Star Fox

• 1. Introduction

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  Star Fox started with a trip to a shrine. The Japanese game designer Shigeru Miyamoto visited a shrine to the fox deity Inari Ōkami on a regular basis. Reaching it meant passing through a series of arches, and that experience shaped how the first game played. From it grew a Nintendo series about a combat team of anthropomorphic animals, led by Fox McCloud, who fly missions through space.

  The series leaves several puzzles for this documentary to answer. How did a single cartridge teach a home console to draw 3D in 1993? Why did players in Europe and Australia see a different name on the box? What happens to a game that is completely finished and still never ships on schedule? And how did a squad of cartoon pilots end up inside a web search page?

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• 2. The Chip Inside

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  The Super FX chip sat inside the cartridge of the original Star Fox, released in 1993 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It is a math co-processor, a second calculator that helps the console render graphics it could not manage alone. The chip gave players the first hardware-accelerated 3D gaming experience on a home console, in a period when most games were still 2D.

  Nintendo EAD developed the game, and Argonaut Software handled the programming. The same chip appeared in other Super NES games afterward, and some of them ran it at an increased processing speed.

  Next Gen Magazine singled out Star Fox as a pioneer of 3D graphics in video games. Yet the game has also been cited as proof of how little had changed underneath. Even built entirely from polygons, each level still followed a set path, much like older games. The original is a forward-scrolling 3D rail shooter, so the player steers within a fixed route. Escaping that route would occupy much of the series that followed.

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• 3. Crew and Craft

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  Fox McCloud's team in the first game includes Slippy Toad, Peppy Hare and Falco Lombardi. Their enemy is Andross, who threatens to overthrow the Lylat system, the planetary neighborhood where every mission takes place.

  The team's principal ship is the Arwing, and it has appeared in every Star Fox game to date. Miyamoto explained the name this way: it was called Arwing "because it was like one big wing shaped like an A". The design has changed considerably over the years, but every version keeps a central fuselage and two crested, streamlined side pods. Those pods are known as Gravity Diffusers, or G Diffusers, and the wings mount onto them. From Star Fox 64 onward, the side pods have been a distinctive blue.

  The Landmaster M1 arrived with Star Fox 64 in 1997 as a tracked light tank. It drove in two of the game's missions and appeared on one multiplayer map. When it returned in Star Fox: Assault in 2005, tires had replaced the tank treads.

  The rival craft is the Wolfen, flown by Wolf O'Donnell. It was meant to debut in Star Fox 2, but players first met it in Star Fox 64, on the planet Fichina or alternatively on Bolse. Fichina was mistranslated as Fortuna in that release, and the error was fixed in 64 3D. Players who take the hard path to Venom face the Wolfen II, which outperforms the Arwing. In Star Fox: Assault, Team Star Wolf finally flew the original Wolfens against the heroes, and players could pilot them in multiplayer.

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• 4. Two Names and a Rumble

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  Perceived problems with a German company called StarVox changed what European and Australian players saw on the box. In PAL region territories, the first game was released as Starwing, and its sequel as Lylat Wars. Nintendo stopped the practice with Star Fox Adventures and has used the same name worldwide since.

  Star Fox 64 reached the Nintendo 64 in 1997. It retold the main story of the original with new characters and gameplay elements, and the plot grew only through relatively small changes to the core.

  Fully spoken dialogue made its first appearance in the series here, along with movement off the rails and new vehicles. Multiplayer arrived too, with free-for-all, battle royale and time trial modes. A multiplayer mode that players had to earn also offered a rudimentary taste of play on foot.

  In the box came the Rumble Pak, a force feedback attachment for the controller. That made Star Fox 64 the first Nintendo console game with force feedback.

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• 5. Changing Hands

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  In 2002, Star Fox Adventures reached the GameCube, developed by Rare. It is mostly an action-adventure game in which Fox carries a mystical staff, and traditional space shooting shrinks to small segments between chapters. Its roots lie in Dinosaur Planet, a game Rare was developing late in the Nintendo 64's life. Nintendo cancelled it and converted it into a Star Fox game.

  The story takes place eight years after Star Fox 64. An army of dinosaurs called the Sharp Claws, led by General Scales, is the main threat, and the game introduced Prince Tricky and Krystal. Fox saves Krystal's life shortly before the final boss fight, the two fall in love, and she joins the team. The gameplay resembles most 3D Legend of Zelda games, which led many fans to complain that it felt too much like a role-playing adventure. Even so, critics praised it.

  Namco developed Star Fox: Assault, released in 2005 for the GameCube. Arwing flight returned to the center, joined by portions on foot. The story takes place one year after Adventures, with a new threat to the Lylat system called the Aparoids. Along with ROB, Peppy now pilots the Great Fox, and Krystal takes over his role as one of the team's pilots.

