In 2023, Hitman and 007 First Light developer IO Interactive announced a surprising new IP, an online RPG codenamed Project Fantasy. While that game is still on the way, it has hit a snag that will result in layoffs.
IO posted an update on the game, stating that “A relationship with an external partner on our own IP, Project Fantasy, has come to an end. This means we have to adapt to this new reality and its short-term consequences, including staffing decisions, which is what is happening as we write this update, and we are fully committed to supporting those affected through this challenging transition.”
Bloomberg has reported that Xbox confirmed to the outlet that it was the “external partner” funding the project and that it has pulled out of the relationship as it re-evaluates its investments. An Xbox spokesperson told Bloomberg that despite the news, the company is not investing less in video games, but rather plans to invest the same amount as it did last year. “What’s changing is where we’re investing and the kinds of projects we’re backing,” said the spokesperson.
Despite this setback, IO remains committed to continuing work on Project Fantasy, writing that it is “a game, a world, and an IP that we absolutely love and remain 100% committed to, now and in the future. This wonderful universe will see the light of day.”
Dear gaming community,
For a good while, it has been all positive news from IO Interactive. We remain humbled and honored by the response to our latest outing with a young, unproven Bond. A bold new story and a take on one of the most famous characters in entertainment, which…
Project Fantasy was revealed in February 2023. At the time IO wrote of the game that it is “A world and a game built from the core to entertain players and expand for many years to come. It feels familiar, yet at the same time IOI is going on a journey unlike any we have been on before.”
“For many, this journey is also a deeply personal one that began long before we started making games for a living – and it started with the fantasy genre,” IO wrote in Project Fantasy’s announcement post. “From the “Fighting Fantasy” books compelling you to choose your path, alone, against wizards, lizards, and thief kings. To the togetherness, camaraderie, agony, and delight found around the tabletop. For some it meant taking the role of a game master: Part storyteller, part AI opponent, part guide, part villain. For everyone around that table it meant creativity, imagination, building a world together, and a shared goal in creating a great game experience.”
Earlier this year, IO released 007 First Light to positive reviews and strong sales. You can read our review of that game here.
On June 15, reports surfaced from various news outlets that Microsoft is planning to either close or sell off multiple studios in its gaming division. While nothing has been officially announced or confirmed, five have been named by reporters so far: Compulsion Games (South of Midnight), Double Fine (Psychonauts), Ninja Theory (Hellblade), and, most recently, Undead Labs (State of Decay), as reported by GamesBeat. These studios have been said to be in various stages of negotiations with Microsoft about their futures. Xbox studios that won’t be shuttered are still expected to undergo layoffs.
The Verge reports that sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans state that Dishonored and Deathloop developer Arkane Studios is also under consideration for closure or sale. Arkane, based in Lyon, France, was acquired by Xbox as part of its larger purchase of ZeniMax in 2021, which also gave the company Bethesda and id Software. Under the Xbox umbrella, Arkane Lyon specifically has released Deathloop. Arkane’s former American branch, Arkane Austin, the team behind 2019’s Prey, was shuttered by Xbox in 2024 following the negative reception to its 2023 co-op action game Redfall.
Arkane Studios’ next announced project is Marvel’s Blade, an action game based on the popular hero first revealed at The Game Awards 2023. No gameplay has been shown for the title, but it’s been described as a single-player, mature-rated third-person action-adventure game set in Paris. According to The Verge’s sources, Blade was supposed to debut later this year, but its launch date was internally delayed to 2027 (the game has no publicly known release window). Blade is also reportedly running over budget.
This news comes a week after Entertainment Weekly published a large feature covering the state of Xbox, in which Bethesda’s Todd Howard provided a brief comment about Blade and Arkane as a whole. “I’m not at liberty to say when [we’ll see more],” Howard teases, “but I saw some stuff just yesterday [on May 21] and the folks at Arkane [Studios, the developers] are doing a really, really great job.”
All eyes are looking toward next week for the shoe to drop on all of these reports, given that it will be the end-of-quarter financial calls for Microsoft, which is presumably why the company has not made any official layoffs announcement yet.
