During the development of Star Fox Adventures, Nintendo considered re-releasing Star Fox 64 for GameCube, likely as a pre-order bonus similar to how The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was re-released with the first ever release of "Ura Zelda" or Master Quest as a pre-order bonus for The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.

Star Fox Adventures' origins actually come 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 had begged Shigeru 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.

Takaya Imamura illustrated the back boxart of Star Fox Adventures for its Japanese release. Notably, it's one of the first notable instances of Fox's head being drawn with a more stylized, Noh Kitstune mask look, as opposed to the more animalistic proportions he had in-game and also in prior installments such as Star Fox on SNES and Star Fox 64. This design has often been described by certain fans, often in a derogatory manner, as a "bellhead", due to it being somewhat shaped like a bell.

Star Fox Command would be the first time Fox would sport this head design in-game, and it would go on to influence his appearances in later Super Smash Bros. games and to a certain extent, Star Fox Zero.

In a 2002 interview with Takaya Imamura regarding Star Fox Adventures, in which he explains his reasoning for having the characters age over the eight years since Star Fox 64, Imamura had this to say:


Funnily enough, four years later, the "Goodbye Fox" ending in Star Fox Command shows Fox McCloud and Krystal settling down and having a son named Marcus, who then goes on to form an all new Star Fox team, comprising of Slippy's son, Peppy's granddaughter, and even Falco Lombardi, who takes Peppy's place as the older mentor of this new team.

Many of Star Fox Adventures' Japanese ancillary material, such as its cover art, official guidebook, official website and even the 4koma manga, utilize renders/designs from the N64 version of Dinosaur Planet for certain dinosaur tribes, those specifically being the EarthWalkers (represented by the King EarthWalker's DP render) as well as the ShadowHunters, who even appear on SFA's Japanese cover art despite only appearing very briefly in the final game during the Test of Fear.

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.

Star Fox Adventures notably takes place eight years after the events of Star Fox 64. Takaya Imamura felt it'd be better for Fox and his friends to grow and change over time, as opposed to other Nintendo characters like Mario and Bowser who never age. In addition to wanting to come up with a justification for why Fox, Falco, Peppy and Slippy would reunite to fight the enemy, he also wanted to reflect the change in genre from SF64 to SFA and how the relationships between the characters had evolved since then.

As mentioned in an 2002 Nintendo Dream interview regarding Star Fox Adventures, in a developer interview in the official Japanese guidebook for Star Fox 64 released in 1997, Imamura had already stated he'd like to make a sequel taking place 20 years later, where Fox would be 38 years old.

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.

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.

Early footage of Dinosaur Planet shows that Sabre and Krystal were to utilize the Projectile spell by firing it directly from their hands. It seems this was already scrapped by the time of the December 2000 build that was leaked on the internet in early 2021, as Sabre (or Fox McCloud, who has already replaced Sabre at this point) and Krystal instead fire projectiles through their sword and staff respectively. This would carry over into Star Fox Adventures, where Fox can fire magic projectiles through Krystal's staff.

One holdover from this early idea that remains in both the December 2000 build of Dinosaur Planet and the final Star Fox Adventures is within the prologue, where Krystal, riding on top of a CloudRunner, is inexplicably shown to be able to fire blasts of magic from her own hands in the battle against General Scales' galleon.

Unused models of both Sabre and Krystal's arms can be found within the files of the leaked Dinosaur Planet ROM.

Despite the English version of Melee using Star Fox Adventures' voice cast in the game's Corneria and Venom stages, the Japanese version uses all of the original Star Fox 64 voice actors. Shinobu Satouchi, Hisao Egawa, Kyoko Tongu and Tomohisa Aso all reprise their roles as Fox, Falco, Slippy and Peppy respectively. The former two's voice clips are also used for Fox and Falco as fighters even abroad.

The music track that currently plays in Dragon Rock in Star Fox Adventures was originally intended for the Walled City in Dinosaur Planet.

Dragon Rock originally just featured eerie sounding ambience for background music in Dinosaur Planet. In Star Fox Adventures, Walled City now shares the same stage music with LightFoot Village.

Fichina, the ice planet that was introduced in Star Fox 64, is infamously erroneously called Fortuna in the English version of the game. Fortuna was previously the name of the jungle planet from Star Fox on SNES filled with monstrous and primordial creatures. It was also infamously dubbed "the Dinosaur Planet", years before the Star Fox series would incorporate another Dinosaur Planet with Star Fox Adventures.

