Highlights
- A veteran Nintendo programmer believes that Star Fox, the beloved space-shooter franchise, will make a comeback in the future.
- The programmer acknowledges that Nintendo has been trying to recreate the magic of the original Star Fox game.
- The programmer attributes the lack of success in the later sequels to the franchise’s failure to capture the unique formula and charm of the 1993 classic.
A veteran Nintendo programmer thinks that Star Fox will eventually return after its nearly seven-year-long absence. The original Star Fox was released for the Super NES back in 1993 and impressed players with its revolutionary-for-the-time polygonal graphics and gripping space-shooter gameplay, becoming one of Nintendo’s most beloved and genre-defining first-party titles. Several sequels were produced with varying levels of success, and Star Fox characters like Fox McCloud and Wolf O’Donnell have appeared as fighters in the Super Smash Bros. series.
Unfortunately for fans of Fox and his rag-tag crew of anthropomorphic space heroes, the Star Fox series has faded into the background since 2016’s Star Fox Zero for the Wii U, with the only new release being the long-in-limbo Star Fox 2 as part of the Super NES Classic Edition bundle. There were rumors of a new Star Fox game being for the Nintendo Switch by Retro Studios of Metroid Prime fame, but this was later revealed to be nothing more than speculation and fan dreams.
Despite these setbacks and false starts, one notable member of the original Star Fox development team thinks that the series will eventually take flight once again. Star Fox programmer Dylan Cuthbert recently sat down for an interview with VGC to discuss his time working on the franchise, during which he predicted that Nintendo would produce a new game in the future. “Oh, I’m sure [it’ll return],” Cuthbert stated. “I mean, they keep trying, don’t they? They keep trying, not quite achieving the original.”
Cuthbert went on to describe how previous Star Fox games failed to recapture the magic of the 1993 classic, which he says is a mix of the UK Amiga-style 3D gameplay of titles like Carrier Command or the Star Wars arcade game and Nintendo’s usual family-friendly charm. Cuthbert concludes that while he thinks the later sequels like Star Fox Adventures were fine in their own way, they each lacked a critical component to the successful formula of the first game that he still looks back on fondly to this day.
Dylan Cuthbert isn’t the only person hoping to see Star Fox make a long-overdue comeback, as fans still pay tribute to the series by recreating Fox McCloud’s signature Arwing in Starfield or even creating indie titles in the spirit of the blistering space-shooter franchise. While there isn’t any indication of Nintendo making a new Star Fox game as of this writing, Cuthbert thinks that players will see the series return eventually – either on the Switch or Nintendo’s often-rumored next gaming console.
Source: VGC