Netflix is no stranger to adapting video games into TV series, and the streaming giant looks to be tackling a live-action Persona series, Variety reports.
The series’ showrunner, writer, and executive producer is reportedly Christopher Monfette, a writer and producer of series such as Star Trek: Picard, 12 Monkeys, and 9-1-1. Sega’s senior executive officer, Toru Nakahara, is attached as an executive producer. Nakahara served as a producer on all three Sonic the Hedgehog films. Netflix declined Variety’s request for comment.
We’ll have to wait to see if this Persona series is real, but this would certainly be an ideal time to announce such a project. The franchise has made headlines recently due to the reveal of a release date for Persona 4 Revival, a remake of the acclaimed RPG, and the announcement of Persona 6.
Eschatology Entertainment and publisher 4Divinity have revealed Guns of Eschaton, a soulslike FPS set in a supernatural American Wild West. The game’s visual design was envisioned by the late Viktor Antonov, the art director behind Half-Life 2, Dishonored, and many other works.
The game stars a multi-armed gunslinger shooting his way through an apocalyptic west. Despite being a first-person shooter, Guns of Eschaton shares far more in common with soulslikes. Players can blast foes with a large arsenal of firearms and specialized ammunition types in deliberately paced, challenging combat that emphasizes making every shot count. On the defensive side, you can parry incoming attacks or use a dash to evade at the right time.
The gunslinger can be customized to suit various playstyles through what Eschatology touts as “flexible buildcrafting.” You can equip gear such as armor, talismans, and consumables, along with active and passive abilities. Studying enemies using a Codex reveals their weaknesses. Guns of Eschaton can be played solo, but it also supports online co-op.
Guns of Eschaton’s art direction, which blends 19th-century Americana with occult horror, was envisioned by the late Victor Antonov. The artist was best known as the art director for Half-Life 2 and Dishonored, creating the visual aesthetic for both titles. Antonov passed away in 2025.
“We are incredibly honoured to be revealing Guns of Eschaton, the final project shaped by the extraordinary vision of Viktor Antonov,” says Fuad Kuliev, studio head at Eschatology Entertainment, in a press release. “From the earliest stages of development, I had the privilege of shaping this world together with Viktor: where ideas, themes, and concepts evolved through his talent into the world players will see today. Viktor’s imagination and creative legacy have been a constant source of inspiration throughout development, and this game is the result of an incredible collaborative effort from our entire team to bring that vision to life. We are proud to share it with players around the world in partnership with our publisher, 4Divinity.”
Guns of Eschaton has no release window, but it’s coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
Sony has announced it is removing hundreds of purchased movies and TV Shows by Studio Canal from players’ digital libraries. This will begin September 1, with Sony citing seemingly expiring content licensing agreements as the reason.
You can view the full, lengthy list of content being removed from players’ PlayStation digital libraries by checking out Sony’s announcement post published on Friday, June 26, which succintly reads “From September 1, 2026, due to our content licensing agreements, you will no longer be able to access your previously purchased content from Studio Canal, and it will be removed from your video library.” The news first attracted attention thanks to a social media post by user somatyk, who shared a message sent by the PlayStation Store to users notifying them that their purchased content would soon become unavailable.
PREVIOUSLY PURCHASED $7.535B 2025 profit, but Sony are quite happy to shaft their customers, given half the chance. pic.twitter.com/2QVpSJ7e9D
Notable films listed include Apocalypse Now: The Final Cut, The Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2, From Dusk Till Dawn, Hot Fuzz, Inside Llewyn Davis, Moonrise Kingdom, Paddington 2, Pan’s Labyrinth, the first three First Blood/Rambo films, Sharknado, Silver Linings Playbook, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, This Is Spinal Tap, and Train to Busan. TV shows include American Gods, The Young Pope, and Trust Me.
The post makes no mention of refunds, so players will not be compensated for losing access to films/shows they paid for. PlayStation ceased the sale and rental of movies/TV shows in 2021, so while players have been unable to buy or rent such media for years now, they could still access previously purchased content. However, as noted by Video Games Chronicle, PlayStation’s End User Agreement, as with most digital storefronts, states that users purchase licenses to view content, which can be removed upon the expiry of licensing agreements.
