It’s coming up to a decade since Nintendo released Star Fox Zero for the Wii U in 2016. But if Nintendo won’t get around to it, someone else has something very similar. Giles Goddard–one of the programmers of the original Star Fox–is working on Wild Blue Skies, a new on-rails sky shooter that looks and feels a lot like his former franchise.
IGN debuted the new gameplay video for Wild Blue Skies, which covers the entirety of the second stage, Hurricane. It’s enough to give you Star Fox 64 flashbacks as Bowie Stray, an anthropomorphic pilot dog, leads his squadron–Chuck, Roe, and Thorne–into battle during a raging storm. And it gives us enough of the new team’s personalities that we can say Thorne is definitely the Slippy Toad of this group.
Goddard and his team at Chuhai Labs keep up the banter between Bowie and his group throughout the stage. And when Boss–that is his name–shows up to fight them at the end of the level, even he gets in on the chatter. The final version of the game will feature multiple biomes for the team to fly over, and Bowie can already do a Fox McCloud-style barrel roll.
Wild Blue Skies, formerly known as Wild Blue, is being published by Humble Games, and it’s currently only planned to be released on PC through Steam, though there’s no confirmed release date as yet. It’s also not the only Star Fox tribute game on Steam. Whisker Squadron: Survivor was released in its final version on Steam earlier this year.
Although the Star Fox franchise is currently dormant, comedian Adam Conover has revealed that Nintendo was planning to team up with his former employer, CollegeHumor, for a Star Fox stop-motion animated series. That series, and a proposed live-action Legend of Zelda show on Netflix, fell apart after the projects were leaked, according to Conover.
