Star Fox Adventures primarily takes place on a planet filled with dinosaurs known simply as "Dinosaur Planet". It would return or be referenced in future games like Star Fox Assault and Star Fox Command, as well as "Star Fox Zero - The Battle Begins", a promotional anime released to commemorate the release of Star Fox Zero, but it would instead be referred to with a different name: "Sauria".

It turns out Rare had always intended Dinosaur Planet's real name to be Sauria, as leaked voice clips from the implied climax of the original Nintendo 64 Dinosaur Planet feature the Krazoa name dropping it as they begin the alignment of the "Majestic Eight" planets to wreak havoc on the universe using the power of their god, the Quan Ata Lachu. An edition of "Ask Uncle Tusk" on Rare's old website revealed Dinosaur Planet's name to be Sauria as well.

Star Fox Adventures began development as Dinosaur Planet, which originally began development as a direct sequel to Diddy Kong Racing, starring Timber the Tiger (who himself was intended as the main character of DKR when it was Pro-Am 64, before Donkey Kong characters were incorporated into it). It was pitched as an adventure/racing hybrid where Timber, equipped with a rucksack, little fingerless gloves, and a baseball cap would go back in time and team up with a younger version of Tricky, a boss from the first DKR. Wizpig, the main antagonist and final boss of the first Diddy Kong Racing, was also involved. It would seem a working title for this iteration of the game was "Dino Island", going by several posts on former Rare employee Ed Bryan's Twitter account.

Eventually it was decided to rework the concept into an entirely new original IP with no story connections to DKR and two new main characters, named Sabre and Krystal, and also make it a full-on action-adventure game directly inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. DP/SFA's various racing segments are said to be remnants of the original DKR successor concept, and while he retained the name of the DKR boss (something Rare seems to regret), Tricky would wind up becoming his own distinct character. Several files within DP/SFA's data also mention Timber, obviously a remnant from when he was the star.

Sabre and Krystal were in turn eventually replaced by Fox McCloud as the main playable character when the game was rebranded into what we know today as Star Fox Adventures, though Tricky would remain as his sidekick and Krystal would remain as a main character.

Many fans today recognize Star Fox Adventure's Shopkeeper's name as "Shabunga". However, the game's development team never intended the Shopkeeper character to have a name, even as far back when it was still Dinosaur Planet.

"Shabunga" was initially the name of a cut NPC character from Dinosaur Planet, a mutant creature that Sabre/Fox and Tricky would come across in an area known as Willow Grove, the bridge between SwapStone Hollow (ThornTail Hollow in SFA) and Dragon Rock, which was becoming a strange and mutated land as a result of General Scales' and Drakor's actions within the latter area, which was also mutating its inhabitants. As such, Shabunga, and supposedly other mutants according to the Dinosaur Planet condensed story (though none appear in the leaked December 2000 build) were cast off and sealed away within Willow Grove by the ThornTails that lived in SwapStone Hollow, frightened by their now warped appearances.

This mutant character was said to be an alchemist and also one of the SpellStone guardians, and thus was required to revitalize General Scales' Kamerian Belt (or "Krazoa Star" as Shabunga puts it), to allow Sabre and Tricky to enter the mutated wasteland Dragon Rock unharmed, and would later be required activate the SpellStone acquired from defeating Dragon Rock's boss, the Kamerian Heart.

With Willow Grove removed in the final game, Shabunga would appear in SFA as an enemy type known as the "FireCrawler" that appears in Moon Mountain Pass and also all over Dragon Rock. His role as the SpellStone GateKeeper of Dragon Rock would then be given to a generic quiet ThornTail that resides in ThornTail Hollow.

Curiously, SFA's Nintendo Power guidebook and also official English website would both re-appropriate the mutant's name to the Shopkeeper, claiming his name to be "Shabunga", despite the actual game just merely referring to him as the Shopkeeper. It turns out there's a reason for this: looking at the Japanese localization for Star Fox Adventures, it appears that NCL did indeed repurpose the "Shabunga" name behind Rare's back for the Shopkeeper as he's called that both in-game and also all over its ancillary material. For example, in the Japanese version of SFA, the ThornTail Store is renamed to シャブンガの店 (Shabunga no mise), which translates to Shabunga's Shop in English.

Another notable example is when Fox is talking to the Blue SnowHorn in SnowHorn Wastes; in the English version, the latter has this to say:


Retranslating the Japanese subtitles in the Japanese version of the game, however, reveals:


It would seem that whoever wrote the Nintendo Power SFA guide was given the memo about this.

Star Fox Adventures was at one point called "Star Fox Adventures: Dinosaur Planet". This name referenced both original incarnations of the game, Rare's "Dinosaur Planet" and also Nintendo EAD's "Star Fox Adventures" that was in development around the same time; both ended up being merged into the same project, hence the original title, though sometime before release, the "Dinosaur Planet" subtitle was dropped, leaving the final game named as just Star Fox Adventures.

Curiously, when looking at Star Fox Adventures save data on a GCN memory card through the Wii, it actually includes its original "Dinosaur Planet" subtitle, as well as using the Star Fox emblem present in the beta logo for the save data icon. This was not the case in the GameCube's data card management menu.

Star Fox Adventures was originally a game called "Dinosaur Planet" and was unrelated to the Star Fox series. The game featured Krystal as the main protagonist and was to be for the Nintendo 64.

When Shigeru Miyamoto noticed the similarities of the characters to Star Fox, he asked Rare if they could change it, resulting in Star Fox Adventures.