Star Fox: The Complete Saga

Star Fox is a series that has always been about pushing its hardware a little further and that, combined with its arcadey gameplay is what makes it pretty fun to play. This collection brings together the best ways to experience the saga on your 3DS with community patches that make each game feel more comfortable without messing with what made it special in the first place. So get in your Arwing, we're gonna take a ride through all the Lylat System!

Star Fox: The Complete Saga

Star Fox

Star Fox is one of those games where the technology is impossible to ignore, but thankfully there's a fun shooter underneath it. It puts you behind Fox McCloud's Arwing as you blast through the Lylat system, fighting Andross across six stages and three branching routes with different difficulty levels. The story is simple but the radio chatter from Peppy, Falco and Slippy gives the missions a good amount of personality while barrel rolls, boosts, brakes, U-turns and cockpit views make the flying feel more involved than a basic rail shooter. The Super FX chip was the big star back then, delivering real time polygonal 3D that looked wild for an SNES, tho today the chunky models, limited textures, slowdown and occasionally awkward collision detection are pretty noticeable. Even so, people agree that the gameplay holds up better than the visuals and the multiple routes, secrets, tough bosses and short but replayable campaign give it real staying power. Also, the Super FX 3 upgrade gives the game a serious tune up: FastROM plus the much faster FX3 lets it hit the 20 FPS ceiling far more often. Yeah, it doesn't uncap the framerate but making Star Fox from 4 times smoother without changing its core is a damn cool way to revisit it.

Star Fox 2

Star Fox 2 feels both more ambitious and more experimental than its predecessor, even tho Nintendo kept it unreleased until 2017. Fox McCloud and the Star Fox team are called back when Andross launches another invasion of the Lylat System, but instead of simply flying through fixed stages, you're free to move around a strategic map, choosing targets, intercepting enemies and protecting planets while the threat constantly shifts. The story is still pretty light, tho the expanded cast including Miyu and Fay and the introduction of Star Wolf give the conflict more personality. Once you jump into combat, missions mix traditional rail shooter sections with open space encounters, boss fights and different objectives, making every playthrough feel less predictable. The Super FX 2 hardware gets pushed hard and the polygonal graphics are noticeably more ambitious, tho slowdown can be rough and some encounters feel chaotic rather than polished. That's where the improvement patch comes in really nicely, it cleans up regional translation and graphical mistakes, fixes script typos, adds the missing Titania localization, improves performance to a 25 FPS cap, enables fast multiply mode, fixes small visual bugs, default homing, space view change with SELECT and it already includes a Super FX 3 conversion to give the game a performance boost.

Star Fox Command

Star Fox Command is one of the misfits of the series, it takes the classic Arwing formula mixing it with a strategy layer that works better than you might expect. The Star Fox team is dragged back into action when a new Anglar Empire threatens the Lylat System but the story quickly becomes more personal, bringing back old relationships, introducing new characters and splitting into branching paths with nine different endings. On the map, you plot flight routes, protect the Great Fox, manage fuel and choose which enemies to intercept, once you collide with one, you jump into free roaming 3D battles inspired by Star Fox 64's All-Range Mode. The DS hardware handles the visuals well and the game runs at smooth 30 FPS, while the soundtrack keeps that familiar Star Fox flavor. The elephant in the room is the stylus only flying: some people loved how naturally it fits the DS while others find it slippery and frustrating. That's why the D-pad patch is such a welcome option, replacing touch based movement with traditional controls, mapping A to boost and B to brake like in the MARIO KART series and since it doesn't change Command's ambitious structure, it makes the actual flying feel far more familiar if the original controls never clicked for you.

 

Star Fox 64

Star Fox 64 is the game that really established what the series could be, turning the SNES games into one of the N64's coolest action games. Fox McCloud and his team return to stop Andross, flying through the Lylat System across branching missions where your performance can completely change the route while All-Range Mode, the Landmaster and Blue Marine add some welcome variety. The campaign is short but the different paths, medals, secrets, Star Wolf encounters and tight controls make replaying it genuinely fun while the fully voiced radio chatter gave it a ridiculous amount of personality. The first remake brings that same formula to 3DS with cleaner visuals, stereoscopic 3D, redesigned character models, better textures, gyro aiming, updated controls, Score Attack and local multiplayer while keeping the branching campaign intact. It's not the smoother way to play today anymore since the Switch 2 reremake is out but it's still a great way to enjoy this classic.

 

Remake voices

 

Original voices