking epic and gazing off into the distance. I asked him what it was about, and he told me, bluntly, that he “just put it up because it looked cool.”
You know what? He was right. Star Fox is bloody cool.
And now I want to see more of him.
Star Fox releases in Australia on June 25, 2026.
Previewed at an event hosted by Nintendo
