Franchise: Star Fox

The "barrel roll" (as dubbed by Peppy Hare in the English version of Star Fox 64) that appears in many Star Fox games is not a barrel roll at all, but rather an aileron roll. In the original Star Fox, the maneuver is generically referred to as just a roll. In Star Fox 64, Peppy's iconic phrase "Do a barrel roll!" was created by the English localization team; in the Japanese version, he instead says "ローリングで弾くんだ!", which translates to something along the lines of "deflect it with a roll!" It's only in Star Fox: Assault that you can actually perform a barrel roll.

ROB 64 in Japan is called NUS (ナウス) 64 and is named after the Nintendo Ultra Sixty Four, the original name given to the Nintendo 64 console. NUS also appears in serial numbers of various Nintendo products.

Pigma Dengar's surname is a reference to people in Japan with a Kansai dialect. In the Japanese version of Star Fox 64, Pigma speaks with a Kansai dialect. People with the dialect tend to end their sentences with the word 'dengar'.

F-Zero has several tie-ins with the Star Fox series. The character James McCloud shares the name of Fox's father from Star Fox, and the characters have many other similarities:
• They wear the same outfit.
• Both drive drive ships powered by G-Diffusers that were designed by a company named "Space Dynamics".
• F-Zero's James McCloud also is the squadron leader of a space combat team known as "Galaxy Dogs", a clear parody of Star Fox, and his partner, a man named O'Donnell, is a likely reference to Star Fox's Wolf O'Donnell.
• In F-Zero X, James McCloud even states the he "drives like a sly fox", furthering the connection.

Star Fox was originally a 3D tech demo converted into a rail shooter. Fox's concept and the idea of flying through rings came from Shigeru Miyamoto visiting a shrine of Inari (a Japanese deity associated with foxes and also believed to fly) that is located right outside of Kyoto, Japan.

Nintendo once teamed up with Kellogg's and Nelsonic to develop and release a promotional LCD-based Star Fox Game Watch, which was only available through the mail order form that came with a box of cereal. Nelsonic later released the watch in stores with a different appearance.

According to Takaya Imamura in the Nintendo Dream magazine, before Star Fox became the name of the series, they thought of other names for the series, like 'Star Glider' and 'starcraft'. The idea for the 'Star Fox' title came from Star Wars' title 'Star', and the main protagonist Fox McCloud's 'Fox' race.

The Japanese name of the Star Fox series' main antagonist, Andross, is アンドルフ (Andorf).

According to Takaya Imamura in a 2002 Nintendo Dream magazine interview, the name was deprived from “Andromeda”, and his name was changed to Andross in the Western localizations because of fears that his original name had "Nazi overtones", presumably suggesting the name's spelling had similarities to dictator Adolf Hitler, as アンドルフ can also be anglicized as "Andolf".

According to Takaya Imamura in a 2011 Nintendo Dream magazine interview, Fox McCloud's mother is actually still alive and well on their home planet of Papetoon. This is in contrast with the 1994 Nintendo Power comic series, where it was revealed that Fox's mother (named "Vixy Reinard") was accidentally killed by a car bomb planted by Andross that was intended for her husband ("James" as he would referred to in the games starting with Star Fox 64).

According to Imamura, Fox's mother disapproved of her son following in her husband's footsteps and potentially getting himself killed the same way, and thus they have become estranged from each other, though they haven't exactly broken off from each other completely. Imamura even hints that she's secretly supporting her son's actions from behind the scenes.

According to Takaya Imamura in a 2011 Nintendo Dream magazine interview, frogs in the Lylat System are born as tadpoles and remain as such until they're a month old. He even explains that Slippy and Amanda's baby seen in the "Slippy's Resolve" ending in Star Fox Command was one month old already, hence why it appears as a frog. Imamura would later illustrate this fact in comic form to commemorate the release of Star Fox Zero.

According to Takaya Imamura in a 2011 Nintendo Dream magazine interview, planet Papetoon, the homeworld of Fox McCloud as well as his father James and also Peppy Hare, actually exists outside of the Lylat System, approximately 10,000 light years away from it and Corneria. Imamura even states that the characters have to use warps to come and go.

This was alluded to in "The Curse of Pigma" ending in Star Fox Command, where Falco says:


For comparison's sake, in the Japanese script, he says:

On the Japanese website for Star Fox 64, Slippy mentions certain background characters who would appear in future installments:

• Peppy's wife, Vivian Hare. According to Slippy, Peppy took her to planet Zoness for their honeymoon, which explains why Peppy is so distraught at its polluted status in SF64. Vivian would appear in-game for the first time in Star Fox Command, where it's revealed that she and Peppy had a daughter named Lucy, and that Vivian had died of a disease several years prior.

• Slippy's father, Beltino Toad. According to Slippy, Beltino works as an engineer for Space Dynamics, the manufacturer of the Arwing and many of the other vehicles the Star Fox team utilize. Beltino would later appear in-game for the first time in Star Fox Assault, and would later appear in Star Fox Command.

