I woke up this morning to some amazing news - one of my childhood favourites, an all-time N64 classic, is being remade by Nintendo with visuals that bring it kicking and screaming into the age of modern gaming. Star Fox 64, or Lylat Wars as it's called here in the UK, is getting a glorious remake and heading to Nintendo Switch 2 next month, and it looks phenomenal.
I'm going to put the Star Fox Direct here, and then we can talk about it afterwards. See you in just under 17 minutes, or you can skip straight to my thoughts below if you don't have the time!
It's amazing, isn't it? The characters look so much more real, more defined. You can actually see the feathers on Falco's head, the lines on Fox and Peppy's fur, and Slippy... well, Slippy looks a little slimy like a toad should be, so I guess I can't complain.
As the video states, while the stage layouts have remained the same for fans of the original to have some familiarity with, the visuals have been upgraded all the way to 11 (the video didn't say that bit, I added it in). The Lylat System looks rich and vibrant; I want to say it looks how I imagined it back in the day, but there are so many more elements to the levels and so much more richness to the graphics and depth that it far surpasses the original. It has a bit of a Star Fox 64 meets Star Fox Adventures feel to it now.
The Landmaster tank and Blue Marine submarine are back, as is the Arwing with all of its amazing weapons and iconic barrel roll (Peppy's favourite move). And watching the original prologue featuring James McCloud at the end of the direct - that gave me goosebumps! Honestly, the last time I was this excited for a game coming to Switch was Breath of the Wild, and Star Fox has even more of a nostalgic pull for me.
There are other cool features too, like using a character avatar in Game Chat to turn your image into Fox, Falco, Slippy, Peppy and other key characters from the game. And here's the best bit - if you played the original game on the N64 and remember the controls like the back of your hand, then you'll be able to use the N64 controller for the Nintendo Switch to play the game just like the good old days.
The game is releasing on June 25th, and I'll post pre-order links when they become available!
