RazörFist dropped his signature rant on Nintendo’s new Star Fox announcement, and underneath the profanity and chaos lies sharp analysis that the gaming press won’t give you.
He opens with Nintendo’s current predicament, noting the Switch 2 launched “overpriced, underpowered” with a library that amounts to essentially one game. “With games that range from $70 to $80, at that point you could buy an honest to god human being for a better bargain.” Nintendo needed a win badly, and Star Fox delivered one, at least for longtime fans.
RazörFist’s franchise credentials run deep. He recounts in his usual bombastic manner a “platonic love affair with the Star Fox franchise since before Justin Trudeau was a bead of sweat on Fidel Castro’s nut sack,” backing that up with a full franchise retrospective. He’s beyond a casual observer for what he’s saying here.
His honest take on the internet’s mixed reception? He agrees with exactly one criticism and dismantles the rest. “I am in accord with one of the points being leveled against it. That being enough already with the Star Fox 64 remakes.” The point lands hard. Star Fox 64 has appeared on Nintendo 64, 3DS, Virtual Console, and now Switch 2. “What are we going for? The Skyrim record here, folks.”
His theory on why Nintendo keeps returning to 64 specifically cuts through the noise. “I suspect this remake is more about testing the waters for a proper continuance of the series.” If that’s the calculation, RazörFist approves of the strategy even while finding the repetition exhausting.
The art design controversy gets the most interesting treatment. While others complained online, RazörFist defended it with historical context nobody else bothered to provide. “The art design looks like puppets. You know, like the ones on the cover of the original and still superior Star Fox SNES game.” He traces his love for the aesthetic back to childhood, noting that since the franchise’s early 90s advertisements featured actual puppets, he’d “longed for a feature-length film with a ruddy, lived-in Lucas Star Wars style spaceships and a cast of conventional animatronics.” The new game delivers exactly that vision in video game form.
The multiplayer mode, meanwhile, garners some enthusiasm. The Fox versus Wolf four-on-four battle mode, where teams compete across multiple Corneria-set stages, has RazörFist ready to “play that thing till my thumbs fall off.” Given his history with the franchise, that’s a meaningful endorsement.
He reserves his sharpest criticism for Krystal’s redesign, which he describes as coming from “the lowest chambers of furry inferno.” The character went from a recognizable fan-favorite design to something unrecognizable, and RazörFist’s frustration reflects a bigger truth about franchise stewardship, where legacy character designs definitely matter to the people who built your audience.
He also notes one of the voices sounds a lot like Andy Richter, and that’s not a good thing: “Is that Andy Richter as Peppy Hare, or am I auditorially hallucinating?” The concern about the voice performance taking on a Southern accent mid-line gets a laugh. It definitely sounds a lot like the actor.
His closing argument cuts to the core of Nintendo’s current relationship with its fanbase. “Between price hikes and a diet of digital software, Nintendo have gone from habitual gamer darling to everyone’s favorite flogging boy in under a year.” Yet Star Fox pulled him back anyway. The franchise holds that kind of power over a specific generation of Nintendo faithful.
What do you think about Nintendo’s new and old direction for Star Fox?