Four years after its first polygon shooter, Nintendo told the same story again on the Nintendo 64, and this time the cast talked. In Star Fox on the Super NES, Fox McCloud’s wingmen had babbled in electronic gibberish; in Star Fox 64 they shouted for help and told Fox what to do, in speech that ran through every mission. N64 Magazine, reviewing the Japanese cartridge in June 1997, called it “more cinematic than any game I’ve ever played before — CD-based or otherwise”, and wondered how Nintendo had “fitted it all into the cart”. It was also the game the Rumble Pak came with, so that every hit on Fox’s ship shook the player’s hands.
Fast facts
- Developer: Nintendo’s EAD, produced by Shigeru Miyamoto and directed by Takao Shimizu, with Takaya Imamura as art director and music by Koji Kondo and Hajime Wakai (in-game credits).
- Released: Japan, 27 April 1997; North America, summer 1997 (Nintendo Power announced 30 June); Europe, as Lylat Wars, October 1997.
- Platform: Nintendo 64; a 96-megabit cartridge.
- Price: ¥8,700 in Japan; £60 in Britain, with a Rumble Pak in the box.
- Reviews: Edge nine out of ten; N64 Magazine 94%.
Along the route
The story is the Super NES game’s again. The evil Emperor Andross has attacked the Lylat system, and General Pepper sends the Star Fox team, Fox, Peppy, Slippy and Falco, to stop him. What changed was the path to his planet, Venom. The first game had offered a choice of three fixed routes. In Star Fox 64 the player’s performance picks the next mission. Edge gave an example from the first level: save Falco from three enemy ships and he leads Fox through a waterfall to a different boss and on to the harder route. N64 Magazine found that someone who flew the most direct way to the end on the first evening would “only actually have seen about a third of it”, and that the hardest route played like “a completely different game, with a different ending”.
Most missions are flown in the Arwing, which Nintendo Power counted in 13 of the 16. The others use a tank, the Landmaster, on the planets Titania and Macbeth, and a submarine, the Blue-Marine, under the sea of Aquas. Most stages are corridors that scroll forward, as in the first game, but six use “All-Range Mode”, a free-flying arena for dogfights, and some corridor stages switch to it for the boss. The idea came from Star Fox 2, the Super NES sequel that Nintendo almost finished but did not release at the time. The Arwing could now loop and turn round, and Edge found the loop “particularly useful, as enemy ships on the player’s tail suddenly find themselves on the business end of Fox’s laser cannons”. The same magazine singled out a battle beneath a huge alien mothership that looked “suspiciously similar to those seen in ‘Independence Day’”. Up to four players could also fight one another on a split screen.
The wingmen needed looking after. They “possess a gift for getting chased by enemy fighters and asking Fox for help”, Edge complained, and a wingman shot down sat out the next mission while his ship was repaired. That cost the player more than company: without Peppy, the boss’s energy bar disappeared. Miyamoto told Nintendo Power that the game was “balanced so that players of any skill level can play the game in their own way. But you need good motor skills to get all the medals or finish the expert mode.” Edge‘s main complaint was that it was too easy to reach the end: most players, it thought, “should see the three routes’ end sequences after a few days’ play”.
The voices
The speech went into a cartridge at a time when rivals were putting video and music on CD, and the magazines noticed. N64 Magazine heard General Pepper’s mission briefings, “panic-stricken babbling” and “Andross’s evil taunts”, and pointed out that the scenes between and during levels were drawn by the game itself, in the same ships and characters, with no pre-recorded video. Nintendo’s British advertisements promised “over 600 soundbites of real dialogue”. Some of the jokes worked only in Japanese. The villain Pigma Dengar, Miyamoto explained to Nintendo Power, “speaks in the Kansai dialect of Japan. In Kansai, people end their sentences with the word ‘dengar.’ So, it’s sort of a Japanese joke.”
One line outlived the game. Peppy’s advice, “Do a barrel roll!”, became an internet catchphrase, and in November 2011 Google made its search page spin when the phrase was typed in. Edge, reviewing a remake that year, was less fond of the cast: the clearer speech made Slippy Toad’s “hyperactive, shrill blathering more annoying than ever”.