A standalone sequel to Netflix’s hit Cyberpunk: Edgerunners was announced last summer, and now we have our best look yet at the upcoming series thanks to a new trailer. Netflix has also revealed a Fall premiere date.
The 10-episode Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 stars a brand-new cast and story. While it remains set in Night City (of course), it centers on four new faces: Weak Kingsley, D, Roman Carax, and Talia Yang. Netflix has provided official descriptions for each character (thanks, Video Games Chronicle).
Weak Kingsley was “Once known as ‘King,’ a veteran Edgerunner at the top of his game, Weak now lives in the shadow of his former glory.” D is a “Snake Nation netrunner who hunts the killer that wiped out his clan.” Talia Yang “hails from the Corpo towers, but her heart belongs to chrome and violence.” Lastly, Roman Carax is a “young cinephile in search of real stories in a city that abandoned cinema for braindances.”
Kai Ikarashi, director of the first Edgerunners, helms the sequel, along with returning lead designer Kanno Ichigo and Hugo Award winner Bartosz Sztybor as showrunner, story writer, and producer.
For more on Cyberpunk 2077, check out our reviews of its base game and its Phantom Liberty expansion.
Arc Systems Works revealed a new team and characters for its upcoming tag team fighter Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls during Evo 2026 this weekend. One hero, one villain, and one fourth-wall-breaking mercenary are joining the fight.
Blade, Loki, and Deadpool are the latest additions to the roster. Blade relies on his Muramasa blade to slice apart foes while relying on guns and throwing knives to keep them at bay from afar. Loki bashes enemies using a flaming sword, a staff similar to the one that housed the Mind Stone in The Avengers, and likely plenty of other tricks. An Asgard stage has also been revealed alongside the trickster god. Lastly, Deadpool looks as wacky as he did in Marvel vs. Capcom 3, with a moveset bursting with a barrage of comedic chatter and fighting game references (including his own rendition of Mortal Kombat’s “Toasty!”). Deadpool is also voiced by Nolan North, who reprises the role after voicing the character in his eponymous 2013 game.
The three, along with the previously announced Ghost Rider, form a team called the Samurai Outriders in the game’s narrative. They’ll battle rival factions such as the Fighting Avengers (Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, Black Panther), the Knights of Doom (Doctor Doom, Magneto, Carnage, Green Goblin), Unbreakable X-Men (Wolverine, Magik, Storm, Danger), and the Amazing Guardians (Spider-Man, Star-Lord, Ms. Marvel, Peni Parker).
Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls launches on August 6 for PlayStation 5 and PC.
Star Fox is back! And by that, of course, I mean the 1997 Nintendo 64 game is literally back. Who knows how long we will be waiting for a proper, new Star Fox, but you know what? The remake, simply titled Star Fox, is pretty dang good. Turns out doing a faithful remake of a great game, even an old one, usually works out pretty well.
That’s the big game release this week, but there is plenty of other stuff happening across the industry. Check out some stories below before diving into our weekend recommendations.
I proudly proclaimed, “I don’t want another remake of Star Fox 64! We have that at home,” while pointing at my 3DS that has been dead for years and I don’t know where the charger is. But then I got my hands on the 2026 Switch 2 remake of Star Fox 64 from Velan Studios and remembered, “Oh yeah. This game is very important to me. And also this remake is well done.”
I don’t know if this remake, released for the Switch 2 yesterday, will inspire a new generation of Star Fox fans. But for those like me who played the Nintendo 64 game repeatedly, it’s a fun, nostalgic revisitation of a great game. The soundtrack is a particular highlight, but seeing every world with a 2026 coat of paint is also wonderful. And importantly, flying the Arwing feels right.
Also worth noting, a free demo for the game is available if you want to get a taste.
