known as Lylat Wars in PAL regions, is a 1997 rail shooter game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64. It is the second installment in the Star Fox series and a reboot of the original Star Fox for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The game was the first Nintendo 64 game to feature support for the system's Rumble Pak peripheral, which initially came bundled with retail copies of the game.
Since its release in 1997, Star Fox 64 has sold over 4 million copies, making it the best-selling game in the series and the ninth best-selling game on the system. The game received critical acclaim for its precise controls, voice acting, multiplayer modes, and replay value through the use of branching gameplay paths. Like the SNES Star Fox game before it, Star Fox 64 has been deemed one of the greatest video games of all time. A stereoscopic 3D remake for the Nintendo 3DS, Star Fox 64 3D, was released in 2011, and a reimagining for the Wii U, Star Fox Zero, was released in 2016. A remake for the Nintendo Switch 2, simply titled Star Fox, is scheduled to be released in June 2026.
Gameplay
Star Fox 64 is a 3D rail shooter game in which the player controls one of the vehicles piloted by Fox McCloud, usually an Arwing. Most of the game takes place in "Corridor Mode", which forces Fox's vehicle down an on-rails path straight forward through the environment. In Corridor Mode, the player's vehicle can be maneuvered around the screen to dodge obstacles and can also perform a somersault to get behind enemies or dodge projectiles. The Arwing and Landmaster can charge up their laser cannons to unleash a powerful lock-on laser.
In addition to Corridor Mode, some stages of the game, including multiplayer and most boss fights, take place in "All-Range Mode". In this variant, the player can move freely in a three-dimensional space within the confines of a large arena. Pepper hires the Star Fox team—James McCloud, Peppy Hare, and Pigma Dengar—to investigate. After Pigma betrays the team, Andross captures James and kills him, while Peppy barely escapes from Venom alive.
Two years later, Andross launches an attack across the Lylat system. To defend Corneria, Pepper summons the new Star Fox team, led by James' son, Fox McCloud. Peppy Hare serves as Fox's mentor, and Fox's friends, Falco Lombardi and Slippy Toad round out the team. While traveling through several planets, the team battles with Andross' henchmen, including the rival mercenary team Star Wolf. After the team arrives at Venom, Fox confronts Andross alone, with the encounter taking two different forms depending on how the player approaches the planet. If the player arrives from Bolse, Fox destroys a robotic version of Andross, leaving Andross himself adrift in the Lylat system. If the player arrives from Area 6, Fox reveals Andross' true form as that of a floating brain, and finally kills him. Shortly before his death, Andross activates his base's self-destruct system in a last-ditch attempt to kill Fox. However, James seemingly appears and guides Fox out of the exploding base before disappearing again.
After defeating Andross in either encounter, Fox returns with his team to Corneria for a victory celebration. Pepper offers the team the opportunity to join the Cornerian Army, but Fox declines and the team departs. Following the game's credits sequence, the player's final score is presented as a bill Pepper receives from Star Fox for their services.
Development
thumb|left|230x230px|Lead producer and series creator [[Shigeru Miyamoto]]
Following the release of Star Fox in 1993, series creator Shigeru Miyamoto began working on Star Fox 2 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). By 1995, Miyamoto and team had largely finished development of Star Fox 2 before realizing that its release would require the upgraded Super FX 2 chip, which would increase the cost of the game. Furthermore, newly launched competitor consoles, namely the Sega Saturn and the Sony PlayStation, possessed processing power and graphics capabilities that dwarfed those of the SNES, making Star Fox 2 appear obsolete. Recognizing this and that the Nintendo 64 would launch the following year with significantly increased processing power and graphical capabilities, Miyamoto made the decision to cancel Star Fox 2, though the game would eventually see an official release on the Super NES Classic Edition and the Nintendo Classics service.
Around this time, Star Fox 64<nowiki/>'s development reportedly began with a series of experiments by character designer Takaya Imamura and programmer Kazuaki Morita. As Morita was new to 3D programming, creating something entirely new was difficult. They also didn't have the final Nintendo 64 hardware itself to work with, instead having to utilize a bulky development computer and a modified Super Nintendo controller without analog sticks; the actual system hardware was being used by the team working on Super Mario 64, which was considered to be a higher priority game. The pair decided to begin development by porting the original Star Fox, which they thought would be better for easing into 3D. As this was Morita's first attempt at learning 3D, he began with inputting his own data and placing objects like cubes on a course, and then launched basic-looking Arwings; this prototype was affectionately named "Star Box".<!-- translation http://www.reddit.com/r/starfox/comments/x938ib/behold_an_attempt_at_translating_an_interview/ --> Imamura and Morita continued their experiments for six months, becoming attached to it and wanting to realize it as a commercial product, while the higher-ups at Nintendo were reportedly not enthusiastic about the project and were even waiting for the two to give up on it. All this would change, however, when the game that would form into Star Fox 64 was first shown off at Shoshinkai 1995, where they had displayed ten seconds of promotional footage, and from there the game's production would be properly green-lit, with director Takao Shimizu coming on board. Miyamoto had two overall goals and themes for Star Fox 64: The first was to create a more fleshed out Star Fox game, as they weren't able to achieve a high enough processing speed for the original Star Fox because of hardware limitations. The other goal was also to retain some of the best elements from the then-cancelled Star Fox 2, not wanting all of that development teams' efforts to go to waste. As such, the development team, which was composed primarily of different staff members from those who worked on Star Fox and Star Fox 2, barring certain alumni such as Miyamoto and Imamura, cribbed heavily from the work that had been done in those two games, with the former estimating that roughly 60% of 64s concepts came from the original game, 30% from the cancelled sequel, and the remaining 10% was original work done during development. The team also wanted to include another variation of the Venom stage, where Fox would step out of the Arwing and battle Andross on-foot with a bazooka, but this was discarded for time, and its remnants were repurposed for the game's battle mode.
