All Articles: Star Fox Zero

It’s Nintendo’s turn to deliver a massive batch of new game announcements in this already ridiculously packed E3 season and the consolemaker has delivered with our first extended look at Star Fox Wii U… now known as Star Fox Zero. While you might assume that “Zero” means the game is a prequel, you’d be wrong. Apparently, Shigeru Miyamoto just likes how the kanji for “Zero” looks and considers Star Fox Zero “its own thing.”

In Star Fox Zero, players will experience a pretty typical-looking Star Fox game on their televisions, but if they look down at the Wii U GamePad, they’ll get a close-in “cockpit view” for precision aiming. But that cockpit won’t be limited to just an Arwing. With the push of a button, players will be able to transform their craft into a Landmaster Tank, a chicken-like Walker, or a drone-like Gyrowing.

A trailer for Star Fox Zero, which is being co-developed by Platinum Games, has been embedded above. And don’t worry, Falco, Peppy, and Slippy are all coming back to do a barrel roll with Fox.

Shigeru Miyamoto recently sat down with Smosh Games to play a round of Mario Kart 8 and answer a few questions about Nintendo’s upcoming release calendar.

With the subject of racing games fresh in their minds, the Smosh Games guys asked Miyamoto about the future of the F-Zero franchise. Once again, the developer said that he wasn’t sure what to do with the franchise, but if it were to come back, it would feature a new controller interface:

“We see a lot of other designers making more traditional racing style of games, so we’ve tried to focus on something that feels a little bit more ‘gamey.’ Maybe if we create a new kind of controller interface and if we find one that’s particularly suited for F-Zero, maybe we’ll do something with it in the future.”

Miyamoto also said that one of the reasons the F-Zero series is on hiatus is because he and Character Designer Takaya Imamura are currently hard at work on Star Fox Wii U. The next adventure starring Fox McCloud will be released sometime this year, but Miyamoto would only confirm that the game will be playable at this year’s E3 Expo. That doesn’t preclude an early Summer for the game, but late Summer is more likely.

But finally, the big bombshell (or should that be Blue Shell?) from the interview came near the end. When discussing Nintendo’s Wii U lineup for 2015, Miyamoto mentioned that the consolemaker has a large number of games in the pipeline including the aforementioned Star Fox Wii U, as well as The Legend of Zelda Wii U, Mario Maker and Yoshi’s Woolly World. But he also admitted that several unannounced games are currently in the works: “There’s more, but I don’t think I can talk about them right now.”

Nintendo is a company that knows how to keep a secret, so it’s unlikely that we’ll learn more about these unannounced games until Nintendo is ready to actually announce them. But who knows, perhaps Miyamoto was referring to the mysterious Project Guard and Project Giant Robot, which were shown behind closed doors during last year’s E3 Expo.