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How Velan Studios plans to modernize Star Fox without losing its soul. Velan Studios, best known for Mario Kart Live, is launching a cinematic Star Fox remake on Nintendo Switch 2 on June 25, 2026, built on a proprietary engine with new online multiplayer. The project represents a high-stakes franchise revival that must satisfy longtime fans while introducing Fox McCloud to an entirely new generation. When Nintendo hands the keys to one of its most beloved dormant franchises to a studio best known for remote-control karts, the gaming world pays attention - and Velan Studios is betting everything that reverence for the source material is the only co-pilot it needs. With Star Fox launching exclusively on Nintendo Switch 2 on June 25, 2026, the Troy, New York-based developer faces a challenge that extends well beyond shipping a polished product: it must prove that a storied franchise can be reborn without losing the essence that made it legendary in the first place. Computer & Video Games The weight of the barrel roll - why Star Fox 64 still matters. Star Fox 64 occupies a near-mythic place in Nintendo's catalog. Its characters, its barked voice lines, its kinetic on-rails aerial combat - these elements didn't just define a console generation, they burned themselves into the memory of an entire cohort of players who still recite "Do a barrel roll!" with the reflexive ease of muscle memory. That cultural weight transforms any remake into something more consequential than a technical exercise. It becomes an act of franchise stewardship, where the margin for error is narrow and the scrutiny is relentless. The stakes are compounded by years of franchise stagnation. Star Fox has drifted through experimental entries and muted receptions without ever recapturing the momentum of its 1997 peak. This cinematic remake arrives, then, not merely as a game but as a second chance - a revival that must simultaneously satisfy longtime devotees and make a compelling case to an entirely new Switch 2 audience encountering Fox McCloud for the first time. Computer & Video Games An unlikely studio, an unconventional assignment. Velan Studios did not arrive at this assignment through an obvious path. The studio built its Nintendo relationship through Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit, a charming augmented reality experiment that placed miniature karts in living rooms across the world - an inventive product, but one that bears almost no surface resemblance to a high-stakes cinematic remake. Nintendo's decision to entrust Velan with Star Fox is, by any measure, a genuine surprise, and it signals a depth of institutional trust that can only have been earned through demonstrated competence behind closed doors. The technical choices Velan made early in development reinforce that this is a studio operating with serious ambition. Rather than building on an off-the-shelf engine, Velan developed the game on its own proprietary VIPER engine, engineering a locked 60fps experience from the ground up. That decision is not the behavior of a studio treating Star Fox as a safe commercial exercise - it is the behavior of a team that approached the source material as a genuine artistic statement, one demanding a custom-built canvas. The regional dimension of the story carries its own resonance: outlets including the Times Union have framed the project as a local success story, a reminder that one of gaming's most prestigious assignments now rests with a mid-sized studio from upstate New York. Computer & Video Games Honoring the blueprint while rewriting the rules. Few creative decisions communicate intent as clearly as a title. By stripping away any "Remake" or "64" qualifier and releasing the game simply as Star Fox, Velan and Nintendo have declared their hand: this is not a museum piece, it is a relaunch. The movie-style cinematic poster released ahead of the June 25 date reinforces a creative vision that treats Star Fox 64 as a launchpad rather than a ceiling - something to honor and then, carefully, transcend. The reveal strategy was equally deliberate. A shadow-dropped, dedicated "Star Fox Direct" broadcast on May 6, 2026 - approximately 15 minutes, no prior announcement, no manufactured hype cycle - let the footage argue for itself. The broadly positive early coverage it generated, led by outlets like IGN Southeast Asia, suggests the gamble paid off. Confidence, it turns out, is its own form of marketing. Perhaps the sharpest modernization instinct Velan demonstrated was the introduction of a new online aerial dogfight battle mode built around a "Team Fox vs. Team Wolf" rivalry. Rather than simply recreating what existed, the studio identified a competitive multiplayer dimension that fans had long imagined and built it in natively. It expands the soul of the franchise without diluting it - a distinction that will matter enormously to a passionate fanbase. Features, fanbase, and the road to launch. GameShare support, a key Switch 2 platform feature, threads the needle between Star Fox's social roots and contemporary play habits. By enabling shared multiplayer access, it opens a natural pipeline for introducing the franchise to players who never owned the original, broadening its footprint organically rather than through nostalgia alone. Community enthusiasm - particularly around the return of dogfight gameplay highlighted by Nintendo Life's coverage - signals that Velan has correctly identified which elements of Star Fox's DNA are non-negotiable. The aerial combat is the soul of the experience, and it remains intact. Positioned as a marquee Switch 2 title at launch, the game carries platform-level stakes that extend beyond Velan's own fortunes. A strong reception would validate Nintendo's franchise revival strategy and, more broadly, the argument that storied IP can be trusted to ambitious outside studios with something to prove. Velan Studios' approach - proprietary engine, cinematic framing, expanded multiplayer, and a shadow-drop reveal - reflects a studio that internalized what made Star Fox 64 great before deciding what to change. The "soul" of the franchise appears to have been protected by design, not by accident, and that intentionality is the most encouraging signal of all. Whether Star Fox ultimately succeeds will be measured not just in sales figures, but in whether it answers a longer question the industry has been asking for years: can a beloved Nintendo dormant franchise be fully revived, and can a smaller, regionally rooted studio be the one to do it? On June 25, 2026, the Lylat System opens for business once more - and this time, the stakes could not be higher. Your email won't be published No comments yet. Be the first to comment!

