Former Nintendo developer pleads for a Switch port of Star Fox Zero
One of Star Fox's key creatives has a message for his former employers - they should port Fox McCloud's Wii U adventure to Switch.
The Nintendo Switch has become a happy new home for many a Wii U title that failed to find huge success on that struggling machine - but one of the titles that remains left behind is Star Fox Zero, that machine’s iffy-but-fun entry in the Star Fox series.
One person is definitely still holding out hope for that port - former Nintendo developer Takaya Imamura, who also happens to be one of the key artists behind two fairly maligned Nintendo series - Star Fox and F-Zero.
Imamura used the sixth anniversary of the release of Star Fox Zero, which is today, to call for the company to port the game to Switch.
“I know there are some challenges, but please port the game to Switch,” Imamura wrote on his twitter account.
Imamura also suggested that if Nintendo was also willing to produce a sequel to the awesome promotional animation that was produced for Star Fox Zero, Imamura would be happy to return to work on the animation’s content and story.
Imamura, who had a huge hand in the design of the characters and world of Star Fox and F-Zero, continues to work in the games industry as a freelancer. He left Nintendo in 2021.
Imamura's comments follow PlatinumGames, who co-developed the game, also expressing an interest in porting the game to Switch - though of course, the decision remains Nintendo's.
Star Fox Zero was… alright. I consider Star Fox 64 (Lylat Wars here in the EU) to be one of my top five favorite games of all time, and every now and then Star Fox Zero felt like a worthy successor to that game. But too often, a control method designed explicitly to justify the Wii U gamepad’s existence felt like it went against what makes Star Fox great and, worse, made action feel complex and inaccurate. Game Maker's Toolkit has a great video oin where the game went wrong.
There was a kernel of something great in Star Fox Zero however - as you’d expect with action aficionados PlatinumGames assisting with development. It’s the sort of game that’d need a lot of work - as Imamura acknowledges - but one that’d likely benefit greatly from no longer being tied to the Wii U.