Nintendo has released one additional game for the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack’s Nintendo GameCube – Nintendo Classics app. Let’s have a look!

Here’s what I thought of this game:

Nintendo GameCube – Nintendo Classics

By now it’s well-known that the foundation of much of Star Fox Adventures was originally designed without any attachment to the Star Fox franchise, going under the name Dinosaur Planet, a name that could still function as this game’s subtitle. A Star Fox Action-RPG isn’t entirely unthinkable, and indeed Nintendo was internally working on such a project before Shigeru Miyamoto himself pushed for Rareware to combine the two projects. But a game where Fox goes around digging up plants, talking with sapient dinosaurs, and pointedly not using a blaster and shooting things… well, it definitely seems like General Pepper called the wrong team for this job. That On-Rail Shooter segments were clearly added after the fact to cater to fan expectations doesn’t change this.

However, if we put aside those expectations and look at the game on its own merits, we find… well, it’s still a mixed bag. There is definitely some good here: the puzzle design can be clever at times, and the game occasionally injects variety into the action by having you do something completely different. However, Star Fox Adventures suffers from a terrible camera, a fairly linear map that you’re not really able to explore yet too often a lack of signposting to show you where you need to go, and it is constantly nagging you to collect various bits and pieces strewn around, whether it’s to fuel your tools, feed your companion character, or to be able to afford necessary upgrades at a shop.

Speaking of that companion character… oof, what a pain. There are surely other worse companion characters in the history of videogames, ones with a more annoying voice and writing, ones that frequently disobey your commands, and ones that serve no purpose other than to act as a key to gates the game throws in your way to justify that character. There are surely worse examples… but Trixie definitely has to be in the running.

Some players will be able to put up with these issues and enjoy this game’s better qualities, and some won’t. On balance, I think Star Fox Adventures is overall better than average… but it’s far from great. Still, this is one of the GameCube’s noteworthy exclusive games, and an interesting experiment in the history of the Star Fox franchise, so its presence here makes sense. That said, it’ll be nice to get more games on the GameCube app that are genuinely good rather than ones that are merely “interesting”.

tl;dr – The Nintendo GameCube app on Nintendo Switch 2 gets Star Fox Adventures, which divided players when it was released due to how ill-fitting the Star Fox franchise is for this style of gameplay, and still divides players due to the many annoyances contained within that gameplay. It’s not a terrible game, and it’s a unique and interesting game in the history of the Star Fox franchise, but this isn’t generally remembered as one of the better games on the GameCube, and for good reason.

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