Star Fox May Finally Justify Wii U’s Weird Controller

Nintendo's putting most of its holiday hopes in 2015 on Star Fox Zero, a Wii U entry in a series based on a rather incongruous pairing: Fluffy animal pals engaging in high-stakes spacecraft dogfights.

As you might expect from a series with such a strange combination of inspirations, Star Fox has always been about collaboration. The first game in the series was co-developed with Argonaut, the creator of the British classic Starglider---in fact, it was a Starglider game until Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto stepped in to add furries. So it shouldn't be a surprise that for Star Fox Zero, Nintendo has teamed up with what is fast becoming one of its closest development partners in Japan, Platinum Games, to craft this version.

"This is the first time I've ever done this kind of collaborative design," says Platinum Games' Yusuke Hashimoto, who also directed the last Platinum-Nintendo game Bayonetta 2. "It's not just with Mr. Miyamoto, but also with Mr. Hayashi here," he says, gesturing to Nintendo's Yugo Hayashi, also in the E3 meeting room, also working on the game.

"The three of us are always working together and it's very fun," Hayashi says, "but obviously when Mr. Miyamoto shows you something and is like, what do you think of this, and you have to come up with a good answer, it's very nerve-wracking."

"I'm struck by how fast this goes," says Hashimoto. "The turnaround between the exchange of the two parties is very quick. It's a kind of development speed I haven't really seen before."