Pilot Briefing: How Scoring Actually Works
Medals require two things on every stage: reach the hit target, and finish with Peppy, Slippy and Falco all still flying. One downed wingmate voids the medal regardless of score. Medals are only available on Normal and Expert (never Easy), and only in Campaign Mode.
Charged shots are your score engine
A lock-on charged shot that destroys several enemies at once pays bonus hits: two kills counts as 3 hits, three kills as 6, and it keeps scaling. The bonus flashes on screen as +1, +2, +3. Bombs never earn this bonus, so save them for enemies that would otherwise escape off screen.
Spawn hidden enemies
Flying through narrow gaps, crevices and arches triggers extra enemy groups that most players never see. These bonus spawns arrive clustered, which makes them perfect charged-shot fodder. This is how Corneria runs push past 220 hits when the medal only asks for 150.
Steal your allies' kills
Kills by Falco, Peppy and Slippy score you nothing. Watch what your wingmates chase and take it out first. This matters most on Katina, where Bill's squadron is extremely aggressive. But respond to every distress call instantly, because a downed ally voids the medal.
Protect your laser upgrades
Grab the green laser upgrades early and keep your wings intact so twin and hyper lasers carry into later stages. On Expert, any collision breaks a wing instantly, and a broken wing turns your next laser pickup into a wing repair instead of an upgrade.
Checkpoint pacing
Every stage has a checkpoint that roughly halves the enemy supply. If you are behind pace at the checkpoint, restart rather than grind a doomed run. Retrying costs nothing on Normal: restart from the pause menu or checkpoint as often as you like while medal hunting.
Rapid fire on Pro Controller
Map both rear paddles (GL and GR) to the fire button: hold Home, open the GL/GR Buttons config, and assign each to A. Three fingers cycling fire inputs dramatically raises your rate during dense waves on Area 6 and Zoness.
Bomb refill trick
Starting a hard stage with no bombs? Dying immediately at the start respawns you with three. Worth it on Venom 1. Never do this on Expert, where running out of lives is a hard game over for the whole run.
Lock-on control
Locked onto the wrong target when a juicy cluster appears? Hold L + R together to cancel the lock before firing, then re-charge over the group. Precision lock discipline is also how you avoid friendly-fire hits on challenges that forbid clipping teammates.
Patch watch: v1.1.0 changes that affect scoring
The launch day patch removed the classic Meteo trick where a charged shot on a Flip Bot paid bonus hits from its explosion, so do not budget hits for it as N64 veterans might. It also fixed the exploits where boosting past the Meteo and Solar bosses broke the stage, and the life-loss bug when quitting after a checkpoint restart. Easy difficulty (added in this patch) gives a sturdier ship and stronger laser but never awards medals. No further patch has shipped as of 13 July 2026.
amiibo bonuses
Three compatible Star Fox amiibo unlock 12 Battle Banner elements in total: three backgrounds and nine emblems. These are cosmetic only, so nothing scoring-related is locked behind them.
Unlock chain
All 15 Normal medals unlock Expert difficulty (plus James McCloud sunglasses for Fox). All 16 Expert medals, including Venom 2, unlock an alternate title screen, an extra multiplayer mode and 100% recognition. Challenge Mode completions feed Character Avatars, AR accessories, Battle Banner cosmetics and Holoviewer intel logs on characters and locations.
Lylat System Routes
Sixteen stages exist but each run only visits seven, from Corneria to one of two Venom finales. Select a route to trace it on the star chart. Reaching Venom 2 via Area 6 is required for the true ending, and it also scores higher than Venom 1 because each Star Wolf takedown you claim yourself pays a fat bonus.
Branch Unlock Conditions
Each alternative path has a specific in-stage trigger. The map screen tracks which routes you have opened (press X on the planetarium screen).
All 16 Stages: Medal Targets & Max-Score Strategy
Hit targets are identical on Normal and Expert; only survival gets harder. Checkpoint pace figures tell you whether a run is worth continuing. Tap a stage to expand it.
Challenge Mode: All 192 Objectives
Each stage has 6 Normal and 6 Expert challenges. Expert unlocks per stage once all six Normal tasks are done. Challenges only count in Challenge Mode (never the campaign) and medals cannot be earned here. The moment a challenge's checkbox appears you can quit and it saves, so run conflicting objectives separately and bail early. A greyed-out box means the requirement failed: restart immediately, because Challenge Mode has no checkpoints.