According to Polygon, Nintendo has announced a Star Fox 64 remake for the Switch 2, dropping in 2026. This is, by rough count, approximately the nine-hundredth time Nintendo has re-released, remastered, or otherwise poked at the same game while the rest of the Star Fox franchise continues to collect dust in a Kyoto storage closet.
Shigeru Miyamoto, legendary game designer and apparent Star Fox hostage-taker, has a well-documented complicated relationship with the series. He loves it just enough to keep it alive, but not nearly enough to actually let it go anywhere new. It's like watching someone save a fish from a puddle and then immediately put it back in the same puddle.
The Star Fox curse is real and it has a name
Star Fox as a franchise is basically the gaming equivalent of a save file stuck in a loading screen - perpetually existing, never really progressing. We got Star Fox Zero back in 2016 for the Wii U (RIP), and that was... not the triumphant return fans were hoping for. Since then, Fox McCloud and the gang have been radio silent, aside from the occasional Smash Bros. appearance where they remind everyone they still technically exist.
The 2026 Switch 2 remake does at least make a certain kind of business sense - Star Fox 64 is genuinely one of the greatest rail shooters ever made, and a new generation of players deserves a chance to scream "I CAN'T LET YOU DO THAT, STAR FOX" at their TVs. But as Polygon's coverage highlights, the pattern here is becoming hard to ignore: Nintendo keeps revisiting the same entry instead of building something fresh.
What does the fanbase even want at this point?
At this point, Star Fox fans have gone through the classic five stages of grief and looped back around to cautious optimism, which is frankly impressive emotional endurance. Everyone from Fox's dad to Andross himself has had more narrative closure than this franchise. The core question - why can't Nintendo move Star Fox forward - remains unanswered, and a Switch 2 remake doesn't exactly scream "we have a bold new vision."
Still, if you're going to be stuck in a time loop, being stuck in one of the best arcade-style space shooters ever made isn't the worst fate. Do a barrel roll, buy the game again, repeat until Nintendo figures out what Star Fox 64 2 looks like. We'll be here. We've got time.
