Star Fox 64: Virtual Console Review

Star Fox 64 / Lylat Wars

By: King Zarthius

Year originally released: 1997 | System: N64

In 1993 Nintendo released a revolutionary game, Star Fox for the SNES. 4 years later in 1997, an "extension" if you will, of the game was released, Star Fox 64. 10 long years later, the game was released on the Nintendo Wii Virtual Console.

Star Fox 64 does a great job of expanding on the outstanding gameplay of the original. The game is bigger, prettier, and more importantly, features almost non-stop shooting action from start to finish. It is because of this that most critics call it the best Star Fox game in the series.

In this sequel, however, there is more emphasis on the character’s backstories:


Years before the events of Star Fox 64, General Pepper had ordered another team to head to Venom to destroy Andross. That team consisted of Fox’s father, James McCloud, a younger Peppy Hare, and Pigma Dengar. During the mission to Venom, Pigma betrays the group, resulting in the capture of James and Peppy. Although Peppy manages to eventually escape, James is left behind, presumably dead. Peppy eventually makes it back to Corneria, barely alive, to tell James’s son Fox about the horrible fate of his father. As an older Fox begins the mission at the beginning of the game, he is more than determined to confront Andross, hoping for sweet revenge for the death of his father.


The body of this game is almost identical to the original. Fly a land or space based mission, fight a boss, and move on. There are multiple paths available, which are chosen for you depending on your performance in specific missions. For instance, win a dogfight within a certain amount of time, and go to one mission, or, lose the dogfight, a base explodes, and you are taken to an alternate mission. This is ten times better than just having a difficulty option. A nice addition to Starfox 64 is the dogfights, including specific adversaries for each member of the Starfox team. My only complaint is the fact that my wingmen are basically useless, as I'm always saving them. Along with the basic story mode comes a training course and a multiplayer dogfight mode. Of course, a little is lost in this mode, due to the fact that the screen is split four ways, no matter how many players are present.

When a 3D game was released on the N64, you could be sure that it was going to look spectacular. Starfox was no exception, but, frankly, the fog effect became really old, really fast. Also, while in space, where fog can't be used, the result is horrendous pop-up. Barring this glaring problem, the graphics are still very nice, with loads of color and clean textures. Laser fire leaves blast marks on the ground, and everything is reflected when flying over water.

There are many, and I mean MANY memorable quotes in this game, from Slippy's "NOOOOOOOOOOO!" to The Legendary "Barrel Roll". There is continuous radio chat from your wingmen during flight, and all major enemies taunt you tirelessly. This feature adds an immeasurable amount of authenticity to Starfox, weather or not the acting is good or bad.

The Barrel Roll in its finest moments:

This leads me to another point; the Music. The musical scores in Starfox 64 for the most part are strong, captivating, and just plainly beautiful. Each stage features it's own great score. Although the music is somewhat repatitive in a sense. The opening, and ending themes of the game are just fantastic.

Overall, Starfox is a great, must-have game. The one majour flaw is the play time, it can be easily beaten within 1 hour. Although this does not mean that the "fun" ends there, with the many paths in the game, the game experience can change the 2nd time you play through (and it is definetly worth it to play this game over again!)