Star Fox (Switch 2) Review: The Comeback Dads Wanted

🦊 Introduction

I grew up doing barrel rolls. The Nintendo 64 game we Europeans knew as Lylat Wars — and most of the world calls Star Fox 64 — is one of those games I never really stopped loving. The dogfighting, the cast, that score, the branching routes that begged for “just one more run.” It’s an evergreen, the kind of cartridge that earned its spot on the shelf and never had to justify it again. So when Nintendo announced a Switch 2 remake — confidently dropping the number and just calling it Star Fox — my cynical-dad reflex and my inner ten-year-old got into an argument.

Good news: the ten-year-old won, and he was right. After several launch-day playthroughs of Star Fox, the honest verdict is that this is the comeback I wanted and didn’t quite trust Nintendo to deliver. The on-rails gameplay that made the original timeless is intact, the presentation is a genuine generational leap, and — most surprisingly — the new cutscenes made me see a near-30-year-old game with fresh eyes. For the Dadnology community, this is a 9/10 I’d put a controller in a kid’s hands for tonight.

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Star Fox (Nintendo Switch 2) (opens in a new tab)

The full Lylat campaign, remade for Switch 2. Same on-rails brilliance, gorgeous visuals, a thrilling score, and new cutscenes that recontextualize every route.

This is the “Tech-Dad mit Haltung” part: I don’t hand out nostalgia points. A remake that just upscales textures and calls it a day gets no credit from me. This one — built from the ground up by Velan Studios — understands why people loved the original and then has the confidence to add to it. It’s not a museum piece. It’s a living game.

Star Fox has always had a structure that suits a busy parent perfectly: short levels, multiple paths, and a campaign you can finish in an evening but replay for years. That hasn’t changed, and it’s still one of the smartest things about the design.

Same Cockpit, Slightly Different Feel

The first thing any returning pilot will check is the feel — and this is where remakes usually fumble. The good news is that the core loop is unmistakably Star Fox 64: weave through canyons, juke incoming fire, lock onto a squadron, and pull off a barrel roll to deflect lasers at exactly the right moment. The all-range dogfights are still tense, and the boss patterns still reward learning rather than spamming.

It feels slightly different, though, and I keep going back and forth on it. The handling is a touch smoother, the targeting a hair more generous, the whole thing a little more modern. There’s also a genuinely new option: you can hold a Joy-Con 2 like a mouse to aim from inside the cockpit, and once it clicks it’s a surprisingly natural way to line up shots. None of it betrays the original — it’s more like the same car on new tyres. Purists with N64 muscle memory will notice the difference in the first thirty seconds. Within a level, I’d stopped noticing entirely, because the rhythm underneath is exactly what I remembered.

Crucially, the branching routes survive completely. Hitting the conditions to peel off toward a harder path, chasing the medal runs, deciding whether to take the easy road or the brutal one — that decision tree is still the engine that gives Star Fox its replay value. For a dad who games in stolen 25-minute windows, a game built around short, distinct, replayable routes is close to the ideal format.

A Genuine Glow-Up: Visuals and Sound

If the gameplay is the part they had to not break, the presentation is where they clearly wanted to show off — and they should. The visuals are gorgeous. The Lylat system has gone from charming low-poly blocks to a vivid, readable, genuinely beautiful set of worlds, with more varied planets and a cast that’s been pushed in a more characterful, animalistic direction. And they did all that without losing the clean visual language that made the original easy to parse at speed: enemy fire still reads instantly, your targeting reticle is still crisp, and the spectacle never gets in the way of the dogfight.

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Star Fox is a Switch 2 exclusive, so you'll need the console. Happily, it's the best family machine Nintendo has ever made.

And the music. The score was always one of the original’s secret weapons, and the remade arrangements are thrilling — the kind of soundtrack that makes you sit up a little straighter when the boss theme kicks in. It’s the rare remaster soundtrack that I’d happily put on outside the game. Together, the visuals and the score do exactly what a remake’s presentation should: they make the moment-to-moment action feel new while hitting the same emotional notes that made you love it in the first place.

The Surprise: Cutscenes and Briefings That Reimagine, Not Re-Skin

Here’s the part I didn’t expect and ended up appreciating most. The remake adds new cinematic cutscenes and mission briefings between stages that recontextualize the events of the campaign — and, smartly, they give a reason why Team Star Fox chooses one route over another on the way to the final stage. The original left those branches as pure player choice and gameplay condition; this version threads a narrative logic through them.

It’s not necessary. The game would be perfectly good without it. But it works, and it kept me engaged across multiple playthroughs in a way a straight remaster never would have. Seeing a familiar mission suddenly carry a bit of dramatic weight — knowing what the team was actually weighing when they peeled off toward the harder path — is a small thing that adds up.

You’ll also notice slight variations in lines, new dialogue, and scenarios that play out a little differently than you remember. I’m firmly of the school that the best remakes are reimaginings, not photocopies, so all of these little surprises were a feature, not a bug, for me. Every time the game zigged where my memory expected a zag, I grinned.

The Honest Nitpicks

No 9 is a 10, and a Tech-Dad mit Haltung names the flaws. Two things keep this just short of perfect.

