Star Fox returns before a Switch 2 price increase: May 6-12 news digest

Have you ever been out of the house on an errand, and you get a notification on your phone that ends up distracting you for the rest of said errand? That happened to me last Wednesday, when I was out grocery shopping and Nintendo decided to pull a fast one.

Hours after sending out a newsletter that included a bit about the rumored Star Fox Switch 2 game, Nintendo confirmed its existence in a very Nintendo-like way, putting out a video livestream at 6 pm Eastern, revealing the game—about 10 minutes after announcing the stream. Needless to say, it sidetracked my grocery run and stalled my search for the canned vegetables.

As annoying as it was to be unable to report the news after hours, it’s hard not to be amused by Nintendo’s unpredictability. Immediately upon returning home (and after unloading the groceries, of course), I fired up the Nintendo 64 app on my Switch 2 and gave Star Fox 64 a spin. I’ve been on a retro N64 game kick since then.

We’ll definitely get into some Star Fox talk in this issue. Once again, I have to skip the “Fill Me In On _____” segment this week due to an absurdly busy schedule, but rest assured, I’m working on it!

Anyone who’s ever held a Nintendo controller in their hands has surely heard of the Star Fox series, even if only through the Super Smash Bros. games. Nintendo’s space flight combat simulator starring anthropomorphic animal pilots is back, 10 years after the previous game in the franchise.

The new Star Fox game—simply titled “Star Fox”—is a remake of the 1997 classic Star Fox 64, set for a June 25 release exclusively on Switch 2. But nearly 30 years of technological advancement later, the graphics, art style, and designs of characters like Fox McCloud have never looked so crisp and realistic—for better or worse.

Nintendo is clearly going for a more cinematic and photorealistic vibe in this new Star Fox. The story told in Star Fox 64 will be expanded with extra cutscenes and dialogue, and the characters sport traits closer to the animals they’re based on—just look at Falco’s chicken legs (respectfully) for proof.

Of course, with any major change, there will be tons of arguments about whether this is the right direction for the series or not. The more “real” animal designs in Star Fox are already attracting a ton of memes and comparisons to Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox and “Ugly Sonic.”

Quite frankly, the fact that there is a new Star Fox game is pretty special, considering how the franchise appears to have been ignored by Nintendo for the past decade. The previous title was Star Fox Zero (which was also a reimagining of Star Fox 64) on Wii U, a controversial entry due to its unconventional and clunky control scheme.

Star Fox appears to be the pet project of creator and producer Shigeru Miyamoto (who you know better as the creator of Mario and Zelda), and this new game looks like a reboot that’ll hopefully give the franchise a fresh start. Younger audiences may have been first introduced to the Star Fox property when Fox McCloud showed up in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie with a rather sizable role.

In terms of the game itself, there isn’t anything groundbreaking that Nintendo has revealed so far. It’s a back-to-basics game where you’ll fly an Arwing fighter and shoot baddies, with branching paths in the campaign depending on your gameplay performance. Besides the new cinematic cutscenes and much-improved graphics, there’s also 4v4 online multiplayer, optional mouse controls, and the bizarre ability to basically be a Star Fox VTuber via camera filters.

There’s roughly one notable first-party Switch 2 game coming from Nintendo every month—coming up in May is the adorable Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, while July will give us the single-player-focused Splatoon Raiders spin-off game. Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave is out sometime this year, though Nintendo hasn’t announced a specific launch window. Pokémon Winds and Pokémon Waves will release in 2027.

Nintendo also promised that games it hasn’t announced yet are coming later this year as well. But if you want to play these games and you don’t have a Switch 2 yet, you might want to consider getting one this summer.

Analysts—along with anyone with a sense of how the economy is these days—predicted that Nintendo would raise the price of the Switch 2 this year, and these predictions have been realized. In the United States, the Nintendo Switch 2 will get a price hike from $450 to $500, effective September 1.

Nintendo cited “changes in market conditions” and “the global business outlook,” and you can bet that the global shortage of memory chips onset by demand from AI data centers is part of the blame. The company also lowered its sales forecast for the coming 12 months, expecting to sell 16.5 million Switch 2 consoles—that’s down from the 19.86 million Switch 2 units Nintendo has sold since launch.

On the company’s part, Nintendo offered an apology to customers “for the considerable inconvenience and trouble this will cause,” though it promises to make up for it with “robust software line-up.”

Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa stated that the price hike won’t even “fully account for all cost increases” that the company incurred—probably his way of saying that the price increase could have been worse.

Perhaps to soften the blow of the impending price hike, Nintendo is offering a $500 bundle deal that some might find enticing. You can choose one of three Nintendo-published games to be bundled with a Switch 2: Mario Kart World (which is $80 standalone), 2025 Game of the Year contender Donkey Kong Bananza, and the hit cozy game Pokémon Pokopia (the latter two are $70 standalone).

It’s unclear how long the offer will last—I’d guess that if the bundle is still available after September 1, that price will go up. But if you want to save some cash from buying a Switch 2 and a new game for it, this is a good way to get more out of $500.

That’s right, we’re beginning and ending this newsletter issue with Star Fox. As I mentioned in the intro, I hopped on the Nintendo Switch Online N64 app right when I got home and jumped right back into Star Fox 64, a game that I’ve always admired, but admittedly never really got into myself.

While I’m still not the biggest Star Fox fan ever after rolling credits on this game, my admiration and respect for it grew. The flight controls were super easy to wrap my head around, and I think its biggest strength is its replayability.

In case you haven’t played a Star Fox game, most of the entries in the series have a unique level structure: You’ll complete a mission, and depending on your performance, you’ll progress through the story through one of many branching paths. That’s to say that every playthrough of the game might have you playing different missions, so there’s an incentive to go back and try to improve your scores, shoot down more enemies, take alternate paths, and so on.

Of course, your enjoyment of Star Fox 64 will depend on which types of missions you find to be fun. Star Fox usually has your flight on rails, but I found myself a little frustrated in levels where you can freely fly around—objectives got a little messy, and dogfights were repetitive. But who knows—maybe if I keep improving through multiple playthroughs (this game is pretty short, after all), I’ll finally get the hang of it and appreciate those missions even more.

Check in next week for another gaming news catch-up!

Good luck,
Chris Compendio