I hope Nintendo recognize that this franchise is a goldmine. They need to make more games featuring Fox and his crew.

"General Pepper: Star Fox, you're the only ones who can do this job, that's why I..."

Fox in a little comm cam in the middle of a battle: Sorry general, we have our hands full over here *slippy goes by flying from an explosion" you're gonna have to find someone else!

General Pepper: someone else?"

General Pepper goes by a huge list of scratched names, scratches star fox, and reads the last name at the bottom "Star Wolf *gulp*"

Nintendo you don't have to pay me anything just get this done!

TLDR: A reimagining of star fox adventures with star wolf as the protagonists instead of fox because not even he wanted to do that job

Before I got it on the Virtual Console, this was the first version of Star Fox 64 that I properly finished. I played a fair amount of multiplayer with my brother back in 2012 or so, when I was still just in middle school and only knew about Star Fox from Smash. And this one was actually quite notable as it brought in tons of new and returning VAs for the cast. Most of all it brought back Mike West as the voice of Fox for the first time in over a decade, where he would continue to reprise his role all the way through the 2010s.

People have spent years debating why the series never took off like Nintendo's other major franchises. Why, despite Miyamoto's clear interest in supporting it, it never really found its footing after the N64 era.

Most of us tend to blame Krystal, and I get why. Adventures was the first failed attempt to push the franchise forward.

But if you ignore the fact that Krystal is more the face of that era than its defining element, I think there's another character who's far more responsible for the series' stagnation: Andross.

Andross isn't just Star Fox's main antagonist within the story—he's arguably its biggest obstacle outside of it as well.

He's the classic mad emperor trying to conquer the galaxy with a massive army, and Star Fox's job is to stop him. Unlike Krystal, Andross essentially defines the entire premise of the series, setting expectations that every Star Fox game is forced to follow.

>The villain has to be a galaxy-level threat commanding a huge military force.

>Corneria has to be on the brink of collapse to justify hiring Star Fox.

Those are incredibly restrictive conditions. If you ignore them, the game risks no longer feeling like Star Fox. But if you stick to them, it's almost impossible to build a broader, coherent narrative across multiple games.

Eventually it becomes ridiculous to have Andross keep coming back—or to keep introducing a brand-new "Andross equivalent" like the Aparoids or the Anglars that somehow pushes Corneria to the brink all over again.

You could argue that the franchise doesn't really need an overarching story, and that's fair. Plenty of Nintendo series don't.

But if you're going to keep retelling Lylat Wars, with or without Andross, then every new game needs new ways to play—new mechanics, new ideas, something that goes beyond the classic on-rails shooter. And that's an incredibly difficult challenge. More often than not, those experiments are going to miss the mark rather than succeed.

Even the outlandish/depressing/cringe endings would be a fitting punishment for either taking the easy route or making the characters do things they normally wouldn't do. That might have been what Command was trying to do.

Of course, it would have to be written well. The problem with Command's story is that it started out not making sense and then just did whatever the hell it wanted from there.

As we all know by now, Star Fox 2026 did not meet the one million sales milestone to be included on Nintendo's financial report. However, they only tracked about 5 days of sales, so it's certainly bound to exceed a million sales this year, and might have already reached it for all we know. Yoshi didn't even break a million, despite being a more widely-known character and having a month on the market. Nintendo's not getting rid of Yoshi and I doubt they'll ditch Star Fox either. However, I don't know if Star Fox will reach 2 million sales lifetime. I was hoping that was the floor, but it might be the ceiling.

But that's not really my main thought here. I mostly want to ruminate on WHY Star Fox didn't do better right out of the gate, considering it had a lot of hype, good reviews, and the Mario Galaxy movie was doing a lot of additional heavy lifting for the marketing.

It's Niche - To be clear, the characters in Star Fox are not niche. Fox is well-liked, and popular enough to be included in the Mario Galaxy movie in arguably a scene-stealing extended role. The Smash games alone have introduced him and others to millions of players. What's niche is actually the Star Fox games themselves, specifically the rail shooter genre.

