Star Fox is one of Nintendo’s most iconic franchises, but Dylan Cuthbert, who served as a programmer on the original title (and in total was a lead developer on four of the series’ games), believes that “some of the more recent titles” missed out important elements that made the original game what it was.
Speaking to VGC, Cuthbert said he's “sure” that the series will return at some point, and said: “They keep trying, don’t they? They keep trying, not quite achieving the original.”
He elaborated on this and stated that he thought it was a combination of the 1991 3D rail shooter, Starblade, the 1993 Star Wars arcade game, Amiga games such as Carrier Command, and Nintendo’s family-friendly touch that ultimately formed the original 1993 SNES game. He thinks that some of the newer games missed out on one or more of these key parts that made the first game feel like it did.
“It’s the combination of all those things that I suppose was what made Star Fox what it was,” he speculated.
“So some of the more recent titles - maybe, say, the Namco version, for example - are all great games, but there’s always that one element missing, that sort of UK old-school 3D shooting game element missing from it,” he continued, referring to the 2005 GameCube title, Star Fox: Assault.
Not counting Star Fox 2 (which was developed in the 90s but wasn’t actually released until 2017), the most recent main Star Fox game was 2016’s Star Fox Zero, which was released exclusively on the Wii U. With an average critic score of 6.9 on Metacritic, reception was rather mixed, and it remains one of the few major Wii U titles that still hasn’t received a Nintendo Switch port (alongside the likes of Xenoblade Chronicles X and Paper Mario: Color Splash). No further Star Fox games are currently known to be in development.
For more Nintendo content, be sure to check out our recommendations for the best Nintendo Switch games. You can also check what games are releasing soon with our roundup of upcoming Nintendo Switch games.
