What a Star Fox Game for the Nintendo Wii Must Have to Be Successful

Some video game series started out great, only to take a dip in quality along the way. One such series is the Star Fox series, which had two solid games before it began to take a turn for the worse. The original Star Fox game was a fun and challenging entry for the Super NES, and Star Fox 64 has been rightfully deemed as the series' best game, and one of the Nintendo 64's greatest classics. Then came Star Fox Adventures, and with its tacked-on Star Fox features (it used to be a Nintendo 64 game called Dinosaur Planet without the Star Fox characters) and other mediocre qualities, it was the start of the franchise's downfall. However, it was not nearly as bad as Star Fox Assault, with its heavy reliance on ground-based missions with awkward controls and its very short length. As I have not played Star Fox Command, I cannot comment on it, but it, too, seems to have been met with a mixed reaction.

Which brings me to the point of this article. Nintendo has released games for the Wii featuring characters from several classic franchises. Mario, Zelda, Metroid, and even Punch Out have succeeded on the system, and more popular series may appear on the system at some point. Star Fox may very well become one of them, and while a Star Fox Wii has not yet been officially announced, chances are it will be at some point. If and when it does come out for the Wii, I have some suggestions as to how it could be the best game in the series since Star Fox 64. If Nintendo wants to bring the series back to its former glory, they may want to pay attention to the following ideas.

Obviously, a new Star Fox game for the Wii would have to feature motion controls. For this type of game, they would be ideal, and really give the player the sense that he or she was actually piloting the Arwing. The Wii remote could be held sideways, and tilting it back and forth or shaking it could pull off such maneuvers as the famous barrel roll. Alternatively, the remote and Nunchuk could be combined to pull off other possibilities such as a targeting system. If players are not wild about having to use motion controls to pilot the Arwing, the Classic Controller and/or the Gamecube Controller could be used to play the game in a more traditional sense. If pulled off well, the game's control setups could work wonders. Of course, it needs more than just great controls to be completely successful.

One of the problems that the series has had lately is relying on villains that turn out to be one-shot bad guys that may or may not come back in a later game. While I feel that such villains are fine once in a while, doing it too much robs the series of enemies with the potential of making life miserable for the Star Fox Team. Since it can be presumed that Andross will never be back, the main villains could be all or part of the Star Wolf Team, who have been thorns in Fox McCloud's side since Star Fox 64 and who have proved to be cold blooded killers. General Scales could be resurrected, and hopefully Nintendo would allow us to fight him this time instead of giving him a terrible send off as in Star Fox Adventures. Failing these, a new villain could emerge and become a major antagonist in future titles. Mario and Zelda do not rely too much on one-shot enemies, so why can't Star Fox be so lucky?

What gave Star Fox 64 a lot of replay value was that players could complete missions in different ways so that they can take on new paths and obtain multiple endings. Star Fox Wii should give players the same option: having them take various actions so that they can encounter new planets and achieve a ton of goals. This would make the game less linear, unlike Assault. Alternatively, we could be given the chance to control not only Fox, but his teammates, in a story mode in which each character would go on his or her own quest that might tie in to an even bigger story. Completing each story might even unlock a final story mode which would bring everyone together to face a final threat. Any of these steps would give the game a great deal of variety and replay value.

Nintendo could also eliminate ground-based missions, which popped up too often and were often too frustrating in Assault. If they must have Fox on the ground, they should just keep him in the Landmaster tank or have him automatically move forward...all the player would need to do is fire at enemies and dodge attacks as necessary. All-range arenas in Assault were a bit too large for their own good, which made it difficult to achieve your objectives quickly or save your teammates before they are forced to withdraw from the battle. By making these stages a bit smaller, they could be more manageable and make it simpler to complete the missions as fast as possible.

If the usual action of having just Fox be playable is taken, his friends should be more helpful and less likely to wind up in danger. Having to rescue them all the time, especially when you are in the middle of completing an important mission, is annoying. The rest of the team should learn to take better care of themselves and actually try to save their own hides for a change. Failing this, they should just stay out of trouble by staying on the Great Fox and simply give Fox advice whenever the need to do so arises. I know that defending your friends as much as possible is vital to the success of a war, but the way they have done so in the Star Fox series is such a huge pain.

As for other changes, the voice work could be improved a great deal. The wonderful voice acting from Star Fox 64 was replaced by mediocre voice acting in Adventures and largely bad voice acting in Assault. Nintendo should use actors that fit the roles perfectly so that we do not have actors who sound bored or who tend to grate on people's nerves. The Arwing should fly at a fairly good speed, and not at a slow pace as in Assault. The missions could be replayed to achieve higher scores, and like in Star Fox 64, there should be some neat rewards for completing some very hard challenges. If Nintendo wanted to go the extra mile, they could even solve some plot points that remain unanswered, such as what caused the destruction of Krystal's home planet (a plot point mentioned at the very beginning of Adventures, only to be forgotten about for the rest of the game). Lastly, Nintendo should simply make the game themselves instead of relying on other developers. I am not saying that Rare and Namco are bad companies, but the way that they made Star Fox games that did not feel as great as they could have been tells me that Nintendo would be better off making the game completely in-house in order to turn it into a masterpiece.

There is no telling when we might hear about a Star Fox game for the Wii...perhaps Nintendo will at least hint at such a game at this year's E3 convention. Chances are that it will hit the system at some point, and when and if it does, hopefully Nintendo will take at least some of my ideas to heart. Doing so means that we may finally see a game that puts the series back on track and makes it a well-respected franchise once again. Failure to do so, and continuing to rely on features that bring the series down, will merely result in an exercise of wasted potential. If a Star Fox Wii is officially announced, I will surely compare the revealed details with my ideas and perhaps give an analysis in a future article. Until then, we can only hope that someday soon, the Star Fox series will rise to glory once again.