Star Fox Adventures launched on the GameCube back in 2002. We didn’t play it 24 years ago due to middling contemporary reviews (although some were a bit stronger) and didn’t get the chance to play it. UNTIL NOW!

This week, in September of 2026, Nintendo re-released it on its digital classics platform. Thusly, it gave us a chance to dive on into this action-adventure romp and see what this was all about.

A Surprising Amount of Dinosaurs in Star Fox Adventures

Importantly, this was developed by the British developer Rare. Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, the developer had a unique partnership with Nintendo and only produced games for Nintendo consoles.

It launched on September 23rd 2002 and was Rare’s only game for the GameCube console. Microsoft had acquired the developer for itself and Rare hasn’t made a game for Nintendo since.

However, the key Rare staff that made it such a stunning force in the 1990s had moved on. So Microsoft was, essentially, buying a different developer. And this really shows in Star Fox Adventures.

It has the hallmarks of a classic ’90s Rare game… just without being anywhere near as good.

The game is largely a third-person action-adventure experience. You take control of Fox McCloud eight years after the events of Lylat Wars (recently remade as Star Fox on the Switch 2). You must save a cat-woman thing called Krystal from a mysterious curse by investing Dinosaur Planet, using Krystal’s lost magic staff as a weapon, and then going around exploring and uncovering secrets.

It plays out like the spiritual successor to Rare’s Jet Force Gemini (1999) on the N64. That with occasional flourishes from Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda series, with a bit of Star Fox lore thrown in as well.

Above is it running on the Switch 2 (seems to have had a bit of a graphics rejig for this re-release). The game certainly looks great, there’s a really fancy water effect we love.

To our DELIGHT, we soon realised it also features one of British composer David Wise’s soundtracks. He worked with Ben Cullum on this one and it has all the familiar ’90s Rare music hallmarks.

It can be a bit samey, not his best work, but the usual Wise hallmarks are there of catchy hooks that lend fine atmospherics to the various regions you visit.

Away from that, our general issue with Star Fox Adventures is it’s just very middling.

This is past-peak Rare and not the same developer that created so many era-defining blockbuster titles in the 1990s. It was actually Nintendo’s idea for the action-adventure focus, with resident genius Shigeru Miyamoto suggesting the concept when Star Fox creator Takaya Imamura wanted to make a Lylat Wars sequel.

Rare had randomly been working on a new game called Dinosaur Planet, which Miyamoto saw when it was demoed at the gaming event E3 2000. The two companies then agreed Rare would adapt it into a Star Fox game.

The outcome was a game that promised a lot, but the execution is lacking. It’s not a bad game at all, but the core problems are cumbersome controls and a disappointing and plodding action-adventure centrepiece. There’s just too much plodding around, lifting up rocks for money, gradually collecting money, lifting more rocks, hitting some enemies etc. etc.

This is from the same developer that wowed the gaming world with Banjo-Kazooie (1998) only four years earlier. In comparison, Adventures is a flat pancake of generic stuff.

It highlighted Nintendo had nothing to fear in 2002 with the departure of Rare. It hasn’t been the same since circa 2000 and Microsoft’s big purchase backfired, as none of the landmark blockbuster titles it hoped for followed for its Xbox consoles.

Star Fox Adventures has its moments, though, and the game did make for a marked shift away from the traditional Star Fox format of on on-rails space shooting.

As it’s a standalone experience, we think that says everything you need to know. Nintendo didn’t consider a success and won’t be pursuing another outing anytime soon.