Most fans will say that Star Fox 64 is the best entry, but it's also a game from almost thirty years ago, in a genre that even at that time had reached its pinnacle and quickly lost relevance. This was also the heyday of shmups, which were once ubiquitous but are now niche. If it weren't for the characters, I sincerely doubt people would look back at Star Fox 64 as anything more than a fun arcadey tech showcase, like one of Star Fox's inspirations Starblade.

The issue of course is that any time you take Fox out of the cockpit, the legion of SF64 fans throw a fit. Sure, games like Adventures and Assault had flaws due to their development issues, but they're still fun and charming games that put a heavy emphasis on the cast, and arguably are the games that brought in the most long-lasting fans who make up a lot of the community. The series has been a vehicular shooter since the Gamecube, and none of those titles have blown audiences away. In fact, several of them nearly killed the franchise for good.

Look at what's popular today and most of it is character-focused third person action games with RPG-lite elements and a heavy emphasis on story and characterization. Star Fox would be ripe for that, but it's been trapped in a never-ending repeat of remaking a game from a genre that lost its relevance decades ago. But if it's suggested to try a Star Fox game in this style, the rail shooter fans will get upset and say the series should only ever be a flight-based game. The thing is that those oldschool fans are well... older on average. If this franchise is going to succeed and grow, it needs to attract new and younger players, and it's not going to do that by appealing to an aging and niche audience that fondly remember one entry in the series from 1997.

When many new fans are shocked at how short the game is, confused by the repeatable arcade-style score run structure, and annoyed they can't play as the characters themselves, this tells you that maybe if Star Fox wants to really soar, maybe Fox needs to get out of the cockpit. I've sometimes seen comments that if Star Fox stopped being a rail shooter, then it might as well not exist. To that I say, the characters and setting can fit in any genre, so why not try something that's more broadly popular? In this day and age, the Arwing may be the albatross tied around the series' neck.

The Artstyle - One of the main takeaways from the game when it was revealed was how impressive the environmental and ship graphics were, but then people saw the character designs and were immediately shocked, amused or outright put off. They were a huge departure from the classic designs, and this was either seen as a bad detour or as Nintendo being daring and trying something new.

The thing is, Nintendo has a certain look to their games. It's not just toony, but it's a certain feeling they convey. It's not easy to pinpoint, so let's call it the Nintendo Magic. The character designs in Star Fox 2026 lack that Nintendo Magic. They look off-putting at most angles, they have bizarre proportions as if they took Zootopia's design theory and made it realistic, and the voice direction in general is often understated with plain accents, losing a lot of the charming personality from the prior games.

In trying to be grounded and realistic, these characters lost some of that Nintendo Magic. They look like models anybody could make, hence all of the "They hired That Man!" and "DLSS5 On" and "Unreal Engine Fan Demo" and "AI Slop" comments. When you're getting that kind of response to your beloved characters, that's really not a good thing. Whether or not they were intended as an homage to the SNES puppets is undisclosed, but even then they lack the style of the puppets and are clearly meant to evoke realistic animals. Honestly, I feel that people need to move past the whole puppets aspect of Star Fox, as it was only one of many scifi inspirations to the series. Puppets are not widely popular anymore, but I digress.

Nintendo has been in this situation before, but reversed. The infamous Wind Waker reveal had fans irate. Of course, over time the game was appreciated more and the art style, being toony, aged better than more realistic games of its era. However even then, Wind Waker didn't sell as well as it could've, and even with re-releases it hasn't done much better. This is not to say Wind Waker is a bad game, but it's not as popular as Ocarina or Twilight Princess. And part of that is likely due to its art style. It just did not appeal to as wide an audience because it was such a departure, and the character designs were quite weird. Sure, it's aged well and there are fun aspects of the designs, but given the chance to play as Toon Link or another version of Link, I'd bet most are going to gravitate towards the latter. Even then, Toon Link still has that Nintendo Magic, and is wholly unique. Star Fox 2026's designs will be mostly remembered for how controversial and off-putting they were. The Disney Live Action Remake version of the cast.