  Q-Games made Star Fox Command for the Nintendo DS in 2006. It was the first Star Fox game on a handheld and the first to offer online multiplayer. Players plot flight paths on the touch screen and fight in an open arena, giving up the fly-by-rail roots for a more strategic system. Dialogue returns to chatter, as in the SNES game, instead of voice acting. Each character has a unique ship. Slippy's has no lock-on and shorter boosts but stronger lasers and shielding, while Fox pilots the redesigned Arwing II. The story sits two to three years after Assault and has nine possible endings, determined by the player's choices.

  Star Fox 64 3D remade the Nintendo 64 game for the Nintendo 3DS in 2011, after a conceptual trailer at E3 2010. The circle pad steers the Arwing, and players can switch on Gyro Controls that use the console's internal gyroscope. A new Battle Mode supports up to four players over LAN through Download Play. During battles, each player's face appears on opponents' screens in a live reaction feed from the internal camera.

  On the 6th of May 2026, a remake of Star Fox 64 for the Switch 2 was announced under the plain title Star Fox. Gameplay, level design and storyline remain largely identical, with modern visuals. It is scheduled for release on the 25th of June.

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• 6. Shelved Flights

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  Nintendo cancelled Star Fox 2 even though the game was completely finished. Many of its ideas moved into Star Fox 64, including the rival team Star Wolf, all-range mode and the charge shot. A multiplayer mode went along too, though it no longer appeared in the final beta of Star Fox 2 itself. Choosing characters, pointing at the map and multiple ship variations waited for Star Fox Command. A beta version of the Landmaster, called the Walker, shows up as an Arwing with leglike attachments.

  A third-party team of hackers later released a patch for the final beta to make the game complete. It removed the debug mode menus, added an English translation and stripped out subroutines for a buggy third vehicle that the game never used. Nintendo eventually released Star Fox 2 officially as part of the Super NES Classic Edition. It was later added to the SNES Nintendo Classics service for Nintendo Switch Online subscribers.

  At E3 1995 and the Winter Consumer Electronics Show 1995, a demo showed an Arwing performing spins and other motions. It was a tech demo of what would have been a Star Fox game had the Virtual Boy adopted the series. Cinematic camera angles were a key element, as they were in Star Fox 2. The closest released game is Red Alarm. One observer called the demo "an intriguing technical demo featuring a Star Fox-like spacecraft doing a lot of spinning and zooming in 3D", and said its filled polygons looked far better than the unfilled vehicles in Red Alarm. Attendees at both shows received 3D glasses to watch the demos and tech videos.

  An arcade game planned as a companion to Star Fox: Assault was scheduled for 2004-2005. It was abandoned and never released, and the reason for the cancellation is unknown.

  In an interview with The Serf Times, the comedian and television host Adam Conover revealed another loss. In February 2015, he and others at CollegeHumor were working with Miyamoto on a clay-animated Star Fox show. A month later, Nintendo cancelled the project after Netflix leaked plans for a series based on The Legend of Zelda.

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• 7. Page and Screen

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  In June 1993, shortly after the first game appeared, the company Nelsonic developed a promotional LCD Star Fox Game Watch. Buyers could redeem it with a coupon found in boxes of Kellogg's Corn Flakes. It has four levels, and the goal is to fly toward the Attack Carrier and destroy it while dodging plasma balls and falling structures. Earphones came with it, along with a headphone jack, but it has no volume control. Nelsonic later sold it in stores in a different watch appearance.

  That same spring, Japanese children's magazines carried Star Fox manga. Kazumi Sakamoto drew a one-issue comic for the Comic Bonbon 1993 Spring Vacation Jumbo Edition, published in April. Takao Aoki drew another for the 1993 Spring Break Edition of Corocoro Comic. In 1997, Takahiro Yamashita's Star Fox 64 comic ran in the April and June issues of Bessatsu Corocoro Comic.

  Issues 45 to 55 of Nintendo Power in 1993 carried a monthly comic strip illustrated by Benimaru Itoh. It adapts the original game and adds characters found in none of the games, including Fara Phoenix. She is a vixen who becomes the fifth member of Star Fox after the team rescues her from Venomian forces, and she grows close to Fox. The story follows the team from outlaws on Papetoon to an elite Arwing squadron. Only Fox, Falco and Andross have fully explained backgrounds.