However, looking through leaked SF64 files from the Gigaleak, there does seem to be evidence that Nintendo dubbed Fichina as Fortuna for most of SF64's development, only to change the name to Fichina at the tail end of it. Almost all of the source code refers to it as Fortuna, and the internal file system has “FO” appended to all of the stage’s assets. The image file Nintendo provided for the stage name to be translated is also labeled FO_E_FO. With the decision to rename it to Fichina seemingly being a last minute one, it's possible Nintendo of America were not brought up to speed by Nintendo's Japanese branch of this lore change when they were originally localizing SF64.

Nonetheless, Nintendo has since firmly established Fichina and Fortuna (as it was in the SNES game) as being their own distinct planets, with both appearing together in Star Fox: Assault and Star Fox Zero. Strangely, in the former game, Fortuna's Japanese name フォーチュナ (Fōchuna) was slightly modified to フォーチュナー (Fōchunā), which would translate into "Fortuner" in English.

Drakor, who appears in Star Fox Adventures as a turret boss in Dragon Rock, was the original intended primary antagonist and final boss of Dinosaur Planet.

Drakor's original backstory was that he belonged to an ancient race of alien dragons known as the Kamerians, that existed in the early days of the universe along with another race known as the Krazoa. The two races had a big intergalactic war with each other that nearly destroyed the galaxy and it ended above orbit of what would eventually be known as Sauria, the Dinosaur Planet, with the Krazoa narrowingly winning. One of the last great war dragons was killed in battle and its body fell onto the planet's surface, and it became something of a god figure to Sauria's dinosaur inhabitants who spawned right around the same time.

Drakor became aware that the Kamerian dragon, now reduced into a heart, was on Sauria, so he invaded and helped General Scales and the SharpClaw by providing them advanced weapons and technology so that they could take over the planet and also its Force Point Temples, as they planned on channeling all of Sauria's magical energies and pumping it into the Kamerian heart within Dragon Rock, which would revive it and allow Drakor to destroy the planet and gain ultimate revenge on the Krazoa, who still dwelled there in stasis lock.

The twist was that, despite obviously his methods involving genocide and conquest, Drakor was actually trying to save the galaxy in his own way: The Krazoa themselves were also revealed to be actually extremely evil, as they were the ones who started the Great War against the Kamerians, because the latter didn't wish to be ruled by them and their god, the "Quan Ata Lachu". They manipulated Sabre and Krystal into finding each of the Quan Ata Lachu spirits hidden away in their shrines/test, promising that it will bring "peace" to the universe, when in reality they want nothing more than to set it into flames and remold it into their image/liking, spreading disease, terror and chaos as they please.

The final Star Fox Adventures game saw all of this scrapped in favor of Andross as the main antagonist. Drakor would be repurposed as a subordinate of General Scales, a mutant bioweapon that dwells within Dragon Rock as the guardian of the one of the SpellStones Fox (who similarly replaced both Sabre and Krystal as the main playable character) must collect. The Krazoa were more or less condensed into the Quan Ata Lachu spirits Fox must also collect, and also essentially replaced the Kamerian Heart as the deities the inhabitants of Dinosaur Planet worship.

As mentioned before, Andross' spirit would fulfill Drakor's original role as the manipulator behind General Scales and the SharpClaw's uprising, and would also fill in for the Krazoa's role as he manipulates Fox into finding the Krazoa Spirits in promise of rescuing Krystal from her prison atop of Krazoa Palace, all of which results in his resurrection as the game's final boss.

Star Fox Assault was actually informally announced in May 2002, several months before its predecessor, Star Fox Adventures, would actually hit store shelves.

In May 2002, Namco and Nintendo announced that that they would be collaborating on several GameCube games, one of which being a new Star Fox game in the same vein as Star Fox SNES and Star Fox 64. Nothing else was revealed except for a tentative logo (dubbed at the time as "Star Fox GC") and poster, and the fact that it would be developed by the same team within Namco who worked on the Ace Combat series. This turned out to be not true, as the final game was developed by different Namco employees at the time, with Tsuyoshi Kobayashi as the producer, Toshiyuki Nakanishi as the All-Range Mode director, and Yutaka Yoshida as the Battle Mode director.

The Aparoids are unique in Star Fox's rogue gallery in that they're the only main enemy forces to have absolutely no connections or ties to Andross whatsoever:

• In "Farewell Beloved Falco", the canonical manga interlude between Star Fox 64 and Star Fox Adventures, Captain Shears, despite being affiliated with the Cornerian army, was revealed to be a turncoat seeking to revive Andross through cloning.

