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The Legend of Zelda franchise has been soaring high for the vast majority of its lifespan, while the Star Fox franchise has struggled to gain traction over the course of multiple entries. These franchises exist in completely different spaces in terms of prestige and consistency. However, they do share a few similarities. Both are beloved franchises, and for many, both produced their greatest (or at the very least, defining) entry on the Nintendo 64. In 2011, both games received 3DS remasters, and this year, Nintendo surprised many by announcing remakes of both The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Star Fox 64 for release in the same calendar year 15 years later. In a vacuum, these 2026 announcements may feel strange in conjunction with one another; after all, why would Nintendo populate its second year of the Switch 2 with two high-profile Nintendo 64 remakes? But even as both franchises exist in extremely different standing within the present-day gaming landscape, returning to their iconic Nintendo 64 entries through modernized remakes makes sense for each respective series.
For Star Fox, the pitch is simple: Reintroduce Fox and his friends to the world of gaming hot off the heels of his prominent appearance in the very popularSuper Mario Galaxy Movie; Nintendo already did that with several of its characters following the first Super Mario Bros. Movie, with releases like Mario vs. Donkey Kong, Princess Peach: Showtime, Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD, and, most recently, Donkey Kong Bananza capitalizing on the box-office success of that film. But it goes deeper than that.
With Star Fox Zero releasing on Nintendo’s lowest-selling home console of all time (and the reception giving players no reason to find a Wii U to play it and Nintendo no reason to bring it to Switch), it’s been two decades since Star Fox: Assault and Star Fox Command, the last two original games released on popular systems. That means there are entire generations of people who grew up thinking of Fox, Falco, and Wolf as little more than Super Smash Bros. characters. Sure, the 2011 3DS version of Star Fox 64 probably helped somewhat in that regard, but Nintendo needed a way to reestablish the Star Fox team in the fronts of Nintendo fans’ minds. Simply naming it Star Fox, rather than referencing Star Fox 64 in the name, hints that Nintendo sees this as a starting point; if Star Fox is successful, it’s not hard to imagine Nintendo uses that as a jumping-off point to explore all-new adventures starring Fox, Falco, Slippy, and Peppy.
Now that we know the game was developed by Knockout City and Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit developer Velan Studios, 2026’s Star Fox could serve as a jumping-off point for that studio, as well. On multiple occasions, developers have told me that they have used remakes of older games to get a handle on a franchise or new technology. Longtime Pokémon developers Junichi Masuda and Shigeru Ohmori told me in 2019 that they used Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu and Let’s Go, Eevee (remakes of Pokémon Yellow) to further understand the challenges of console development versus handheld development. Meanwhile, the team at Halo Studios is in the midst of moving Xbox’s flagship franchise to Unreal Engine 5, and part of the learning process involved creating Halo: Campaign Evolved, a modern, from-the-ground-up remake of our first adventure with Master Chief and Cortana on the latest version of Unreal Engine. These remakes give development teams the ability to focus on visuals, audio, and gameplay without needing to worry too much about design and story. It’s not hard to imagine that developing Star Fox gave Velan Studios a deep understanding of the franchise’s characters, lore, and, most importantly, gameplay, which it could carry into creating its own all-new entry down the road.
For The Legend of Zelda, the franchise is already in an incredible spot; the last two 3D Zelda games are the best-selling titles in the franchise’s history, several of the games in the 40-year-old series are considered among the greatest games of all time, and Link and Zelda are getting their own silver-screen treatment next year. There’s just one problem: The Wild Era. Now, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is my personal favorite game of all time, but it’s impossible to deny that it fundamentally changed what it means to be a Zelda game. That game, along with its sequel, Tears of the Kingdom, delivered an unprecedented level of freedom for Zelda players, and by all accounts, it was unbelievably successful in doing so.
But it’s been nearly a decade since Breath of the Wild redefined the 3D side of the series, and the last traditional 3D Zelda game was 2011’s Skyward Sword, which released all the way back on the Wii. And while many longtime fans have requested Nintendo return to the more structured approach of games like Skyward Sword, Twilight Princess, and Wind Waker, anyone who got into the series through its best-selling entries, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, could view the additional structure and direction as more of a pull-back on freedom rather than a reinforcement of the narrative and game design. This means that an all-new, more linear 3D entry could be seen as a jarring step back in the eyes of newer fans, rather than the next evolution Nintendo as Nintendo would likely want it to be viewed.
Nintendo may have come to the same conclusion that, despite its success in The Wild Era, those games put the franchise in a difficult place when the time comes to reinstate the more traditional structure of the earlier 3D Zelda games. It’s entirely possible Nintendo may have also come to the same solution that I did: A remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time could be a way to delight longtime fans, while allowing newer fans to dip their toes into that more structured, linear 3D Zelda format, without the expectation of evolution. Instead of hearing there’s an all-new Zelda game and wanting a step further down the path of what was delivered by The Wild Era, newer fans would instead approach it as a modernized way to experience a classic that is considered by many as the greatest video game of all time; they would approach it as an approachable way to experience this historical game, which has a different structure from a different era. However, if done right, it would aptly demonstrate to those newer fans the value of the more linear approach to quest and world design, and then, when Nintendo ultimately returns to that format for the next mainline 3D game, the transition is much more palatable for anyone whose entire history with the franchise going into the Ocarina of Time remake was limited to Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.
It also helps that this year is the 40th anniversary of The Legend of Zelda franchise; fans had bemoaned the lack of celebration from Nintendo’s side up until it announced Ocarina of Time in June, so it accomplishes two tasks. If in the coming years, we see a new 3D Zelda adopt the structure or linearity of games like Twilight Princess and Wind Waker, we can safely assume the Ocarina of Time remake did, in fact, serve as that transitional stepping stone for the franchise. Similarly, if Velan Studios receives the chance to make its own original Star Fox title in the next few years, we can likely chalk this year’s N64 remake as a training grounds of sorts for the crafty, New York-based studio. And if neither of those come to pass, and my thoughts on why these games make sense in 2026 don’t actually pan out into the reality of the situation, I’ll still be happy that two of my favorite games from the Nintendo 64 are available on Switch 2, both in their original forms through Nintendo Switch Online, and through these modern remakes.
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