  The same team later produced a sequel in which Andross's DNA is split between two clones who invade the Lylat system. One clone sees Fara on a monitor, wearing clothing once worn by Fox's deceased mother, and believes he is speaking to the dead woman. Over a loudspeaker he reveals that the original Andross loved Fox's mother and accidentally killed her with a bomb intended for Fox's father. Enraged, Fox fights through the clones' forces. One clone kills the other, judging its feelings a weakness, and Fox destroys the survivor. The Lylat system celebrates as the remnants of Andross's forces flee.

  The official Club Nintendo magazine in Germany ran a manga-style Star Fox 64 comic. It shows scenes missing from the game, such as Wolf kicking Andrew and Pigma out of Star Wolf for acting against his orders. That move also saves Star Fox from the pair's plot. The comic ends with a robotic Andross being defeated.

  Star Fox: Farewell, Beloved Falco is a Japanese manga created by Nintendo. It appeared on the official Star Fox Adventures Japanese website and bridges Star Fox 64 and Adventures by explaining why Falco is absent from the team. Captain Shears runs a base on the sand-dune planet Titania, secretly taking part in an experiment to resurrect Andross. Katt Monroe returns with a rag-tag team who suspect Shears is evil, but Fox remains unconvinced. A sparring match between Fox and Falco follows, underlining Falco's wish to leave. The manga ends with the team learning of Dinosaur Planet's broken state and choosing to investigate.

  In The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, released in 2026, Fox McCloud appears as a main character voiced by Glen Powell. His role is relatively substantial. He pilots Rosalina's observatory with the Lumas to carry Mario, Luigi, Peach, Toad and Yoshi to Bowser's fortress in the Space Junk Galaxy.

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• 8. Cameos and Verdicts

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  Fox McCloud has appeared as a playable character in every entry of the Super Smash Bros. fighting series. Falco Lombardi has been available to players who earn him in every game from Super Smash Bros. Melee onward. Wolf O'Donnell is an earned fighter in Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

  Arwings carry the series into those games as well. Fox and Falco use them for their on-screen introductions, and on Fox's Level, Sector Z, an Arwing occasionally flew through and shot lasers at the players. Sector Z did not return, but the stage Corneria is very similar and also features Arwings. They fly in the background of the Venom, Lylat Cruise and Orbital Gate Assault stages, and some games include them as collectible trophies. The Landmaster became the Final Smash for Fox, Falco and Wolf in Brawl in 2008, and for Fox and Falco in the 2014 games on Nintendo 3DS and Wii U.

  WarioWare: Smooth Moves for Wii contains a Star Fox minigame in the style of the SNES title. The player flies the Arwing with the Wii Remote through Corneria, Sector X and Titania. Each level ends with a fight against R.O.B., the NES attachment rather than the Star Fox character ROB 64, armed with a large NES Zapper. Several boss battles from the first game are also included as minigames. WarioWare Gold for Nintendo 3DS adds another SNES-styled microgame, challenging players not to crash into anything while their ship is nearly destroyed.

  Fox, Falco, Peppy and Slippy appear as Mystery Mushroom costumes in Super Mario Maker, along with the Arwing Walker from Star Fox Zero. The Nintendo Switch version of Ubisoft's Starlink: Battle for Atlas has exclusive missions with Star Fox characters and ships. Its starter pack includes figures of Fox and his Arwing.

  The Arwing also hides in unexpected places. In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, it can be reached only through a GameShark code. It then appears in Kokiri forest as an enemy that Link can defeat with a boomerang, fairy bow or fairy slingshot. When defeated, it falls and explodes, and the blast may accidentally kill Link. In Animal Crossing: Wild World and Animal Crossing: City Folk, an Arwing is a piece of furniture that briefly plays the Star Fox theme when touched. In Super Mario RPG it sits as decor over a box in Hinopio's Market. In Bayonetta 2, miniature Arwings replace Bayonetta's guns when she wears the Star Fox costume, and the plane in the final level becomes an Arwing too.

  Critics have generally been kind to the series. Star Fox 64 is the most acclaimed entry, and Star Fox Zero drew the most mixed reviews. The original took the No. 115 spot on EGM's list of The Greatest 200 Videogames of Their Time. It ranked 82nd among games made for a Nintendo system on Nintendo Power's Top 200 Games list. Famitsu gave it 34 out of 40, and Nintendo Power gave it 4.125 out of 5. In an IGN poll asking fans to choose a favorite Nintendo character from ten, Fox placed fourth, behind Link, Mario and Samus.

  The commercial picture was less rosy. In October 2009, Miyamoto said he was disappointed that sales of the series in Japan had decreased over the preceding period. Even so, the series is popular enough that Google built in an Easter egg. Typing "do a barrel roll" or "Z or R twice" into the search bar makes the screen rotate 360 degrees.

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