The Drifter was released on Steam in July of last year and is currently boasting “overwhelmingly positive” reviews; this week, it is available on both Switch and Switch 2. The game follows Mick Carter, who must solve a mystery surrounding his own death as his consciousness is repeatedly placed back into his body moments before he drowned in a reservoir by sci-fi soldiers. It’s a classic point-and-click adventure game with wonderful pixelated visuals, but it is designed to be played with a controller. It has a unique control system that lets you interact with the environment and characters without mousing around the screen with a thumbstick.
I missed the game on Steam, though I thought it looked awesome at the time. Though I have not made it far into the Switch 2 version, I am enjoying its look, the ease of play, and the story. I have been reviewing a lot of twitchy games like Star Fox and others you will see on the site soon, so I am in the mood for something a little slower-paced and thoughtful. Maybe you are, too.
Rhythm Heaven Groove Demo
Kyle Hilliard
I am a big fan of the Rhythm Heaven series and reviewed both Fever and Megamix. I remember looking up pre-YouTube videos of the Japan-only Rhythm Heaven for Game Boy Advance (Rhythm Tengoku) on the computers at my college library and pantomiming the button presses to remove the onion’s beard thinking, “Man. I wish I could actually play this.”
Thankfully, you don’t have to suffer like I did because there is a free demo featuring the first collection of rhythm minigames available to download on Switch, and I highly suggest you do. It’s a game that is hard to appreciate in trailer form, as it is all about the feeling of “playing” music. And it’s weird as hell.
Dark Scrolls
Marcus Stewart
The latest joint by Doinksoft, makers of fun, quirky titles like the Metroid 2-inspired Gato Roboto and action platformer Gunbrella, is back at it with this unexpectedly engrossing auto-scrolling action game. As one of three starting characters, you’ll blast through barrages of incoming enemies either as a wizard lobbing magic orbs, an axe-tossing barbarian, or a dagger-throwing rogue. Being forced to constantly move forward due to the auto-scrolling stages while dodging tricky enemy patterns makes survival challenging, especially since the run-based structure means starting from scratch after each failure.
However, unlocking various upgrades, such as imbuing weapons with elemental damage, faster attacks, or even shooting fire from your feet, helps extend runs. I wasn’t hot on Dark Scrolls during my first run; auto-scrollers don’t usually do it for me as a platforming fan. But after the third attempt, the hooks started to dig in. The itch to reach a castle at the end of the game, a path that splits along the way by fulfilling certain conditions, is real. I felt genuine excitement when I lasted longer than a previous run, and avoiding attacks while blowing away foes is satisfying. Thanks to its format, I’ve enjoyed fitting in a run or two of Dark Scrolls between bigger games and look forward to conquering my current roadblock: the second-level boss.
Tabletop Pick – Jungo
Matt Miller
For a fast-playing card game that can be slotted in after dinner, or between rounds of a more involved and bigger game, Happy Camper Games Jungo has become one of my go-to options. It’s a hand-building game where you’re trying to get rid of all your cards. The twist is that you can’t rearrange the cards in your hand once they’ve entered it, creating novel challenges for how to get closer to victory. Additionally, you can only play cards that all have the same numerical value, and if the cards played depict a higher number or it’s a larger number of cards than what is currently played onto the table. It’s simple to grasp once you start in, and even inexperienced or younger players can grasp the concept, but more experienced players will love the unique structure and flow of play.
Dead Or Alive 6 Last Round
Brian Shea
When it originally launched in 2019, Dead or Alive 6 didn’t exact rise to the top of our franchise ranking. While our 6.75 out of 10 review for the base version of the game was critical of the online suite and absolutely eviscerated the story, the core fighting mechanics remained strong, just as they have for much of the series. Dead or Alive 6 Last Round doesn’t reinvent the story, but it does make this the best place to experience the sixth mainline entry of the long-running franchise, and the mission-driven DOA Quest mode is still as fun today as it was back then. Optimized for current-generation hardware, Dead or Alive 6 Last Round includes 29 characters, including 5 DLC fighters. On top of that, a free-to-play “Core Fighters” edition allows players to sample the package with limited offerings. If you’ve ever been curious about the Dead or Alive series or are just looking for a good excuse to jump back into the fight with Kasumi, Ryu Hayabusa, Ayane, and the rest of the roster, DOA6 Last Round seems like a decent starting point.