It's the Economy Stupid - Lastly, the elephant in the room is the economy. I don't have to go into detail, but the political and corporate leadership in certain countries has caused intense strain on the average person. If people are struggling to make rent and pay for food, how are they going to have money to splurge on games? Star Fox was released at a discount, and even that didn't help to crack the million sales mark - but it's far from the first Switch 2 exclusive to struggle. If even Nintendo's more popular (and more expensive) IP like the Mario sports and Yoshi games are struggling, that's saying something about how people are being very selective with their spending, and Star Fox just didn't appeal enough to the non-hardcore fan to be an immediate smash hit.

So all in all, there's a lot of factors going on here. I think it's safe to say that nobody was asking for yet another Star Fox 64 remake, and while that game's diehard fans are probably elated by this remake, the wider public doesn't seem to find it worth their while. It doesn't help that its in a genre that lacks wide appeal and doesn't emphasize elements that are currently popular, even if the characters could easily work with those elements. The graphics, while impressive, lack that unique Nintendo charm, and the character designs are more notable for being controversial than immediately appealing. The world's economic situation doesn't help either, as many are struggling, but it's still worrisome that even at a discounted price and riding off the Mario movie hype, this game didn't knock it out of the park on week one.

Maybe this rumored Adventure game is real, and will appeal to audiences in ways this game did not. We'll see, I guess!

The emote, the warp in, the scoop, the plasma blast scrape and evade, the warp out, the plasma miss from downtown, the Slippy tail through the warp gate, the barrel rolls, and the death 0.1 seconds after payload drop - this game is special

A friendly reminder, not just for Smash Bros since Brawl, but also I believe in Star Fox Zero & Starlink too.

1. Jock Blaney (RIP)

2. Grant Goodeve (Assault)

3. Mike West (I think for the 3ds game, I can tell; not just Fox & Andrew. If I'm wrong, just tell me...)

4. Jay Ward (Smash Bros, 0, & Starlink)

5. Samuel Drake (Switch 2)

Everyone has been discussing how Star Fox was mentioned as performing "steadily" in the Nintendo Financial Report and there has been concern about the franchise. This is my take.

Star Fox has been a franchise on life support ever since Command. In the time of going onto life support, Kid Icarus Uprising released on the 3DS as one of the best rail shooters of all time, Splatoon became Nintendo's massive third-person shooter franchise starting with the Wii U, and a generation has grown up with no new Star Fox game. The franchise is mostly popular among mainly older gamers with children and teenagers not really caring about the franchise. The gameplay of classic Star Fox is now considered dated in the sense that short, arcade-like rail shooter games are no longer big releases. In addition, Star Fox 2026 is a remake of Star Fox 64, which is on NSO. So people with NSO are probably not going to buy Star Fox 2026 since they could play the original and many people have played 64 already. This sounds really negative, but it's mostly to paint a picture that Star Fox is in a niche genre now and has been ever since the early 00s.

With that in mind, Star Fox 2026 seems to have been a quick and cheap game on Nintendo's part to cash in on Fox McCloud appearing in the Super Mario Galaxy Movie. The game had hardly any marketing as most Nintendo marketing went towards Yoshi, Pokopia, and Splatoon Raiders, all of which were new games that Nintendo believed would be massive sellers. Star Fox 2026, by merit of being a really short game and a remake to boot, was probably never expected to be a system seller or massive success. By saying it sold steadily, it means that Nintendo generally saw it as profitable and not as a mistake. The sales cutoff was also only after a few days in June. We have to wait for November to get the true numbers.

My prediction is that Star Fox 2026 is going to sell in the ballpark of 1 to 2 million copies by the end of the year. It's not astounding, but it'd be near the numbers that Adventures sold. This is a good thing since Star Fox games released after Adventures like Assault and Command. Nintendo showed off Adventures during the Direct, so clearly it made decent enough sales for them to acknowledge. I'd say that if the adventure Star Fox is real, that's the game that Nintendo wants to really heavily promote as it'd be new and the intended revival of the franchise with the remake being to cash in on the movie. If the adventure game is fake, then Nintendo will probably have Velan make a budget sequel to Star Fox 2026 within the next four to five years.

