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32 years after Star Fox hit the SNES, one of the shooter's original creators is building an indie spiritual successor
Wild Blue, an indie spiritual successor to Star Fox created by an original SNES Star Fox programmer, offers on-rails space combat with anthropomorphic animal pilots, branching paths, boss battles, and dogfights, aiming to fill the void left by the lack of recent Star Fox titles.
We're long overdue for a new Star Fox game, but in the absence of an official sequel, one of the creators of the original SNES game is building an indie spiritual successor called Wild Blue. If you've been longing for a new rail shooter featuring anthropomorphic animals piloting sleek space ships, Wild Blue looks to be just the thing.
"Chuhai Labs, founded by original Star Fox programmer Giles Goddard, brings a modern take to the beloved on-rails adventure genre with Wild Blue," according to the official press release. "Fly over oceans, desert ridges, and treacherous caves, battling waves of enemies and pushing back the forces of the evil Baron. With the help of allies, you'll fight to restore peace while enjoying the thrill of classic arcade flight combat."
That press release also promises branching paths and a series of both boss battles and dogfights against a rival fighter squadron, which pretty much covers every feature you'd expect from a new Star Fox. We've only gotten a brief teaser video and a few screenshots of Wild Blue so far, so specific details are pretty light, but the devs certainly understand their target audience here.
Goddard quite jokingly refers to himself as the only developer behind the SNES Star Fox in a brief teaser video for Wild Blue, but jokes aside he was one of the key figures in its creation. Star Fox was co-developed between Nintendo and British studio Argonaut Software, with Goddard – alongside fellow Argonaut programmer Dylan Cuthbert – moving from England to Japan to work at Nintendo's offices on the game.
Nintendo has left some pretty wide gaps between new entries in the Star Fox series, and the last truly new entry to be released was 2016's Star Fox Zero, released on Wii U. There's no indication that the series is getting an official revival any time soon, so I'm looking forward to seeing if Wild Blue can truly fill the Fox McCloud-shaped hole in my heart.