Legendary boxer Marvin Hagler once said, “It’s difficult to get up and do roadwork at five in the morning when you’re sleeping in silk sheets.” While this refers to getting rich through combat sports and therefore losing the work ethic you once had, the notion could also be applied to EA Sports and its lack of competition. The Madden franchise, with its NFL exclusivity, has long drawn the ire of fans for a perceived lack of innovation due to its monopolization of the NFL video game space, and after spending many hours with EA Sports UFC 6, I’m starting to worry the same problem might have transposed to this franchise as well.
To be clear, the gameplay in UFC 6 is the best this franchise has seen. Thanks to new ways of differentiating the fighters, either via animations, movements, tendencies, or signature ways of attacking, EA Vancouver finally cracked the code on making combatants feel distinct. And those fighters largely look incredible; though your mileage will vary based on fighter popularity, the biggest stars’ likenesses are often dead-on in UFC 6. This permeates the experience, whether you’re playing a quick one-off fight in the game’s capable online suite or diving deeper into longer-tail modes.
UFC 6 carries forward the series’ pedigree of action-packed fights inside the cage; though grappling options are always available, in my experience, wrestling-heavy affairs are rare. That’s a good thing, as grappling continues to be a sore spot, straddling the line between being too cryptic and too mindless. Instead, fights often quickly develop into high-speed chess matches and violent car crashes. Thanks to improved blocking and more variance in striking, it pays to be strategic, particularly as you manage your stamina over the course of an extended bout. And thanks to an evident focus on approachability, anyone can ease into the action with optional features like slow-motion in-fight moments, beginner control schemes, and simplified grappling.
This entry also introduces a Flow State mechanic, which uses a charging meter and aims to emulate the feeling of a fighter being in the zone. Once you enter Flow State, activated with a push of the d-pad, the background noise fades away, and your fighter temporarily gains a performance boost. This addition effectively captures the momentum shift that can occur when everything starts clicking, but it also veers the action heavily to the arcade side of the fence.
However, like many UFC stars past and present, the in-Octagon performance isn’t the problem – it’s everything that happens outside of the fights. The M rating affords more blood in the cage, but it’s more often used to listen to (mostly) uncensored rap and nu metal songs on repeat in the poorly optimized menus. You still have access to all the modes of recent games; I enjoyed putting together my dream fight card, setting up a one-night tournament like the early days of the promotion, or pulling off fantasy matchups between two legends in their primes, but I’m always drawn to the longer-form experiences.
UFC 6 touts two distinct career modes, but unfortunately, both fall flat. The standard career mode features the same loop as past games: You sign to fight a specific opponent, then manage your week-by-week bandwidth by completing a combination of sparring and promotional activities. However, this quickly becomes repetitive, as you complete the same few activities multiple times per fight with a career spread across 30-plus fights. You can simulate some of the activities you’ve already completed, but you get fewer benefits, and with all the promotional activities simply being menu items you select, it doesn’t take long for the tedium to set in.
Even the new player-agency elements fall woefully short of expectations, giving you occasional binary choices that range from how you trash-talk to whether you want to fall for your coach’s get-rich-quick scheme. These feel inconsequential at best and outright annoying at worst; by the end of the first couple of years, I was hoping to change camps like in past games, but that is one area of player agency that’s missing. Normally, I’m glued to this mode with each new entry, but since I’ve played all previous UFC games, UFC 6’s career mode quickly gave me an unshakeable sensation of “been there, done that.”
It’s perhaps why I was so hopeful for The Legacy, a narrative-driven twist on career, where you take control of a fictional UFC prospect. This mode, with its M-rated story and promise of fights that spill outside of the Octagon, has a ton of potential, but once you get past the short, forgettable story, it’s just the standard career mode without your custom fighter. After seeing the story through to the end, you can continue playing career mode as the narrative’s protagonist, but I left The Legacy shortly after its narrative conclusion, likely never to return.