The Rumble Pak
In Japan, America and Europe the game came with a Rumble Pak, a small motor unit that plugged into the socket under the controller. Edge described it “vibrating vigorously every time Fox’s Arwing is hit by enemy fire or crashes into obstacles”. Nintendo Power wrote: “You feel every enemy shot rock the controller in your hands, like a flight stick that jerks when a plane is slammed by a missile.” The Rumble Pak entry follows the accessory and its rivals, and force feedback gives the longer history.
Sales and Lylat Wars
In America, Nintendo Official Magazine reported, the game sold more than 300,000 copies in its first weeks, ahead of the early sales of Super Mario 64 and Mario Kart 64. Retro Gamer later wrote that it sold slightly fewer copies than the Super NES game, which had sold about four million.
Europe got it in October 1997 as Lylat Wars. The first game had also changed its name there, to Starwing (the Star Fox entry explains why). N64 Magazine mocked the new name, but the conversion impressed it. Earlier Nintendo games made in Japan had reached Britain with a squashed picture and obvious slow-down, because they had not been properly converted for the European PAL television system, which runs at 50Hz instead of 60Hz. Lylat Wars filled the whole screen, and “once you’re past the title screen”, the magazine reported, it was “virtually indistinguishable from the American version”. The European cartridge could also put its text into French, and could switch the speech to “Lylat”, a burble like the first game’s.
Later versions
Nintendo put the game on the Wii’s Virtual Console in 2007. In 2011 Nintendo EAD and the studio Q-Games remade it for the 3DS as Star Fox 64 3D, with new textures, cleaned-up speech and a mode that steered the Arwing by tilting the console. Edge called it “an excellent update of Nintendo’s classic space opera”. On 25 June 2026 Nintendo released Star Fox for the Switch 2, another remake of Star Fox 64, developed by Velan Studios.
Sources
- N64 Magazine issue 3, June 1997, from p. 30: review of the Japanese Starfox 64 (94%; the routes, the extra levels, the speech and cinematic scenes, four-player mode).
- Edge issue 46, June 1997, p. 68: Star Fox 64 review (nine out of ten; ¥8,700 with a Jolt Pack; the routes and the waterfall, the wingmen, the loop, the mothership, the tank and submarine, the vibrating pack, the difficulty).
- Nintendo Power issue 98, July 1997: Star Fox 64 feature (the Arwing in 13 of 16 missions, the Landmaster and Blue-Marine, All-Range Mode in six stages, six possible paths, up to four players; developer EAD/Nintendo, 96 megabits, release 30 June; Miyamoto on balance and the medals; the Rumble Pak quotation).
- Nintendo Power issue 99, August 1997: E3 interview with Shigeru Miyamoto and Takaya Imamura (Pigma Dengar and the Kansai dialect).
- Nintendo Official Magazine issue 60, September 1997: US sales of more than 300,000 copies; the European name Lylat Wars.
- N64 Magazine issue 6, September 1997, news: Lylat Wars at £60 with a Rumble Pak.
- N64 Magazine issue 8, November 1997: “PAL version” news feature from p. 14 (the full-screen conversion, French text and “Lylat” speech); Nintendo advertisement (“over 600 soundbites of real dialogue”, launching October).
- Retro Gamer issue 116, July 2013, from p. 68: history of Star Fox (All-Range Mode from Star Fox 2; Star Fox 64 selling slightly less than the original).
- Edge issue 232, October 2011, p. 126: Star Fox 64 3D review (Nintendo EAD and Q-Games; Koji Kondo’s soundtrack; the speech; the gyroscope controls).
- Famitsu.com, Star Fox 64 anniversary article, 27 April 2022 (web, secondary): the Japanese release date and the first Rumble Pak game. https://www.famitsu.com/news/202204/27259601.html
- In-game staff credits of Star Fox 64, transcribed by raido.moe and GameFAQs (web, secondary): producer Shigeru Miyamoto, director Takao Shimizu, art director Takaya Imamura, sound composers Koji Kondo and Hajime Wakai. https://raido.moe/staff/n64/n64_starfox_64.html https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/n64/198759-star-fox-64/credit
- Wikipedia, “Star Fox 64” and “Peppy Hare” (web, secondary): the European release in October 1997, the Virtual Console release in 2007, Peppy’s “Do a barrel roll!” and Google’s November 2011 homage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Fox_64 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppy_Hare
- “Star Fox” (Switch 2), Nintendo Life game page (web, secondary): the 2026 remake by Velan Studios. https://www.nintendolife.com/games/nintendo-switch-2/star-fox