Star Fox: Assault showed there's greater story potential beyond 64

Before Nintendo was content to relive Star Fox 64's glory days over and over, the Star Fox universe was rich with storytelling potential.

This is a big week for the Star Fox series. A new generation of players will get to play through the Star Fox 64 story for the first time, while older generations will get to experience it in a new way. The Nintendo Switch 2 remake, titled Star Fox, is one of Nintendo's most celebrated tales. That's evident in how often the company has revisited it. But did you know that there were more Star Fox stories that came after Star Fox 64? Today feels like a good day to revisit one of the series' most underappreciated chapters, 2005's Star Fox: Assault.

The aughts came a decade before Nintendo would start falling back on the Star Fox 64 story like a galactic Groundhog Day. It was also a time when Nintendo frequently experimented with the formula, as I went into with... (blows dust)... Trust Your Instincts: A Star Fox Timeline. Star Fox: Assault holds a special place in my heart, partly because it tried to push the series back toward on-rails shooting after 2002's action-focused Star Fox Adventures. It's also because Nintendo and developer Namco (shortly before it was acquired to create the Bandai Namco everyone knows today) had an epic story in mind.

Star Fox: Assault started with a continuation of the Star Fox 64 story, going into the aftermath of villain Andross' defeat. His nephew Andrew looked to pick up the remnants of his uncle's empire, which turned out to be a great backdrop for the game's opening stage. It was all a setup for the story's true villain, a hostile cybernetic hivemind known as the Aparoids. This was a villain unlike any Fox and his crew had faced before, upping the stakes in ways few could have imagined, taking cues from similar sci-fi foes like the Borg from Star Trek.

Throughout the story, the Aparoids infected any civilization they encountered throughout the Lylat System and assimilated them completely. Their effectiveness was terrifying to witness, especially for a Star Fox team that had historically been presented as hot shot pilots who could stylishly prevail over any kind of adversity. There are several instances in this story where the Star Fox team has its back against the wall. Even in situations where they win, the damage is immense and supporting characters are put through the wringer.

Because of these higher stakes, there's more character growth in Assault than arguably any other Star Fox game. Fox was pushed into becoming a stronger pilot and a better leader, especially as he watched supporting characters around him fall in battle. One of them was Pigma Dengar, a key supporting villain from Star Fox 64, who was completely taken over and mutated by the Aparoids and eventually killed in battle against the Star Fox team. General Pepper, the commander of the Corneria Defense Force who was also Fox's most frequent employer, was also possessed by the Aparoids, leading to one of the series' most unforgettable stages that forced Fox to fight alongside hated rival Wolf O'Donnell for their very survival. Wolf, who scrambled to replace his old partners on the Star Wolf team, showed some new depth when his rivalry with Fox was expressed as one rooted in mutual respect. Pepper Hare, who went from veteran pilot in Star Fox 64 to the team's "man in the chair" for Assault, had a heroic last gasp prior to the game's final stage, risking his life to give Fox one last opening to confront the Aparoid Queen. Star Fox 64 introduced many players to this series' characters, but Assault is where they were allowed to flourish in a high-stakes narrative that, at times, felt hopeless.

Assault's gameplay matched the scope of its story. Stages like Sauria (a.k.a. Dinosaur Planet from Star Fox Adventures) featured larger-scale battlefields that would require Fox to complete multiple objectives. This would mean switching around between the Arwing, the Landmaster tank, and roaming across narrower spaces on-foot. It wasn't perfect by any means. The on-foot sections were particularly terrible with awkward controls and bad camera angles that often led to unwanted falls, like something out of 1996's Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire. In terms of aiming for a more blockbuster atmosphere, however, I certainly couldn't fault Namco for its ambition.

I understand why Nintendo is going back to Star Fox 64 for this week's big release. Younger generations didn't get to experience this classic in its heyday. They're not going to actively chase down 30-year-old hardware in order to do so. The best way to give them the Star Fox 64 story is to give them a fresh start with Star Fox on Nintendo Switch 2. As an older player who was there in 1996, I'm slightly disappointed to tread such familiar ground, but I do take heart in seeing Nintendo and Velan Studios presenting Fox's most well-recognized adventure with a cinematic presentation. That part, at least, shows me that if Nintendo ever does want to explore Fox McCloud's universe beyond the story that many already know, there's potential for that story to be the series' greatest one yet.

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