• In Star Fox Adventures, General Scales and the SharpClaw were revealed to be the unwilling pawns of Andross' ghost, who manipulated them as well as Fox to revive himself using the power of the Krazoa.

• In Star Fox Command, the Emperor Anglar and his Anglar Army are revealed to be bioweapons created by Andross in secret within Venom's acidic oceans.

In particular, the Aparoid Queen is the only final boss in all of the Star Fox series to either not just be Andross again (Star Fox, Star Fox 2, Star Fox 64/Star Fox 64 3D, Star Fox Adventures, Star Fox Zero), nor a creation of his (Star Fox Command).

Outside of Tricky, the two dinosaur species from Star Fox Adventures that reappear (as corpses infected by the Aparoids) in Star Fox Assault's Sauria mission are of the ThornTail and HighTop tribes.

Strangely, while the ThornTails are mostly faithful enough to their Star Fox Adventures models, the HighTops differ, primarily in skin pattern and coloration, being presented as green in Assault as opposed to yellow/beige in Adventures.

Star Fox Adventures has (to say the least) a pretty infamous scene where Fox McCloud, upon visiting the rooftop of Krazoa Palace for the first time, sees the imprisoned and unconscious Krystal and becomes immediately infatuated with her at first sight, all while romantic saxophone music plays in the background.

According to the game's composer, David Wise, the saxophone music was a satirical tongue-in-cheek reference and nod to the Love Theme from the film "Blade Runner", which was composed by Vangelis. The music itself is a remix of the theme that was originally composed for Discovery Falls, an area from Dinosaur Planet that was cut in the transition to Star Fox Adventures, and thus can now be heard in Cape Claw in the final game.

The English manual and prologue for Star Fox Adventures implies a bigger backstory for Krystal, in that she's the sole remaining survivor of her doomed home planet, "Cerinia", and that she's been roaming the galaxy in search of answers for the truth of her family's death, until she receives a distress call from Dinosaur Planet. With how the manual states that Krystal "may finally be drawing closer to the truth" behind her parents' and planet's destruction, it seems Rare was loosely implying that Andross, who turns out to be the real villain of Star Fox Adventures and thus the culprit behind Dinosaur Planet's woes, was responsible for Cerinia's destruction. Krystal even says "It's you!" right before Andross imprisons her in the crystal at the top of Krazoa Palace.

However, it would seem the Japanese localization for Star Fox Adventures would completely eschew this backstory, removing all mention of Cerinia and as well as Krystal's dead parents. The Japanese prologue was even heavily simplified to this:


The Japanese website even states that "it is not known what her purpose is", which flies directly in the face of Rare's original story for her, that explicitly states that she was searching for the truth of Cerinia's destruction. To add more insult to injury, there isn't even any Japanese subtitle presented when Krystal gets knocked into the crystal by Andross in Krazoa Palace.

Curiously, the Japanese localization of Star Fox Adventures also heavily emphasizes Krystal having telepathic abilities, much more so than in the English version. This is noteworthy because neither Star Fox Assault or Star Fox Command, the next two story follows up to Star Fox Adventures that were developed and written in Japan, made any sort of mention of Cerinia. Star Fox Assault however would hugely emphasize her telepathic abilities, and its manual even describe Krystal the same way the Japanese version of Star Fox Adventures does, just as "a mysterious telepathic woman". This also applies to her trophies in Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U that once again make no reference to Cerinia. It's very clear that the developers and writers behind Assault, Command and Smash Bros. in Japan were using the Japanese version of Star Fox Adventures as a reference, as opposed to the English version.

All in all, it would seem Nintendo of Japan had their own differing vision of what Krystal's character was from Rare, that being mostly just as a telepathic woman with a mysterious background, as opposed to Rare's original backstory of her being the lone survivor of her kind.

In Star Fox Adventures, the boss of Walled City is known simply as the RedEye King. However, the leaked December 2000 build of Dinosaur Planet indicates that he was meant to have a name: "Klanadack".

Oddly enough, earlier on, after the battle with Galdon (or "Galadon" as he's called in the December 2000 build) in DarkIce Mines, when Sabre/Fox and Tricky return to Garunda Te with the SpellStone, he tells them he forgot to inform them about the "CLANNAD-ack" and how he managed to freeze him in a waterfall a few years prior, obviously referring to Galdon/Galadon. While spelled differently, it's pronounced the same as "Klanadack", which makes it seems like it was meant to be Galdon or Galadon's name before it was repurposed for the RedEye King in this particular build.