Star Fox received critical acclaim and is often considered one of the greatest video games of all time.

It sold more than 4 million copies and established the Star Fox series as a flagship Nintendo franchise.

A sequel, Star Fox 2, was developed, but was withheld from release until 2017, as a title for the Super NES Classic Edition.

Nintendo re-released Star Fox worldwide for the first time in September 2017 as part of the Super NES Classic Edition.

The game also has a small degree of locational damage detection: if the ship's wings clip against obstacles or the ground too much, they will break off, adversely affecting the craft's handling and removing the ability to upgrade weapons.

This gives Star Fox somewhat more replay value than other scrolling shooters that have a fixed series of levels each time the game is played.

In each level, the player is accompanied by three computer-controlled wingmen: Peppy Hare, Slippy Toad and Falco Lombardi.

Andross, an evil scientist, has fled to the planet Venom after being banished from Corneria, and declared war on the latter, unleashing an enormous army to wreak havoc on the Lylat System.

General Pepper, the commanding officer of Corneria's defense force, dispatches a prototype high-performance fighter aircraft called the "Arwing".

However, lacking in time to train pilots for the new aircraft, he summons the elite mercenary team Star Fox to defeat Andross.

Fox McCloud, the leader of the team, is accompanied by his teammates, Falco Lombardi, Peppy Hare, and Slippy Toad.

Programmer Jez San told Nintendo that this was as good as it could get unless they were allowed to design custom hardware to make the Super NES better at processing 3D.

[9] Argonaut did much of the base programming for the game's engine, while the character designs and artwork were mainly done in-house by Nintendo.

It topped the Japanese Famitsu sales charts from February to March 1993,[35] selling 325,000 units in Japan by December 1993.

Next Gen Magazine pointed out Star Fox as helping pioneer the use of 3D video game graphics.

Unlike most games of this genre, though, Star Fox (Nintendo of America, for Super NES) shows some heart behind the hardware — rarely have such powerful spacecrafts been piloted by so adorable an array of frogs, birds, and bunnies".

[48] Star Fox has become an established Nintendo franchise, with six more installments and numerous appearances by its characters in other media such as the Super Smash Bros. series and Starlink: Battle for Atlas.

A direct sequel titled Star Fox 2 was developed for the Super NES but never released to market, although programmer Dylan Cuthbert reported that the game was completely finished.

A finalized version of the game, obtained from a complete ROM located in Nintendo's archives, was released on the Super NES Classic Edition in September 2017.

In 2005, Star Fox: Assault was released for the GameCube, this time developed by Namco and specifically the same core team that handled the Ace Combat series.

Star Fox Command, developed by Q-Games released for the Nintendo DS in 2006, is the first game in the series on a portable system and the first to feature online multiplayer.

In the game watch, there are four levels and the object is to fly towards an attack carrier and destroy it while dodging plasma balls and falling structures.

[52] The conception and development of Super Mario 64 was inspired by Miyamoto's experience working on Star Fox.