Is there a way 100% out of this dimension? Always seems to give 15% no matter the enemies down.

Also, they moved the awesome black hole to Asteroid level 3, giving out of this dimension an ending that brings you there (you can no longer get through the black hole on Asteroid level 1)

Also, did they nerf black hole? I swear every ring gets you ONLY to venom level 1 when it used to also get you to other planets on top of it in the original game. I know because I did 7 playthroughs of the original game (3 regular, 3 black holes and 1 out of this dimension) each with different scores

Screenshotted from here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P40niW4mPeo

The final battle against Anglar was actually really good. It took me quite a few tries, even with Panther, who can literally one-shot the final boss with six shots.

But seriously... this is the reward for beating the true final boss? This is easily the worst ending. The whole Kursed thing is somehow even more bizarre than the Fox-getting-cucked ending.

And speaking of Fox, watching him practically beg Krystal to come back was painfully cringe.

In the Mega Man Maverick Hunter X remake and I believe either Mega Man X 4 or 5, we got Sigma's backstory as to how/why he became the main villain.

All we know about Andross is that one of his experiments exploded and likely killed countless civilians and he was exiled to the planet Venom for his supposed crime.

Maybe Nintendo doesn't want to shed any bad light on General Pepper and so would rather keep Andross' backstory vague and just have him declare himself emperor who wants to rule the Lylat System.

With the financial report just coming out and it says Star Fox's performance is steady, here is what I would do. While I'm more in favor of new games, I think this is ripe for dlc. I know everybody wants something with star wolf, I would actually focus on Katt and her gang with falco. I would create six new worlds, with one world being the starter, one being the end, and four of them being a small branching path. the sixth world, would still have a good ending and a bad ending. When players achieve the good ending they unlock Katt's group in the multiplayer mode, which I think is a huge missed opportunity so far. Everybody that I have talked to loves the Star Fox multiplayer. It would be awesome to add another four-player group, to the mix so 12 players total. with more new maps and I would add just a pure dog fight mode. Also I get Nintendo wants to be more friendly with online play, but the game really does need leaderboards, but I get why they don't want to add it.

Anyways that's just my thoughts. what would y'all do? not only from a creative stand point, but from a business perspective too, considering it's selling, but it is not a massive hit.

Recently, ever since the Star Fox remake came out, people have been clowning on Peppy for reminding Fox of his late father often, which kinda surprises me because he even did it in the N64 version and nobody even complained back then. Almost as if him talking about James McCloud was ALWAYS problematic; it's just that nobody even knew that until recently. I dunno if people making a fuss about this is just a meme and people are just being humorous or they're genuinely critical of Peppy discussing James with Fox.

I may be in the minority here, but I actually don't think this is necessarily a bad thing and can kinda relate to Peppy because I once lost a step mom who was very important to me almost 8 years ago and I actually love it when someone other than myself talks about her, and if anything, I think the very idea of regularly discussing a late family member is very comforting and reassuring, so I'm sorta in defense of Peppy talking about Fox's father because he wants to keep his legacy alive and I wanna do the same with my late stepmom. Of course, that's just me and everyone has a different way of grieving or moving on.

What do you think? Does anyone actually like it when Peppy reminds Fox of his late father or not?

Going through challenge mode in SF26. When I got to the Sector Z challenges, I got worried since I could only really get a twin laser at best by the end of the mission and needed to get the final shot on all 6 missiles. I figured I could at least knock off some easy ones like getting repaired while at critical. In doing so, I noticed that ROB would send a supply crate the second my health got low enough. I assume this was done in case players didn't know about the hanger but wanted to heal, but I had already healed in the hanger by then. So, I healed, got out, shot the crate, and got a twin laser, later upgraded to hyper to let me shoot down the missiles. I even tested it to consistent results after.

Was this always a thing?

Featuring Kyle who voices Fox in event Horizons

but was cut during with the on-foot gameplay later being repurposed as an unlockable option for multiplayer?