Nintendo have announced that Star Fox Zero, their highly anticipated new sci-fi plane shooter based in the Star Fox universe for the Wii U, will be released this fall. The announcement came at the beginning of Nintendo’s E3 2015 conference, during which three of the developers were introduced as puppets getting ready for the E3 conference. You can watch the trailer for the game below.
These puppet developers then began to slowly morph into characters from the StarFox franchise, before showing off some of the cinematics from the game. Shigeru Miyamoto then went on to explain how he came about the idea for the game, saying:
“When I was a child there was a TV show called Thunderbirds about fighter planes. That inspired me to make a game that had cinematic elements, with each character having a distinct personality and drama. That would be reflected in the dialogue and appear in the scenes like where a cool character and enemies would appear.”
He went on to say:
“When it came to talking about details about how to make the look and feel of the main characters, we talked about all sorts of types of people. But ever since I was in school I drew comics, which caricaturised humanoid animals, and decided they should be based off animals.”
Nintendo also showed off some new vehicles, as well: The classic Arwing spacecraft, the Walker from the unreleased Star Fox 2, the Landmaster tank, and the Gyrowing — a hovercraft that Nintendo revealed in a special press-only demo last year.
According to Miyamoto, the new Star Fox game uses the Wii U’s GamePad to steer and motion controls to aim at enemies. “For Wii U, with its two screens, we experimented with gameplay ideas before this iteration of Star Fox,” Miyamoto said. The two screens each serve a specific purpose. The TV will present a cinematic view while the GamePad displays a cockpit view.
Some vehicles can also transform: During the trailer, we saw the Arwing switch into a Walker form. Miyamoto said that some levels could be replayed with other vehicles.
Star Fox Zero will be released for Wii U this fall.
