After 24 years, Star Fox Adventures is back. Rare’s 2002 GameCube title turned Nintendo’s beloved rail shooter into a Zelda-style action-adventure game, and while my nostalgic love for it runs deep, it’s always had a controversial legacy among series fans. Now, we’re all getting a chance to revisit it on Switch 2, as announced during today’s Nintendo Direct.
Star Fox Adventures joins the GameCube library on Nintendo Switch Online today, September 9. As with all the recent GameCube re-releases, it will only be available on Switch 2, and only with the premium Expansion Pack version of the NSO subscription.
I used to earnestly assert that Star Fox Adventures was the only good Star Fox game, but, well, I played it when I was 12, and I liked Zelda a lot more than I liked Star Fox. I doubt that opinion fully holds up, but I do think Adventures was given a lot more guff than it deserved by hardcore Star Fox fans over the years.
It’s a solid action-adventure game, it was graphically astounding in its day, and it has dinosaurs, after all. It famously started life at developer Rare as an original game titled Dinosaur Planet. Shigeru Miyamoto himself eventually proposed that it should be a Star Fox game and the rest, as they say, is history.
Here’s hoping that Star Fox Adventures lives up to my memories of it at least a little bit. I’m gonna need something to fill the void until I can get my Zelda nostalgia fix with that Ocarina of Time remake.