Franchise: Star Fox

In Japan, Slippy Toad's father, Beltino, is called ベルツィーノ(Berutsīno) which comes from ベルツノガエル (Berutsunogaeru), meaning Bert's frog or Belted frog. This is also the Japanese name for the Argentine horned frog, better known as a Pacman frog. Funny enough, after being alluded to on the Japanese Star Fox 64 website, Beltino would go on to have a major role in Star Fox: Assault, which was developed by Namco, the creators of Pac-Man.

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.

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.

During the development of the original Star Fox, character designer Takaya Imamura originally wanted to make the characters generic humans and aliens, similar to his character designs from F-Zero. It was Shigeru Miyamoto who convinced him to instead make them anthropomorphic animals, as he wanted the game's aesthetic to stand out from every other science fiction property coming out at the time.

Fox in particular being a fox was inspired by the Fushimi Inari-taisha shrine located near Nintendo's offices.

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.