First, Falco. The team banter is one of Star Fox’s defining charms, and most of it lands beautifully — Peppy’s advice, Slippy’s panic, the chatter that makes you feel like you’re flying with a real squadron. But Falco’s cynical commentary occasionally misfires; a few of his lines don’t quite make sense in context, like they were written sharp and edited blunt. It’s a minor wobble in an otherwise excellent vocal performance, but it’s noticeable when it happens.

Second, you may miss the comically over-the-top enemy voice acting from the N64 original. The villain chatter is more subdued and “serious” here, and while that’s a defensible artistic choice, a slice of the original’s goofy charm went with it. I’d have happily kept a bit more of the ham.

Neither of these is close to a dealbreaker. The team element and the voice acting, taken as a whole, are still excellent — these are the kind of nitpicks you only have room for when everything else is firing.

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Nintendo Switch Online Family Membership (12 Month) (opens in a new tab)

Needed for the online Battle Mode dogfights. Even a single bot match made me reconsider my no-online-gaming stance.

Three Modes, and a Confession About Online Play

Star Fox is split into three modes: the Campaign (the classic Lylat run and the heart of the package), a Challenge Mode for score-chasers, and a Battle Mode for multiplayer dogfights. And here’s my full disclosure: I’m not normally a competitive online gamer. It’s not my scene, and I went in fully expecting to ignore Battle Mode entirely. Then I tried a single bot match to see what the dogfighting felt like player-versus-player — and now I’m genuinely considering setting up a Nintendo Switch Online membership just to compete properly.

That’s a bigger endorsement than it sounds coming from me. I might even cave and get the Piranha Plant camera for the animated-avatar gimmick. Is it silly? Completely. It is a camera shaped like a Piranha Plant. Will I do it anyway? Probably — because it’s fun, and “because it’s fun” is a perfectly good reason to spend money on a hobby once the kids are asleep. I haven’t put Battle Mode through its paces yet, so treat that as a hands-on first impression rather than a final verdict — but the fact that it pulled a committed online-skeptic this far is telling.

Family Fit: Pick Up, Barrel Roll, Repeat

Star Fox has always been one of the more family-friendly things on a Nintendo console, and that’s truer than ever here. It’s cartoon space combat with no gore, the levels are short and pausable, and the on-rails structure means a younger pilot can enjoy the spectacle and feel like an ace without needing to master full free-flight controls. The Arwing more or less keeps you on the right line; the skill is in the shooting and the dodging.

That makes it a great shared-couch game for a dad and a kid: short missions that fit a school-night window, an easy on-ramp for the little one, and enough depth (medal runs, harder branches, Challenge and Battle modes) to keep you coming back long after they’ve gone to bed. It clears the Dadnology Nintendo Standard easily — pausable, readable at a glance, and a second player can jump in without a 20-minute tutorial. Being a Switch 2 exclusive is the only real cost of entry, and if you’ve got kids, that console earns its keep on its own.

Why You Should Actually Buy This (Not Pirate the Nostalgia)

Let me be blunt, because this matters. If you love Star Fox and you want to see it come back for real, there is no excuse not to buy this and enjoy it. It’s a great game on its own merits, full stop.

And if your instinct is to fold your arms and grumble that it’s “just another remake” and refuse to support it on principle — fine, that’s your call. But understand what you’re opting out of. This relaunch reportedly landed to strong support, and it sets up so much possibility for fun sequels that not running with it into a Star Fox 2 and beyond would be borderline insane on Nintendo’s part. The way you make that future happen is by showing up for this one.

I get the cynicism. I’m a deeply cynical person — I don’t like most things, and I’m the first to call a cash-grab a cash-grab. This isn’t that. This is a studio doing the work, reimagining a classic with care, and handing the fanbase a clear invitation to bring the franchise all the way back. You’ve got to support that, or this comeback will quietly become the last time you ever see Fox McCloud. I, for one, am excited — and that’s not a word I throw around.

📌 FAQ – Frequently Asked Questions

Is Star Fox on Switch 2 worth it?

Yes, comfortably. It keeps the timeless on-rails gameplay of Lylat Wars, wraps it in stunning visuals and a thrilling score, and adds new cutscenes that genuinely reimagine the story. At 9/10, the only people who should hesitate are those who refuse remakes on principle.

Is Star Fox a remaster or a real remake?

It’s a real remake of the N64 game Lylat Wars (Star Fox 64), built from the ground up by Velan Studios. Beyond the visual overhaul, there are new cinematic cutscenes and mission briefings that recontextualize why the team takes each route, plus tweaked dialogue and scenarios that play out differently.

Is Star Fox good for kids and families?

Very. It’s cartoon space combat with no gore, levels are short and pausable, and the on-rails design means younger pilots can enjoy the spectacle without mastering free-flight controls. A great pick-up-and-play option for a 20-minute family session.

Do I need Nintendo Switch Online to play Star Fox?

Not for the single-player Campaign, which is the heart of the game. You only need a Nintendo Switch Online membership for the competitive online Battle Mode dogfights.

What platforms is Star Fox on?

Star Fox is a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive, released worldwide on 25 June 2026. There is no version for the original Switch or any other platform.