Star Fox on Switch 2: How to Get the Most From the Classic Remake
I’ve been spending the past few days getting as much mileage out of Star Fox on Switch 2 as I possibly can, and it’s still not wearing out its welcome. Even as a remake, it’s a genuinely great revisit—and it’s also a retelling of a Nintendo 64 classic that, even in 1997, I couldn’t stop coming back to. The most interesting part of that comparison is timing: Star Fox 64 arrived in an era when the “how many hours is this?” question wasn’t as dominant as it is now. Today, players often want length to match the price. Back then, people were more interested in substance, and it was easy to stretch a brief campaign into hundreds of hours of meaningful play. That same idea still holds for Star Fox on Switch 2—you just have to approach it the right way.
Key takeaways
- Star Fox on Switch 2 can be finished quickly, with credits potentially rolling after only a few hours.
- The remake keeps Star Fox 64’s core replay hook: branching routes that reward repeated play when you don’t play “on rails.”
- After your first clear, you can check whether you missed alternate paths and see how to unlock them.
- Challenge Mode adds repeatable objectives tied to specific stages, and unlocking them requires additional campaign runs.
- Battle Mode lets you play solo against bots or online with other players, but it requires a Nintendo Switch Online subscription.
Star Fox’s Branching Paths Are a Major Part of Its Appeal
Let’s be direct: Star Fox 64 wouldn’t have become the household name it did if the campaign was simply a quick session followed by nothing else. If that were the whole experience, replay value would have depended almost entirely on players wanting to rerun the same campaign before it even had time to fade from memory. Thankfully, it didn’t work out that way. One reason Star Fox 64 stood out is that it was among the earlier console examples to make branching paths central to how you replay the game.
Read the silhouettes before the clock runs out.
In many modern titles, routes to branching outcomes are often easier to spot. In games that use dialogue-based branching, for instance, the player’s options can lead to results that are obvious almost immediately. Alternatively, a game might plainly announce that you’ve reached a decision point. Even newer releases like Directive 8020 are often upfront about what most choices do, which can make the act of discovering those paths less satisfying than it would be if the consequences were hidden just a bit longer.
Star Fox is only short if you’re playing it wrong.
That’s where Star Fox 64 in 1997 felt different. A lot of its branching wasn’t apparent right away, and it pushed players to rerun levels repeatedly until they figured out what each path actually did. A good example comes from the famous Corneria stage: the first branching route there involves saving Falco from ships tailing him, then completing Falco’s water-based challenge of flying through archways. The game doesn’t announce any of this. It simply leaves it to you to work out what triggers the alternate route.
Star Fox on Switch 2 preserves that sense of discovery by offering many of the same branching opportunities as the original. The biggest change is that, after you’ve completed the story for the first time, you can check whether you missed an alternate route and learn how to unlock it. Some longtime fans of Star Fox 64 may dislike the added clarity, but it’s still an effective way for Nintendo to connect the original’s past design with expectations from modern players.
Each level in Star Fox on Switch 2 also includes a medal you can earn by hitting a specific score target.
So even if you’ve beaten Star Fox on Switch 2 once, remember that this is a remake of a game built around multiple completions if you want to see the full range of outcomes. It also helps that the remake includes proper storytelling cutscenes that shift depending on which route you take when you’re given a choice. All of that boosts replay value, and the fact that the remake is positioned as a more affordable Switch 2 release makes returning for those extra runs even easier to justify.
Star Fox’s Challenge and Battle Modes Are Even More Reasons to Keep Playing
On top of the branching structure, there’s Challenge Mode — and I’ve been getting a lot of enjoyment out of it right now. Challenge Mode asks you to replay levels you’ve already accessed in the main campaign and complete specific tasks. Examples include “defeat 3 or more enemies with a single charged shot” or “defeat all 4 Ski Bots” on Corneria. Just like the main game’s routing, unlocking challenges tied to a given location requires multiple campaign replays until you take the alternate routes needed to reach each level, which keeps stacking extra reasons to return.
Maybe you’ve completed Star Fox on Switch 2 already, but this is a remake of a title that’s meant to be finished more than once if you want the complete picture of how things can unfold.
After you complete every available challenge on Normal difficulty, Expert challenges unlock as well. That gives yet another incentive to revisit stages you may have already played multiple times. Some players might call this kind of progression superficial, but this is an arcade rail shooter—its whole identity is tied to scores, ranks, and challenge objectives.
Finally, Star Fox on Switch 2 also includes Battle Mode. You can run it solo against bots or take it online with real players. Missions in this mode come with different objectives, and while the payoff is purely the enjoyment of getting the job done, it’s especially worthwhile if you can play alongside friends. Even if you’re not chasing anything deeper, it’s a solid break from repeatedly replaying campaign missions back-to-back.
Star Fox’s Battle Mode does require a Nintendo Switch Online subscription, which could be a deal-breaker for some players trying to maximize replay value.
So yes—Star Fox on Switch 2 feels short if your only goal is reaching the credits once and moving on. But the more I play, the more that feels like judging a game by a standard it wasn’t built to hit. Star Fox is an arcade-style experience centered on repetition, discovery, score hunting, alternate routes, and challenges—plus that simple drive to improve each time you jump back into the Arwing. The campaign may only take a few hours, but that’s not where the “real game” ends. If you’ve already beaten Star Fox on Switch 2 and walked away thinking there was nothing left to see, odds are you weren’t playing it the way it expects you to.
