Star Fox has me nervous about Switch 2’s Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake

Nintendo has a monumental task in front of it. Later this year, it will try to iterate on perfection with a full remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Considering that the Nintendo 64 classic is still regularly cited as the single greatest video game of all time, the stakes are higher than your average double dip. Even a short teaser that showed nothing more than a slumbering Young Link was enough to drum up discontent among fans.

I’ve been a little skeptical about the project ever since it was a wee rumor. Part of that is because I revere Ocarina of Time as a foundational piece of video game canon that feels too sacred to mess with, but also because remakes can be a crapshoot. For every truly transformative reimagining, there’s a superfluous glow-up that doesn’t offer much beyond a graphical overhaul. We’re still not sure which camp Ocarina of Time will fall into, but we got a potential hint this week in the form of another Nintendo 64 remake: Star Fox. Despite enjoying it, my skepticism about Nintendo’s approach to remakes remains on high alert.

Developed by Velan Studios, Star Fox is a very respectful remake of 1997’s Star Fox 64. Classy, even. Rather than tearing down the original game’s arcade-style shoot-’em-up action, Velan faithfully recreates every classic stage in one-to-one fashion. That’s an understandable decision, considering that Star Fox 64 is a design marvel that has stood the test of time for nearly three decades. It’s still fun to blast your way through a campaign that you can beat in one sitting, experiencing a movie-length story about a vulpine pilot who’s trying to live up to his dad’s legacy. Streamlined controls only make it easier to appreciate those strengths.

But what does the remake actually do to reimagine that experience and deepen our appreciation of the original? Velan’s vision revolves around pumping up the cinematic elements of Star Fox 64. The visuals are dazzling, the rearranged score is breathtaking, the animal heroes look less like cartoons and more like throwbacks to the puppets of the series’ SNES era, and there are plenty of new cutscenes that make the story more explicit.

Those changes make for a good list of back-of-the-box upgrades, but the remake comes off as a lateral move rather than an evolution. After playing it, I was left wondering what I had actually gotten out of seeing James McCloud’s ill-fated Venom mission play out in a cutscene rather than a text scroll. Interstitial cinematics that show the Star Fox crew hanging out in their home base are enticing on paper, but I’m not sure that I learned anything new about the cast in those moments. For all the extra glitz and glamor, I can’t say that I’m left feeling like I’ve seen Star Fox 64 in a new light.

Image: Nintendo

Star Fox is a fine game as a result, but it feels like it could fall into the same bucket as some of Nintendo’s more forgettable recent remakes. In 2023, we got a remake of 1996’s Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars that traded pixelated visuals for a modern Mario look. It should have felt like a big deal, considering that the SNES game is regarded as a legendary cult classic among fans, but it came and went with little fanfare. That was followed up by a head-scratching remake of niche puzzle game Mario Vs. Donkey Kong in 2024, which similarly seemed to disappear into the ether. Later that year, we got a remake of 2004’s Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, another Nintendo fan favorite that didn’t leave as much of a mark as you’d expect given the original’s sterling reputation.

All three of those are perfectly good games considering that they don’t change much about the great ones they’re built on, but they aren’t terribly exciting as remakes. There’s a certain flavor of Nintendo remake where it feels like the sales pitch is all in the novelty of seeing a classic rebuilt with fresh visuals and modern touches. They make for good curiosities for long-time fans in search of another game to play on the Switch, but you’d be hard-pressed to see any of them rank high on a list of the platform’s most beloved games. Star Fox could very well soar above that bar, but I already feel myself eager to replay the elegant Star Fox 64 instead of firing up a flashier remake full of cutscenes I’m likely to skip.

Will that be the case for Ocarina of Time? The tiny teaser leaves me a lot of negative space to fill. All we get from it is confirmation that the game has been given a visual overhaul in the same vein as Star Fox. Given that it’s the first (and so far only) impression Nintendo wanted to leave fans with, it’s safe to say that the remake’s marketing push will center around a dazzling makeover. That’s to be expected, but I pray there’s more to the project than the novelty of seeing a Nintendo 64 game with modern graphics. If that kind of pitch didn’t do much to turn a new generation of players into Super Mario RPG evangelists, I have no reason to assume it will make a lasting impact for Zelda either.

And an Ocarina of Time remake should leave quite the impact. The original is special because it feels like a video game folk tale that was meant to be passed down and retold over time. A simple story of a hero rising to save his kingdom from evil becomes larger than itself with each passing era of video game history. A full-on remake has the potential to pay off that historical power, proving the original’s timelessness while making it feel like something new that today’s players will want to pass on to those who come after. A nostalgic novelty that doesn’t have much to offer beyond higher production value could instead leave new players wondering what all that old-timer hype was about.

There’s good reason to think Nintendo could pull off something special, even if its mid-2020s remake track record isn’t very exciting. Strong remakes like Metroid: Samus Returns and The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening are both great examples of studios showing us old games in a new light. And for my money, Nintendo produced one of the best remakes of all time in Metroid: Zero Mission, a total reimagining of a classic that stands entirely on its own, apart from the nostalgia of seeing the NES’ Metroid brought to life on Game Boy Advance. That’s the blueprint I hope Ocarina of Time’s developers are looking toward, because I’ll still be thinking about Zero Mission long after Star Fox has faded from my memory.