The one UFC 6 mode that impressed me is the Hall of Legends, a new interactive museum that highlights three current UFC fighters. Walking around a lovingly crafted museum themed after Max Holloway’s home of Hawaii or one that pays homage to Zhang Weili’s Chinese origin in third person delivers a cool immersive experience, giving you bite-sized documentaries of each fighter and tasking you with re-creating iconic moments from their careers in-game. It’s here that the dev team’s love of the sport really shines, but when there are only three fights to relive per fighter, and the documentary footage seems to be all repurposed from past UFC content, I was left wanting more.
Instead, the one area that feels completely excessive and largely unnecessary is perhaps the most baffling: The Gym. This area serves as a menu-based training system, where you navigate some of the laggiest and most unwieldy screens to assign trainers to fighters to arbitrarily unlock cosmetic items. It almost serves as a chart-your-own-path daily login bonus, with each new level for every fighter unlocking new items to equip, but it all feels so tiresome and unnecessary. In fact, the menus throughout the entire UFC 6 package are so laggy that they bring the menu-heavy experiences of The Gym and both career modes down in noticeable ways. In some cases, they’re so poorly optimized that the music even skips as the next screen loads.
UFC 6’s incremental gameplay improvements and bewildering stagnation fly in the face of the fact that it’s been three years since the last entry in the series. With annualized sports franchises, you almost expect iterative innovations year after year, but after such a long wait, I expected a bigger bump with UFC 6. The improved character models, graphics, and fighter distinctions are welcome improvements, but when almost everything else feels so familiar or inessential, I can’t help but wonder if EA Sports’ UFC franchise has experienced too much time uncontested at the top.
Somehow Star Fox returned. Yesterday. With the release of Velan Studios’ remake of Star Fox 64 for Switch 2. And it’s good! It is, expectedly, making us reflect on the larger Star Fox franchise. We originally published this list around the launch of Star Fox Zero back in 2016, but we’ve updated today with new games and have reconsidered our order.
You can check out our list below.
10
Star Fox Guard
Release Date: April 22, 2016 – Platform: Wii U
Its inclusion on this list is somewhat up for debate, as it shares little in common with any of the other Star Fox games in terms of mechanics, but it is called Star Fox and features Star Fox characters. It’s a bonus game included with Star Fox Zero and could also be purchased on the Wii U’s eShop, and there simply isn’t much there. The game stars Slippy and his uncle Grippy as they play tower defense with a series of turrets connected to security cameras. It’s a relatively shallow experience that can be skipped.
9
Star Fox 2
Release Date: September 29, 2017 – Platform: SNES Classic Edition
Nintendo can be a bizarre company, but the saga of Star Fox 2, its development, and eventual release, is arguably the strangest way Nintendo has ever released a video game. Following the success of the 1993 Star Fox, development on a sequel began fairly quickly. The game was reportedly 95 percent complete and nearly ready for release, but Nintendo decided to shelve the game and focus on the upcoming Star Fox 64. And it lived on that shelf for about 20 years until it was included in the SNES Classic Edition, the miniature Super Nintendo console that included a collection of beloved SNES games. And now the game is also available on Switch as part of the Nintendo Switch Online subscription service.
But how is the actual game, and how does it rank compared to the rest of the Star Fox series? Technically, it’s a very impressive game considering it was being created right before the transition into widespread 3D gameplay, but playing it today feels dated even when you put yourself in the headspace of the potential timeframe it would have released. As a point of reference, the PlayStation would have already launched before Star Fox 2 was released. We are glad it was finally released and wasn’t cursed to never officially exist.
8
Star Fox Zero
Release Date: April 22, 2016 – Platform: Wii U
Star Fox Zero is half remake of Star Fox 64 and half series reboot, but the pieces don’t quite fit together. There are moments where the awkward motion controls come together to create a compelling space-combat experience, but those moments are intermittent and difficult to consistently recreate. But even without the motion-control barrier, Zero often feels dated. It does fly closer to the true classic Star Fox experience fans want, however, than Star Fox Assault or Adventures’ entries in the franchise.
