When news about Star Fox for the Switch 2 dropped, I immediately messaged Zoey and told her I was going to review it when it drops later this year. But if I’m gonna do a review of the game justice, I’ll have to refresh my memory of Star Fox 64. It had been a long time since I played it, and I only did a single run last time. So I played through all of that and was about to write my review, but then it occurred to me that I still have this unplayed copy of Star Fox 64 3D sitting on my shelf. Since that was the last Star Fox 64 revisit that didn’t make me want to go bungee jumping with the cord wrapped around my neck, I figured now’s a good time to bust it out and do a retrospective.

By which I mean a retrospective of the original Star Fox 64, because the 3DS port is almost exactly the bloody same. Oh sure, the models and textures are better, the audio is redone, and there are some quality of life additions, but aside from a few small dialogue changes, it’s still the same game. Same level layouts, same Lylat map, same everything. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

IT’S ABOUT TIME YOU SHOWED UP, FOX

Star Fox 64 is a remake of the original Star Fox for the Super Nintendo, which was an arcade rail shooter. There are a total of fifteen stages in this game, but you’ll only go through seven of them per run. You always start at Corneria and you always end at Venom, but the route you take to get there can change depending on how well you do. If you reach certain objectives in a level, the next mission you do will be in a different level on a harder difficulty path. Blue paths are easy, yellow for medium and red for hard. You have the option to switch to an easier route in between levels, but you can’t go to a higher difficulty stage if you didn’t already clear the objectives. A couple levels even have secret paths that let you warp to a completely different level on the other side of the map.

It’s an interesting take on difficulty progression that’s fun to mess around with. You can stick to the easier difficulty path until halfway through your run, warp straight to the hard path and go through a bonkers hard gauntlet for the rest of it. In one playthrough, I went through Sectors X, Y and Z in a single run. There was one bit of cognitive dissonance when I beat Sector X, took the path to Titania instead of MacBeth, and the game straight up removed Slippy from my squad and acted like he crashed on Titania. It’s a weird oversight, but the fact that I can run into that scenario is kind of amusing. You can unlock a harder difficulty mode by getting a medal on all 15 stages, but I do not have the patience to deal with that.

AHHH! I’M HIT!

The levels are mostly on-rails shooter sections in the Arwing where you get through a gauntlet of enemies and obstacles to fight a boss at the end. The Landmaster sections are okay. There are only two levels for this vehicle, MacBeth and Titania. Unlike the Arwing, you can’t deflect projectiles when you barrel roll or slow down. You can hover off the ground to dodge obstacles or get the occasional mid-air item. I like MacBeth more than Titania. The Blue Marine is absolute garbage. It’s only one level, so you don’t have to deal with it for long. But it is painfully slow.

Weirdly enough, all-range mode is my least favorite of the bunch. For whatever reason, they decided to let you move the Arwing to the top of the screen instead of having it fixed near the bottom or even center of the screen. This makes it difficult to shoot down targets above you. And as pointed out by Zoey in her review, the camera doesn’t stay behind the Arwing at all times. That makes it more difficult to shoot enemies down than necessary. It’s also way harder to rescue your teammates in this mode than in the standard rail shooter sections.

Oh, those fucking teammates. They have specific gameplay functions. Slippy will show you enemy boss health, Peppy will tell you when to dodge certain obstacles and occasionally tell you about certain objectives in some levels, and Falco is there too. All three of them will help you take out enemies, but they don’t do much damage. And they will need you to rescue them. A lot. If any of your teammates gets shot down in that level, they are out of the run for the rest of that level and for the next level while they get your ship repaired. I enjoy the dialogue with them, but this is easily the worst aspect of the game. The player already has enough shit to handle without having to play babysitter, especially on the later levels. Especially especially when Star Wolf get involved.

I GUESS I SHOULD BE THANKFUL

There are a couple quality of life features added to this version that edges it out over the N64 original. You can pause your run at any time and come back to it later, so you don’t have to do everything in a single run. If you do happen to run out of lives, you have the option to continue from the start of the level instead of getting a Game Over. You can use the 3DS Gyroscope to aim, but I always leave that thing disabled. Every time you beat a level, you can replay it in Score Attack mode. It’s nice when you want to replay a specific level without having to replay the whole game again, but you’ll still need to go through every stage in the main story mode to unlock them in Score Attack.

There is a multiplayer Battle Mode similar to the original, right down to the fact that you can only play with others locally. This was a sticking point back when it came out because we just had online multiplayer in Star Fox Command back when online multiplayer in Nintendo games were a big deal. It doesn’t matter now because A) Nintendo shut down all online functionality for the 3DS, and B) I don’t give a shit about multiplayer in general. Not that any of my friends have the game anyway.

Thankfully you can play against bots in Star Fox 64 3D, so I didn’t have to socialize for this review. Hooray! There are only a few levels to choose from in this game. I never played the original multiplayer in 64, but from what I heard you can’t unlock the Landmaster or the On-Foot modes in this port. It’s all Arwings all the time, but the Arwings are enjoyable enough. Makes for a neat time waster, if nothing else.

SORRY TO JET, BUT WE’RE IN A HURRY

Despite a few omissions, I think Star Fox 64 3D is the better of the two, but the game itself hasn’t aged quite as well as I remember. It wasn’t worth the $40 Nintendo was asking for on the 3DS, and it absolutely isn’t worth the inflated price scalpers are charging for now. However you get your hands on it, I’d say this is the version of Star Fox 64 to play. If you want a more direct review of the original Star Fox 64 and to see what Zoey thought of the game, check out her review.

Either way, if any Star Fox game would benefit the most from a modern remake, it would be Star Fox 64. But the last time Nintendo tried that, they single-handedly killed the franchise. I guess we’ll see how the new remake fares. Who knows? Maybe the franchise will be dead for only seven years this time.

7/10

The reviewer bought a physical copy back when physical Star Fox games were reasonably priced, but this review was conducted via emulation on an AYN Thor.