Did anyone want this? A slick remake of Star Fox 64, minus the “64.” The same rickety rail-shooter from nearly three decades ago, glossed up with gorgeous environments and uncanny photorealistic animals. A modern game peeks through the haze of this nostalgia. But it’s not altogether worth the $50 pricetag ($60 if you want a physical cartridge).

The Star Fox campaign begins with a cinematic dramatization of the original game’s opening text crawl — the scene of Fox McCloud’s father betrayed by an ally into the hands of the evil Dr. Andross. Three years later, Fox commands his dad’s mercenary band against Andross. Each successive mission briefing gets reworked from its original clipped dialogue into fully animated mini-movies.

But the visuals are a mixed bag. Detailed as the planets and ships might be, fans objected to Fox’s unflattering appearance after the game’s trailer dropped. His original character designer, who wasn’t involved in the new game, admitted to preferring the Super Mario Galaxy Movie version of Fox to this remake’s. For my money, the lighting is more of a problem than the models. In nearly every scene, the cockpit illuminates Fox in a gross green glow.

This campaign doesn’t take long to complete — between an hour to two hours, depending on how often you die and reload. But to reach the game’s true ending, you’ll have to restart and hunt for secret paths, easily quadrupling the runtime. You can also play cooperatively on two systems if you’re in the same room, or you can split your Joy-Cons to have one player steer and the other use mouse controls to fire lasers (an example of Nintendo sacrificing ease for a new gimmick). I’d have loved this mode much more if you could have a second player aim with a joystick, as in Donkey Kong Bananza.

Battle Mode makes for a more entertaining multiplayer experience, but you can’t play it on the same system. I tried it through an online session Nintendo set up, diving and gunning my way through 4v4 matches that required us to capture points or collect energy from meteorites. If you’re hooked up to a webcam, you can use an augmented reality feature to puppet a character’s portrait in GameChat. The facetracking is pretty good: raise your eyebrows, and your character will raise their eyebrows back. Open your mouth to speak and they’ll do the same. If you’re playing as Slippy Toad and puff out your cheeks, you’ll see him inflate his chin.

But even with these charming flourishes, Star Fox remains awkward. It’s got the production values of a modern blockbuster, but the sensibility of a 1990s arcade game. The campaign feels particularly antiquated, even with its expanded script and cutscenes. Perhaps I shouldn’t have expected more. This story’s already been reheated three times since the 1990s, after all.

If you’ve got buddies to battle or a tolerance for odd co-op, go for it. Otherwise, you’re better off skipping this remake and saving up for an original game.

Copyright 2026 NPR

A three-star navy rear-admiral fired by Pete Hegseth last year in the defense secretary’s purge of senior US military officials has won the Democratic primary in a closely watched congressional race.

Nancy Lacore secured the party’s nomination for the US House of Representatives in South Carolina’s first congressional district on Tuesday after defeating Mac Deford, a US Coast Guard veteran, in a runoff.

Lacore’s focus will now turn to November, when she will lead an ambitious Democratic bid to flip the Republican seat in the US midterm elections.

The district is currently represented by the Republican Nancy Mace, who chose to forgo seeking re-election to focus on her failed challenge for South Carolina governor. Jenny Costa Honeycutt, a member of Charleston county council, secured the Republican nomination for the election on Tuesday.

Lacore was among dozens of officers fired during Hegseth’s ongoing elimination from senior military roles of those considered to have crossed the Trump administration, or who do not fit the US defense secretary’s vision for the makeup of the armed services.

She is backed by several veterans’ groups, and Emilys List, which supports Democratic pro-choice candidates running for office. She raised $500,000 in her first two weeks as a candidate, and more than $1.4m through late May, according to a New York Times analysis of federal campaign finance records.

She is also one of 12 House candidates backed by the Bench, a Democratic strategy group advising candidates in districts seen as harder to win, the outlet said.