7
Star Fox: Assault
Release Date: February 15, 2005 – Platform: GameCube
Developed by Namco, Assault served as an almost-return-to-form Star Fox sequel after Star Fox Adventures. The game featured some on-rails Arwing sequences, but was pulled down drastically by its myriad on-foot segments. Those sections were hampered by loose controls, bad AI, and repetitive mission objectives. There was some fun to be found in the multiplayer, but overall, Assault ranks low in the Star Fox series.
6
Star Fox Command
Release Date: August 28, 2006 – Platform: DS
Directed by Dylan Cuthbert, who was instrumental in the creation of the original SNES Star Fox and its sort-of-cancelled sequel, Command is the Star Fox game that many often forget. It’s part strategy game, as you have to map out your Arwing’s routes turn-by-turn, and part standard Star Fox shooter, as all the encounters play out like all-range-mode fights of other Star Fox titles. The game features a hefty amount of story, with Slippy preparing to get married, Peppy’s daughter Lucy making an appearance, and a struggling romance between Fox McCloud and Krystal from Star Fox Adventures. The game uses touch-screen controls for the action, which was an understandable barrier for some, but it’s the Star Fox game many skipped that’s worth a look.
5
Star Fox Adventures
Release Date: September 23, 2002 – Platform: GameCube
Star Fox Adventures started its life as a different game called Dinosaur Planet before Team Star Fox injected themselves into Rare’s reptilian adventure. The Arwing moments are few and far between, but the Adventures portion of the game is a solid experience that holds up today. It shares some commonalities with the puzzle-solving and exploration of Zelda and offers the closest look at these characters and their world that the series has ever offered.
4
Star Fox
Release Date: March 23, 1993 – Platform: Super Nintendo
Seeing the original today may not impress those who didn’t grow up with it, but at the time of release, Star Fox was a mind-blowing powerhouse. No one knew the Super Nintendo was capable of rendering three-dimensional objects, but here was a whole game dedicated to the surprising technology. Today, the game’s framerate is laughable, often clocking in at the single digits, but it is still a highly playable and impressive game.
3
Star Fox 64 3D
Release Date: September 9, 2011 – Platform: 3DS
The 2011 3DS game, Star Fox 64 3D, is a remake of Star Fox 64, but it’s a good update that goes the extra mile to add new elements. The game received a complete visual overhaul, and its on-rails nature made it an excellent showcase of the stereoscopic 3D capabilities of the fairly new-at-the-time 3DS handheld. The game also included the option to use motion controls, but those could thankfully be turned off at any time.
2
Star Fox 64
Release Date: June 30, 1997 – Platform: Nintendo 64
After a teased Star Fox 2 that disappeared, and rumors of a Star Fox for the doomed Virtual Boy, 1997 finally saw the release of a new Star Fox game four years after the original. The game came about a year after the launch of the Nintendo 64 and proved to be well worth the wait with no reliance on gimmicks (though it did come included with a Rumble Pak), great controls, realized personalities with full voice acting (a rarity for Nintendo 64), and plenty of surprises down each of its assorted paths. The game continues to be fun to replay today as it relies fully on what Star Fox does best.
Star Fox (2026) is a great remake of a great game, and the result is that we’re happy to award it the number one spot on our Star Fox ranking list. When the re-orchestrated music kicks in while firing lasers that cast beautiful modern shadows against the giant spaceships that just can’t hit me, and the bad guys complain about how cool and good we are at flying a spaceship right before they blow up, we’d be lying if we said we weren’t having a great, nostalgic time.
We’re not including it on this ranking because, frankly, it is not a Star Fox game. But Starlink: Battle for Atlas is absolutely worth mentioning when it comes to discussing the Star Fox series. Playing the Switch version of the game contains much more than a Fox McCloud cameo – he is integrated into the game’s story in a big way. And, the game also included a physical Arwing toy. It was the most exciting thing we had from Star Fox between the release of Star Fox Zero and the release of Star Fox (2026).
To learn about the assorted gimmicks that have invaded the Star Fox franchise, head here. For our review of Star Fox Zero, head here. For our review of Star Fox (2026), head here.
