From the Backlog

The upcoming Star Fox 64 remake is too conservative, but wouldnt you overcorrect after a disaster like Star Fox Zero?

Date:
Sat, 20 Jun 2026 19:00:00 +0000

We return to the wondrous world of Star Fox Zero on the Wii U ahead of the launch of the next Star Fox 64 remake -- I recently downloaded the Star
Fox demo from the Nintendo Switch 2 eShop and thought it had the smoothest, most perfectly-framed camera in gaming history. And youd write hyperbolic sentences like that, too, if youd also spent the last week wrestling with the nightmare that is its predecessor.

The Wii U s Star Fox Zero should have been
brilliant. Itself a reimagining of the beloved Star Fox 64 (similar to the upcoming remake), it was developed by Platinum Games, hot off the one-two punch of Bayonetta 2 and The Wonderful 101 both essential Wii U titles. Miyamoto was personally involved, saying that Star Fox had skipped the Wii because they felt that it lacked a strong enough idea. Now, to its credit, Star Fox Zero has loads of ideas. Unfortunately, none of them are very good.

The brilliance of Star Fox 64 was its easy-to-learn, hard-to-master
controls. It was simple and intuitive to fly your Arwing and blast enemies with lasers. Fun, too, which made the process of gradually getting good
enough to avoid all incoming fire with somersaults and barrel rolls joyous.

The Wii U incarnation attempts to innovate by pretending that Star Fox was always missing a second screen. On your TV, you get a third-person view of
the action while the Wii U gamepad screen shows the POV of the cockpit. In theory this is meant to simultaneously give you the advantages of a wider
view and a more zoomed-in sharpshooting one.

But Star Fox isnt exactly a game about sniping. Its a big, loud star war
where youre painting the skies with laser fire. Mostly youre charging up attacks and locking on to enemies anyway with a generously-sized targeting reticule, so the view on your TV is 99.99% more useful than the gamepad one.

The games horrible solution to that is to have the TV camera operated by a hyperactive five-year-old whos just downed six barrels of Lucozade. Zero is
in love with shots that would be described as absolute cinema by young
people, and game-breakingly misguided by my ancient, bitter tongue.

Some enemy ships cant just explode in peace. The camera has to zoom out and spin around to capture the most epic angle. Youre left lost and wondering where the hell you even are on-screen. Oh, it turns out you were well within the blast range of that explosion, based on how loudly Fox is screaming and how much fire is on the gamepad screen.

This particular torment kept happening in a mission where I had to destroy several massive missiles before they reached a teleport. I was about to down the missile with mere seconds left on the clock, only for the camera to go whoa, whats this hot new threat? and immediately abandon the action to get a better look. I glanced down at the gamepad just in time to get a lovely zoomed-in view of me crashing into my target.

It even whiffs clear opportunities for the dual screens to be useful. At one point you have to lock onto a giant mechanical gorilla (the perfectly-named Gigarilla) to get it to follow you. Gigarilla will kindly crush any enemy you lead it to, you see. Well, you dont see much, actually. Because when youre locked on to Gigarilla, youre stuck looking directly at it and have to
reverse blindly.

Aha! But with the power of the Wii U, I can look down on the gamepad and see
a reversed-view or a wing mirror, surely? Nope. You just see the exact same view as whats on the TV. Or your disappointed face when the gamepad battery dies again (out of shame, I can only assume.)

If you think a stealth level in a spaceship-flying game sounds
stupid, then its a real pity you werent on the Star Fox Zero development
team. Operating a slow hovercraft around security beams is boring, with the game barely even bothering to punish you for getting caught. But the real fun begins when you have to hack computers to proceed by lowering a little robot called Direct-I. Congratulations to Slippy Toad, who in this exact moment becomes only the second- most hated Star Fox character.

Direct-I is a helium-voiced horrorshow who you lower from a tether out of
your ships belly. A tiny tether thats just short enough to make anything as complex as going around a corner too much for the poor little robot to comprehend. Leave it to me! it squeals merrily, before crashing into a wall and forcing me to try again.

At one point Fox has to save a woman who keeps constantly spouting the exact same request to be saved over and over and over. Imagine her constantly repeating quips, occasionally broken up with Direct-Is requests to leave it
to me! as it merrily botches another attempt, and you might be starting to realise why this game didnt turn things around for the Wii U and drive Microsoft and Sony out of business.

Is Star Fox Zero an abomination then?

Well, yes, for the most part. But its not quite a total
disaster . Platinum may have made more missteps here than someone hosting a tap-dancing contest on a minefield, but the creators of Bayonetta didnt suddenly lose their eye for over-the-top action. There are still plenty of good boss fights, and can you truly hate a game that features Gigarilla?

It can have so much more on-screen chaos than the Nintendo 64 game could ever dream of as well. When the screen is full of killer robots, colourful laser fire, and the right kind of escalating chaos and actually letting you see what youre doing it occasionally becomes the great next step for Star Fox that Nintendo frustratingly no longer seems interested in taking.

Exciting as the prospect of Ocarina of Time being remade with megagraphics
is, wouldnt it be more satisfying if theyd taken another crack at Wind Waker? The one with all the cut corners and missing dungeons, finally added back
in? Likewise, I dont want to serve in the Lylat Wars yet again, when another go at Zero has so much more potential.

Give it a coherent camera and a snip of the tether that sends Direct-I squealing into a black hole, and Id be there day one. Lets hope Star Fox's Phantom Menace moment hasnt put Nintendo off ever taking a risk with this series again.

Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/gaming/nintendo/the-upcoming-star-fox-64-remake-is-t oo-conservative-but-wouldnt-you-overcorrect-after-a-disaster-like-star-fox-zer o

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