Star Fox-nyinnspillingen gjør én ting helt riktig, og det har ingenting med det visuelle å gjøre

Star Fox launched on Switch 2 on June 25, following Star Fox 64's structure note-for-note while adding new cutscenes and overhauling the visuals with more naturalistic character models. The reviews have been mixed. But buried inside the debate over Fox McCloud's new face and cybernetic leg redesign is something that's gone slightly underappreciated: the soundtrack.

The score takes Koji Kondo and Hajime Wakai's original Nintendo 64 compositions and hands them to a full orchestra. Arrangers Matt Pirog and Stephen Barton did not rewrite anything. The main themes and level tracks are transposed note-for-note. Star Fox's original creator, Takaya Imamura, recently said the remake captures "exactly" what he had in mind when he made the N64 original — and if any part of the game earns that description, it's the music.

The approach worked, as spotted by Polygon. The orchestral version of "Corneria" lands with the kind of dramatic string and brass arrangement that borrows heavily from John Williams, which makes sense given Star Wars' documented influence on the original game. What holds up is that Kondo and Wakai wrote actual melodies — not just ambient atmosphere — so the orchestral treatment has something to work with. The Star Fox themes survive the comparison to Williams because they were composed with the same formal clarity, not because they approximate his style.

The menu music is a better example than the battle tracks. "Star Map" in the new game is urgent and cinematic. Pull up Star Fox 64's "Map Theme" on Nintendo Music — both the Star Fox 64 soundtrack and a curated Star Fox playlist are available on the service — and the bones are all there: a martial snare drum, ominous brass riffs, a deep orchestral swell. Pirog and Barton expanded the instrumentation without rearranging the structure. The gap between what the N64 could produce and what was written for it turns out to be enormous.

I think that gap is the actual story here: Kondo and Wakai wrote a John Williams score in 1997 and then compressed it into whatever the N64's sound chip could handle. The orchestra is not an upgrade so much as an unveiling.

That context matters when you compare the music to the visuals. The game looks sharp and detailed, with a cinematic quality that the original Star Fox 64 did not have. The character redesigns are clearly intentional — Imamura, who designed the original cast and has said he based Fox McCloud on Shigeru Miyamoto, publicly said he "absolutely loves the incredibly realistic character designs." He no longer works at Nintendo and had no involvement in the remake. His opinion shifted four days after he told followers he preferred Illumination's Fox McCloud, voiced by Glen Powell in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. That earlier post arrived during a wave of fan criticism over the naturalistic models, with complaints ranging from Falco looking "too human" to outright rejection of the direction.

I read Imamura's first posts and assumed his stance had not moved. The follow-up changed that read, but the visual debate is still running.

The music debate is not. On that front, the remake made the right call — pick the original material, trust it enough to leave it structurally intact, and give it the production it was always asking for. The glissandi and fanfares that Pirog and Barton added are embellishments, not replacements. Everything Kondo and Wakai put into the N64 version is present in the Switch 2 version, and it is audibly the same piece of work.

Star Fox is available now on Switch 2. The full Star Fox 64 soundtrack and a curated selection of Star Fox tunes are on Nintendo Music for direct comparison.

Read also that a rumored Rockstar Games is reportedly developing a Switch 2 port of GTA 6, according to Spanish insider Nash Weedle: technical issues have been resolved and port specialists brought on as subcontractors, though a 2026 release is not expected.