Dinosaur Planet
Dinosaur Planet
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subdirectory_arrow_right Star Fox: Assault (Game), Star Fox Adventures (Game)
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Outside of the SNES titles, Star Fox Adventures is the only Star Fox game on a home console to not feature any sort of Japanese voice acting, instead relying on Japanese subtitles for its localization in Japan. This is because Rare preferred to use their in-house staff for voicing characters in their games, rather than having to travel over to London to find professional voice actors.

Since Krystal and Tricky are the only new characters introduced in SFA to reappear in future games such as Star Fox Assault and the Super Smash Bros. series, they are the only Dinosaur Planet/Star Fox Adventures characters to ever have any Japanese voice work done for them, with Krystal being voiced by Teiya Ichiryusai and Tricky being voiced by Hirohiko Kakegawa. Ichiryusai would reprise her role as Krystal in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, with her voice clips being reused for Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
person Dinoman96 calendar_month October 28, 2023
subdirectory_arrow_right Star Fox Adventures (Game)
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Attachment Dragon Rock, Star Fox Adventures' final SpellStone area, was considerably larger and more complex in earlier versions of the game than in the final release. Both the leaked December 2000 build of Dinosaur Planet and also the E3 2002 kiosk version of Star Fox Adventures show that Dragon Rock featured a slew of additional areas that didn't make the final cut, such as an underground quarry area where Sabre/Fox would have to save the imprisoned EarthWalker from being eaten by a group of creatures known as Skeetlas, and also a large underground mining facility Sabre/Fox could only access by flying the imprisoned CloudRunner to the top of the titular Dragon Rock (a giant tower in SFA) at the center of the map. In SFA's case, Fox would have to solve a puzzle that would involve powering the portal at the back end of the room that would grant him access to Drakor, Dragon Rock's boss.

In the final release, both the underground quarry and the mining facility were removed: Fox simply frees the EarthWalker from a corral on the surface by hitting a switch located nearby the imprisoned HighTop from across the map, and Fox immediately skips to fighting Drakor after being dropped off by the CloudRunner at the top of the center tower. Funny enough, when Fox lands on the platform in Drakor's arena, it bizarrely shows electricity spewing around him, which was a remnant of the portal he was supposed to activate in the cut mining facility segment in order to access the boss.

The SFA dev team admitted on a 2003 Rare Scribes that Dragon Rock was massively scaled back from its intended design due to "approaching deadlines", presumably referring to the impending Microsoft buyout in 2002. It's worth pointing out that the mining facility area can actually be found in the files of the final retail release of SFA and surprisingly in a much more complete state than the kiosk's version, which indicates that the dev team continued working on this area in the final months of development but ran out of time to polish it to their liking.
person Dinoman96 calendar_month October 27, 2023
Dragon Rock in Dinosaur Planet:
https://youtu.be/I-pJrjq6QSM?t=18

Dragon Rock in Star Fox Adventures, circa E3 2002:
https://youtu.be/4yMRuFkG8vc?t=1750

Dragon Rock's cut bottom mining area found in the retail version of Adventures:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHQYmpHWYEE

Rare scribes circa 2003 explaining why Dragon Rock was cut down:
https://www.raregamer.co.uk/scribes-april-3rd-2003/
subdirectory_arrow_right Star Fox Adventures (Game)
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Attachment Rare had originally considered removing the character of Krystal in the transition from Dinosaur Planet to Star Fox Adventures entirely. Former Rare artist Kevin Bayliss recently posted a glimpse at an earlier form of SFA's cutscene sequence notes that shows zero trace of Krystal, instead featuring Fox McCloud in her place in the prologue, riding the CloudRunner onto General Scales' galleon, and eventually arriving at Warlock Mountain (which would become Krazoa Palace in the final game), where he would then communicate with Slippy Toad and General Pepper, the former beaming him the projectile upgrade, obviously filling in for Randorn granting Krystal the projectile spellpage in Dinosaur Planet. It seems an earlier idea Rare had in the transition from DP to SFA was to have Fox crash land his Arwing over Dinosaur Planet, forcing him to traverse on-foot.

Rare would proceed to have multiple meetings with Nintendo's staff in Kyoto, those including Shigeru Miyamoto and Takaya Imamura (the creator of Fox McCloud and godfather of the Star Fox series), to iron out their new story for what would become Star Fox Adventures. Miyamoto and Imamura requested for Krystal to remain in the game, feeling it'd be a waste to scrap her entirely, and Imamura would help redesign her to fit better aesthetically alongside the main Star Fox cast. According to Imamura, his redesign of Krystal was inspired by Vampirella, a Warren Publishing comic book character known for wearing risqué outfits. Reportedly, this was because he and Miyamoto wanted to add sex appeal to the Star Fox franchise, as the latter wanted the series to have mature elements wherever possible.

