Star Fox 64 3D

Star Fox 64 3D is a 3D rail shooter video game co-developed by Nintendo EAD and Q-Games and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 3DS. It is a remake of the 1997 video game Star Fox 64 for the Nintendo 64. It was released on July 14, 2011 in Japan, followed by other markets in September. The game is set on a group of planets in the Lylat system. Ingenious scientist Andross, a native of the fourth planet Corneria, is driven to madness and nearly destroys the planet using biological weapons. For Andross’ treason, General Pepper exiles the scientist to the remote planet Venom.

Five years after Andross’ exile, Pepper detects unknown activity on Venom. Pepper hires the Star Fox team (consisting of James McCloud, Peppy Hare, and Pigma Dengar) to investigate. Upon arriving, Pigma betrays the team, and as a result James ends up missing and is presumed dead, while Peppy barely escapes. Several years later, Andross again invades the Lylat system, causing Pepper to call on the new Star Fox team, led by James’s son Fox McCloud, to battle Andross. With a few exceptions, the gameplay in Star Fox 64 3D is very similar to that of the original N64 version.

The player controls Fox’s Arwing fighter jet using the Circle Pad to steer, the shoulder buttons to bank left and right, and the four right-hand buttons to fire lasers and bombs, boost, and brake. The directional pad allows the player to perform somersaults and U-Turns, which can also be performed with combinations of other controls, and to zoom in and out from the Arwing in “All-Range Mode”. The player can also enable “Gyro Controls”, using the 3DS’s internal gyroscope sensor to control the Arwing.

Character dialogue, messages, and control information are displayed on the bottom screen. The single-player campaign features two modes: “64 Mode”, which replicates the original game’s objectives and difficulty, and “3DS Mode”, in which difficulty and objectives have been tuned and balanced to account for the 3D perspective and gyro controls. A third “Expert” mode can be unlocked during gameplay, adding the difficulty of the original game’s expert setting. Each mode separately tracks the player’s scores and medals.