You know what? I think Star Fox 64 might actually hold up. Granted, I haven't played that game--or any Star Fox game--since the original came out a zillion years ago (in 1997), and consequently I went and looked at the new 3DS version of the game yesterday expecting nothing but a nostalgia piece, but it turns out the 3DS seems like a fine way to experience Star Fox's behind-the-arwing brand of quick third-person shooting all over again.
It helps that Star Fox 3D features fully redone graphics a la Ocarina of Time 3D, but in this case the overhaul comes courtesy of Q-Games, the well-known Japan-based developer behind the PixelJunk series. That mean's Q's head honcho Dylan Cuthbert is sort of coming full circle here, having worked on the original Super NES Star Fox games way back when. I doubt that has much effect on how this redone version actually turns out, but it makes for a nice sentimental story, right?
Story-wise, this is the same game you played on the Nintendo 64, but man does it look better. I played that first area on Corneria and the improvements were nice, but didn't bowl me over, but then I jumped to the Zoness level later in the game, which is covered in water. There I got to see the sort of shadowing and texture on the water that you wouldn't necessarily expect out of the 3DS. Nintendo has gone in and re-recorded all of the game's voiceover as well, though that may have been for simple quality reasons, since the voice work sounded pretty similar to what I remember of the original.
It sounds like a no-brainer, but it's great that Nintendo and Q have added the ability to save your progress between campaign missions. That's mainly because in the original, you had to start the game afresh every time you turned the power back on, and moreover, the game has a widely branching mission structure that makes you satisfy some pretty strict mid-mission requirements to see some of the more obscure levels. Nintendo rightly pointed out that even a lot of devoted players of the original game probably never saw all the levels (I didn't), so you ought to have a better shot at playing everything with the more lenient save feature.
The most substantive addition to Star Fox on the 3DS is the revamped four-player mode. You know what's especially weird about it? You can only play it through single-cart download play; there's no mode that works with four different copies of the game. That's a pretty dramatic shift from Nintendo's old policy of offering extremely limited multiplayer options through download play, and the full experience only if everyone who wants to play has the game. At the core the multiplayer consists of the same four-player dogfighting in the original, but there are new maps to play on, and you can set numerous rules ahead of the match about kills, time limit, and such. Most importantly, there are Mario Kart-style power-ups scattered around that yield random weapons like homing missiles and the "transposer," which swaps the position of your ship and whoever you hit with it. It's also a nice touch that the 3DS camera feeds a shot of each player into the multiplayer match, hovering over their ship. Makes for some added trash-talking.
Much like Ocarina of Time 3D, the appeal of this game for veterans of Star Fox 64 will probably come down their interest in replaying a better version of that same game, this time on a handheld. But if those veterans are like me, it's been so long that the game might feel all shiny and new again. The shooting part still satisfies, at any rate.