Velan Studios behind Star Fox remake on Nintendo Switch 2. Velan Studios has revealed that it is the developer behind the upcoming Star Fox remake out on Nintendo Switch 2 this month. The team is known for their work on Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit and Knockout City, and has now leveraged their expertise to bring Team Star Fox back to the skies. Discover more Nintendo Switch Video Game Consoles Computer & Video Games "We've been passionately working on this for a while, and we're so proud to finally share it with the world: Velan Studios is the developer of Star Fox! Collaborating with Nintendo and bringing Fox McCloud and crew to Nintendo Switch 2 is truly an honor," the developer shared on social media. "Star Fox on Nintendo Switch 2 is developed in VIPER, our in-house game engine at Velan. It allowed us to bring Fox and his crew back in higher fidelity than ever before, with gameplay running at 60fps and all cinematics rendered in real-time." The Star Fox remake has been pitched by Nintendo as "a cinematic take on the Star Fox 64 game, featuring newly overhauled character designs, freshly revamped looks for each stage, plus detailed cutscenes, fully voiced dialogue and a sweeping orchestral soundtrack." Nintendo-Insider were lucky enough to have a chance to go hands-on with the game last month, concluding in its preview: "Star Fox has never looked, sounded or played better than this. The complete visual overhaul of the game is astounding, the orchestral soundtrack is goosebump-inducing and the gameplay experience that underpins it stays true to everything I came to love about the Nintendo 64 original. It's exciting to be weeks away from battling it out across the Lylat System once again, and I hope that this is just the start of a new chapter for the Star Fox squad's adventures." Star Fox will be released at retail and digitally on the Nintendo eShop for Nintendo Switch 2 worldwide on 25 June 2026.

I didn't care about the new Star Fox until I found out who's making it. I never played much Star Fox as a kid. Save for maybe a few minutes here and there at a friend or cousin's house, I've basically not played the series whatsoever. So I was safely out on playing the new one arriving this summer for Switch 2. But a funny thing happened this morning: GamesNu actually learned who is making it-something that oddly doesn't happen much with Nintendo games until GamesNu can watch the credits-and the answer has completely changed my plans. The New York-based Velan Studios was delighted to announce today that it's the development team working with Nintendo on Star Fox, and that the game is built on Velan's proprietary engine, Viper. If you don't know it by name, Velan is a fairly young team, established in 2016, with several games to its name. Of those, the most important one to me is Knockout City. The 3v3 dodgeball game was an incredibly fun arcade sports game, and I've never really gotten over the game coming offline a few years ago. It's one of my favorite games ever. Jun 10, 2026 I've followed the team since then and have been enjoying its more recent release, Midnight Murder Club, a PvP shooter set in a completely darkened mansion that demands players rely on flashlights and sounds to track down their opponents. What these two very different games have in common, beyond their novel gameplay mechanics, is their abundance of charm. Both games offer ample opportunities for players to showcase their skills, but they were also soundtracked by the frequent laughter from those playing. There's a childlike heart to both games that can't be missed-what better way to capture a youthful spirit than things like dodgeball and hide-and-seek? I don't know much about Star Fox, but to me, that sounds like the perfect team to take on a Nintendo franchise where players fly through space and perform daring combat maneuvers on an adventure with colorful characters. To the extent I can get away with "rooting" for a studio, a relatively small team that made one of my favorite games but has since suffered some commercial struggles seems to qualify. I assume the publisher and developer rekindled their relationship from earlier to make Star Fox happen. Believe it or not, the team's very first game was Nintendo's Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit, an augmented-reality racing game. Velan would later go on to use the same tech in a Hot Wheels game, too, and has also released a virtual-reality pinball game called Bounce Arcade. This type of portfolio suggests a team willing to try unconventional things, and to bring Star Fox back, I think you need to think outside the box. I'm excited to see Velan get called on for such a major project. As many players are surely returning to Star Fox as longtime fans hopeful for a revival that feels like it was worth the wait, I come to it from a decidedly different angle, but suddenly eager to play it, too.