It's worth pointing that unlike Vivian, Beltino was mentioned in western ancillary SF64 material, that being both the official western Star Fox 64 website and the Star Fox 64 Official Player's Guide, where it states that he helped his son Slippy create the Blue Marine.

According to the brochures distributed with Star Fox 64 3D in Japanese retail stores in 2011, it was Pigma Dengar who designed the Star Fox logo during his tenure with the original team, before he betrayed them.

Prior to Star Fox Zero, there were two attempts in previous installments to revitalize the concept of the Walker from Star Fox 2, or at least the idea of the Arwing transforming into a robot form, those specifically being Star Fox 64 and Star Fox Command, games that both aimed at preserving ideas from the then-long-lost Star Fox 2.

• For Star Fox 64, according to Shigeru Miyamoto in an interview at the end of the Star Fox 64 Official Player's Guide, he wanted to have the Arwing transform into "a human-type craft". This was rejected by other staff members of the SF64 development team. In response, Miyamoto told his team to come up with better ideas, and from there they created the Landmaster and Blue Marine for additional vehicles.

• For Star Fox Command, according to Takaya Imamura in an interview in 2007, the dev team experimented with having the Arwing and other spacecraft transform into robots, but this was ultimately dropped.

According to Shigeru Miyamoto in an edition of Iwata Asks regarding Star Fox 64 3D, Yusuke Amano originally wanted to create an all new Star Fox title for the Nintendo 3DS. However, the higher ups at Nintendo wanted a game that could be released fast for the 3DS' launch window in 2011, whereas a fully original title would require at least three years to make. Thus the project was reduced into a simplistic remake of Star Fox 64. Miyamoto called upon Dylan Cuthbert and Q-Games, who previously had worked on Star Fox Command in for the Nintendo DS in 2006, to assist development.

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:


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.

The official Japanese Star Fox 64 guidebook reveals that Andrew Oikonny was essentially forced onto the Star Wolf team purely out of nepotism on Andross' part, and that he was actively disliked by his teammates due to his poor piloting skills and also massive ego in regards to his relationship with Andross. Effectively, the only reason Wolf put up with him during the events of Star Fox 64 was due to the fact that he was using said connections to Andross to provide his team with immeasurable technological and financial backup.

A timeline of events provided in Star Fox Command's official guidebook claims that after Andross' defeat at the end of SF64, the Star Wolf team moved away from the Venom army effective immediately and in turn kicked out Andrew, who no longer had the support of his now deceased uncle, hence why at the beginning of Star Fox: Assault, he's on his own trying to rebel against Corneria using the remnants of Andross' forces.

According to the official Japanese Star Fox Command guidebook, Slippy's home world is the water planet of Aquas.

Contrary to popular belief, and also contrary to the Star Fox 64 Official Player's Guide, Solar is not a star, but merely a lava planet with an exposed mantle, according to both the official Japanese guidebooks for Star Fox 64 and Star Fox Command. Even the official Western Star Fox 64 website clarifies it being a planet. The Western localization of Star Fox Command would also reiterate this in-game, with one of its missions on Solar being named "The Red-Hot Planet".

In a 2011 Nintendo Dream magazine interview with the Star Fox 64 3D development staff, Takaya Imamura once again clarified that Solar is a planet, and that the star Lylat exists somewhere in the Lylat System not visible on the map screen. Apparently, the development team did consider changing Solar into being a sun for Star Fox 64 3D, but this was passed over.

It would seem the entire overall story of Star Fox 64, and also its reimagining, Star Fox Zero, spans about 10 years.

Going by the manuals and guidebooks, the story begins with Andross being banished to Venom by General Pepper after he unleashed a deadly weapon of some kind upon Corneria. Five years later, the original Star Fox team are sent to investigate strange happenings on Venom only for its leader, James McCloud, to be betrayed and killed by Pigma Dengar, which was also meant to be Andross' declaration of war upon Corneria and the Lylat System, and he and his new army he build up over time would spend the next five years attacking them, leading to General Pepper calling upon the new Star Fox team, which leads directly into the events of Star Fox 64.

Curiously, most of SF64's ancillary material leave it vague on how long it's been between James' death and the events of Star Fox 64, typically only saying that "several years" have passed, all except for Pigma's biography in the official Japanese Star Fox 64 guidebook, which makes it more clear that it's been five years since he betrayed James and Peppy. Beta Star Fox 64 images, as well as the lost developer dub discovered in the Nintendo Gigaleak from 2020, show that Peppy was originally meant to have a line on Titania where he says "This reminds me of 10 years ago!”, obviously referring to when Andross nearly eradicated Corneria with his bioweapon, which is what led to his banishment to Venom in the first place.

Star Fox Zero, whose story and lore is almost completely identical to Star Fox 64, fully verifies that it's been indeed five years since James' death and also overall 10 years since Andross was banished to Venom, both through its opening prologue, the Star Fox Zero - The Battle Begins animated short that was created to commemorate its release, and also the official Japanese Star Fox Zero website.