With the underlying gameplay largely complete early in development, Miyamoto and the team focused the majority of their efforts on graphics, audio and dialogue, and enemy AI, seeking to harness the Nintendo 64's processing power. and programmer Nobuhiro Sumiyoshi providing the voice for Leon; this was met with negative reception internally and thus it was decided to switch over to using professional voice actors.
thumb|250px|Star Fox 64 was the first title to make use of the [[Rumble Pak peripheral.]]
Star Fox 64 was also the first title to make use of the Rumble Pak peripheral, which came bundled with the game in some instances. Miyamoto stated that the development team struggled to utilize the Rumble Pak in a way that players understood, noting that during development, players were often confused as to why their controller was vibrating. This early version of the game showcased only the first level (Corneria) and featured a minimalistic HUD, showing only a crude meter reflecting the player's shield gauge. Nintendo released further beta footage of the game on December 6, 1996, that showed subsequent levels, an improved HUD, and a short multiplayer segment.
As with its predecessor (which was titled Starwing in PAL regions), Nintendo was concerned that the Star Fox moniker could be considered too similar to the name of the German company "StarVox". Thus, to avoid a potential lawsuit, the game was rebranded as Lylat Wars in certain PAL territories. Nintendo Power subscribers received a promotional video prior to Star Fox 64s release (the same tactic was used to promote Donkey Kong Country for the SNES as well as Diddy Kong Racing, Banjo-Kazooie, and Hey You, Pikachu! for the Nintendo 64) that advertised the game's cinematic presentation, as well as new features like the Rumble Pak and voice acting. It revolves around two agents of Sega and Sony (who at the time were Nintendo's biggest hardware competitors) interrogating Nintendo employees into revealing information about the game. The game reportedly had a marketing budget of $7 million.
In an interview post-release, Miyamoto said that while he was not 100% satisfied with the final version of Star Fox 64, he felt that the game made better use of the Nintendo 64 increased processing power than Super Mario 64, which was a launch title for the console and which Miyamoto had also developed.
Reception
Star Fox 64 received critical acclaim and was one of the top-selling games of 1997, second to Mario Kart 64. Reviews hailed the level branching system, particularly its use of player performance and secret in-level triggers rather than simple path selection.
The most common criticism was that Star Fox 64 was not as much of a leap over the original Star Fox as Super Mario 64 was over previous Mario games, in particular that the gameplay was still on rails.
In the first five days of the game's U.S. launch, more than 300,000 copies were sold, surpassing the record previously held by Mario Kart 64 and Super Mario 64. It was the best-selling home console video game in its first three months of release, and remained within the top ten best-selling video games for the remainder of 1997. It sold above 1 million units in the United States by the end of 1997, one of five Nintendo 64 games to do so. Sales were considerably less in Japan, where it sold 75,595 copies during the first week of sale. <!--The game went on to sell 4 million units (2.76 million in the U.S. and 610,000 in Japan) (read when a figure is found that is not from VGCharts, a site which relies on sales estimates and sales shipments--> The game took the #73 spot in Nintendo Power's "Top 200 Nintendo Games Ever".
Star Fox 64 is listed as the 45th greatest game of all time by Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition in 2009. In 1997 EGM ranked it the 39th best console video game of all time, citing its amazing visuals, huge amount of voice acting, and the deep challenge of earning medals on all stages and completing expert mode. They also named it "Shooter of the Year" at their 1997 Editors' Choice Awards. In 2009, Official Nintendo Magazine ranked the game 14th in a list of the greatest Nintendo games. In 2012, G4 ranked Star Fox 64 as the 74th greatest game of all time on their list of the top 100 greatest video games of all time.
Remakes
At E3 2010, Nintendo announced a remake of Star Fox 64 for the Nintendo 3DS, titled Star Fox 64 3D. Nintendo exhibited a demo the same day that emphasized the technology of the Nintendo 3DS. The remake was co-developed by Q-Games and features stereoscopic 3D graphics, quality-of-life improvements, gyroscope controls, and brand new voice recordings. The game was released on July 14 in Japan and September 9, 2011, in Europe and North America. This marked the first time that Star Fox 64 had been released in PAL territories under the original Star Fox name. While the remake supports multiplayer for up to four players via download play, the game does not have an online multiplayer mode.
Another remake, simply titled Star Fox, was announced in 2026 for the Nintendo Switch 2.