Another old piece of SFA concept art Kevin Bayliss posted features a To Do list with one of the bullet point saying "We use Krystal again". This was obviously after one of the meetings the DP/SFA dev team had with Miyamoto, Imamura, etc in Kyoto.
person Dinoman96 calendar_month October 27, 2023
Earlier SFA cutscene sequence list from Kev Bayliss' twitter:
https://twitter.com/Kev_Bayliss/status/1651842011492646913

2007 interview with Rare employees regarding Krystal:
https://web.archive.org/web/20090705013154/https://krystalarchive.com/articles/rareemployeeinterviews/

Nintendo Dream interview:
https://shmuplations.com/starfoxadventures/

Randorn giving Krystal the projectile spellpage in Dinosaur Planet:
https://youtu.be/pG05g0o-TV8?t=716

More SFA concept art. Notice how one of them says "We use Krystal again":
https://imgur.com/a/OtnVRSg#p3nZIzK
subdirectory_arrow_right Star Fox Adventures (Game)
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Contrary to popular belief, Shigeru Miyamoto and Nintendo did not singlehandedly force Rare (who was never even fully owned by Nintendo) to convert Dinosaur Planet into Star Fox Adventures. It was merely an offer and suggestion Miyamoto gave to Rare, and at the very least, the higher ups such as the Stamper Bros. and Kevin Bayliss were on board with it. An October 2004 edition of Rare's Scribes says as such:

Q: First of all, what’s the true story here, did Rare approach Microsoft because Nintendo raped Dinosaur Planet, or did Microsoft approach you guys because of your talent?

A: None of it had anything to do with Dinosaur Planet. That was way before the negotiations started, and besides, the Rare-Nintendo relationship didn’t work in such a way that they’d just force the SFA switch on us.
person Dinoman96 calendar_month December 19, 2023
Dinosaur Planet/Star Fox Adventures Development Explained:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-bPiQr9AoE

Rare Scribes – October 19th 2004:
http://www.raregamer.co.uk/scribes-october-19th-2004/
subdirectory_arrow_right Star Fox Adventures (Game), Star Fox (Franchise)
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Attachment Shigeru Miyamoto had actually teased the existence of Star Fox Adventures at least an entire year before its actual announcement at E3 2001. In an interview with Miyamoto in a February 2000 issue of 64 Dream (so several months before Dinosaur Planet was revealed at E3 2000 that year), he had mentioned that, while a sequel to Star Fox 64 was not currently in development, he'd like to make a game titled "Star Fox Adventures" for the then-coming GameCube. Similarly, in an interview with Miyamoto at E3 2000, when asked about how he felt about Rare's recently unveiled Dinosaur Planet, he had this to say:

"It looks really nice, doesn't it? I wish they would use Star Fox characters so that they could use the title Star Fox Adventures. Maybe I should call the team and talk about it [laughs]."


Further interviews reveal Star Fox Adventures' origins indeed actually came from within Nintendo in Kyoto, Japan, even before Rare and Dinosaur Planet were involved. Towards the end of the Nintendo 64's lifecycle, Takaya Imamura, who had created Fox McCloud and had been heavily involved with the series since the first game, had begged Miyamoto to let him work on the Star Fox series again. Miyamoto obliged, but had requested for Imamura to instead create an action-adventure title starring Fox as the main character as opposed to a traditional arcade shooter in the vein of Star Fox on the SNES or Star Fox 64. This led Imamura and other Nintendo staff like Kazuaki Morita to begin experimenting with various ideas, like having Fox run around on-foot and shooting down enemies with a gun.

However, with it being a late-stage N64 title, the project was not making much progress as many of the staff were being pulled away to work on bigger projects for the then-upcoming GameCube such as Mario and The Legend of Zelda. This was when Miyamoto noticed Rare was making their own action-adventure game starring Star Fox-esque characters known as Dinosaur Planet. Impressed by their demo at E3, he and other Nintendo staff arranged a meeting with Rare employees to discuss the prospects of merging their similar projects into one, and from there the game that today would be known as Star Fox Adventures would be born.
person Dinoman96 calendar_month October 28, 2023
Shigeru Miyamoto teasing "Star Fox Adventures" in a February 2000 issue of 64 Dream:
https://archive.org/details/64-dream-february-2000-02-600dpi-ozidual/64Dream%202000%2002%20%28J%20OCR%29/page/n91/mode/2up

Miyamoto discussing Dinosaur Planet and the prospects of renaming it "Star Fox Adventures" at E3 2000:
https://www.ign.com/articles/2000/06/06/interview-miyamoto-and-aonuma

Nintendo Japanese website Star Fox Adventures interview:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070705035402/http://www.nintendo.co.jp/nom/0210/fox_03/index.html

English translations of above NOM interview:
https://www.reddit.com/r/starfox/comments/18rek3h/just_throwing_out_a_translation_of_this_old/

Nintendo Dream interview:
https://shmuplations.com/starfoxadventures/

2001 article on shift from Dinosaur Planet to Star Fox Adventures:
https://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/5981/rare-explains-star-fox-adventures

Article by Kev Bayliss on a leaked build of Dinosaur Planet:
https://www.videogameschronicle.com/features/opinion/dinosaur-planet-leak/
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