One of the Krazoa shrines in Star Fox Adventures, the Test of Fear, features the only in-game appearance of a mysterious dromeosaur-esque race known as the "ShadowHunters".

The ShadowHunters had a larger role in the original Dinosaur Planet. Krystal, accompanied with a LightFoot guide in place of Kyte (mirroring how Sabre was supposed to get a temporary sidekick in place of Tricky in the form of a infant RedEye within Walled City), would come across them in an area called BlackWater Canyon, which was said to be the dinosaur's sacred burial grounds, and the home of the Tree of Souls, which was said to return the magic energy of a dinosaur into the planet after their death. The ShadowHunter Tribe were the protectors of this place, with their leader being one of the SpellStone guardians, who agrees to give Krystal his SpellStone, only for his jealous son to run off with it, leading to Krystal and the LightFoot to chase after him. Eventually this leads to the ShadowHunter being trapped within the rib cages of a giant skeletal monster, which would act as the boss fight of BlackWater Canyon. After Krystal and the LightFoot defeated it, the ShadowHunter would realize that they were really trying to save Dinosaur Planet, and gave them the SpellStone, which would then be activated by the ShadowHunter leader.

BlackWater Canyon appears in the leaked December 2000 build of Dinosaur Planet, but is notably devoid of any actual design work or puzzles. The voice lines from the ShadowHunters found in this build seem to indicate a different story from what was presented in the Condensed Story; instead of a SpellStone guardian father with a jealous son, they're portrayed as brothers who live as scavengers in BlackWater Canyon, who come across the SpellStone and claim it as their own, only to come across Krystal as well as Kyte, who would accompany her to BlackWater Canyon in place of the alformentioned LightFoot tribe member. One of the ShadowHunters siblings is willing to hand over the SpellStone, but the other seems to run off with it, which leads to Krystal and Kyte chasing after him, which leads to them encountering a ghostly apparition of Kyte's mother, the Queen CloudRunner (who was killed by General Scales back in CloudRunner Fortress) who encourages them on and warns them about the angry spirits within the area, presumably referring the aforementioned skeleton monster boss (that does not appear anywhere in the leaked build). After they retrieve the SpellStone, they seem to use the Tree of Souls to activate it in place of a proper SpellStone guardian.

BlackWater Canyon would be removed entirely in the transition to Star Fox Adventures, but it seems that Rare still had substantial plans for the ShadowHunters, as an unused briefing from Peppy Hare says this:


Which seems to indicate that earlier on in SFA's development, Rare had considered having the ShadowHunters fill in the role intended for the HookClaw tribe (who had already been cut by the time of the December 2000 Dinosaur Planet build) as the secondary carnivorous antagonist of the Walled City. This of course was scrapped in the final game, where only the RedEye tribe is present.

The senior animator of Star Fox Adventures, Michael Cawood, had mentioned on his website that when animating the Test of Fear, his goal for it wasn't well defined, and he didn't have enough time or resources to request additional assets and thus had to improvise. Fortunately for him, he had access to a library of animations for the ShadowHunters that had originally been planned as enemies in the game but had never got around to being implemented past the animation stage, very likely referring to when they planned as enemies encountered in SFA's iteration of the Walled City.

Funny enough, despite having such a minimal role in the final game, the ShadowHunters were present in some of Star Fox Adventures' Japanese material, most notably on the boxart, oddly utilizing their original Dinosaur Planet renders (presumably because the GCN models were not given an official render, due to them being a last minute addition after initially being scrapped).

What exists as the Walled City in Star Fox Adventures, as well as the leaked December 2000 build of Dinosaur Planet, was originally meant to be two different areas: the EarthWalker Temple, which features a similar set of puzzles and layout to what is found in the Walled City today, and the actual Walled City itself that could only be accessed by the "Jungle Doors" in the very back.

This version of the Walled City, as described the condensed Dinosaur Planet story, was said to be a place where the most dangerous dinosaurs on Dinosaur Planet lived, such as the RedEye Tribe, but also another race said to be the distant relatives of the SharpClaw, dubbed the HookClaw, who were apparently manipulating the RedEye, and was also said to be situated in the "Twilight Marshes". General Scales was said to have imprisoned the King EarthWalker (alternatively known as "Albada") here. As Tricky was said to have stayed behind in EarthWalker Temple, Sabre was to discover an egg that hatches to reveal a baby RedEye sidekick, who remains with him during his stay in the Walled City. The condensed story then describes Sabre rescuing Albada and also meeting with the area's SpellStone guardian, who helps him defeat the HookClaws and return the Baby RedEye to his father, the King of the RedEye Tribe, who has Sabre partake in some sort of challenge in order to gain the SpellStone. Sabre would later have to revisit EarthWalker Temple in order to partake in his second Krazoa shrine test, the Test of Skill, which would now be accessible at the top of the central temple.

This entire sequence and stage had already been completely reworked and rewritten by the time of the December 2000 build of Dinosaur Planet. EarthWalker Temple and Walled City had essentially been condensed into one area filled with rampaging RedEyes, with absolutely zero traces of the alformentioned HookClaw tribe or the Baby RedEye sidekick. The RedEye King (now dubbed "Klanadack" in the leaked build) would remain, but as a boss fight Sabre (or Fox McCloud, who had already taken Sabre's place in this build) must defeat in order to obtain the area's SpellStone. Lastly, Albada himself was revealed to be the SpellStone guardian. For the most part, all of this would carry over into the final Star Fox Adventures game. The Krazoa shrine located at the central temple would remain, but in Star Fox Adventures, the Test of Skill (renamed to "Test of Observation") would be relocated to Krazoa Palace as Krystal's one and only test in the opening prologue, whereas the Test of Knowledge, Krystal's final test from Golden Plains in Dinosaur Planet and fittingly enough, Fox's final proper Krazoa test in Star Fox Adventures, would be moved here.

The original EarthWalker Temple stage was found within the game files of the leaked Dinosaur Planet build, but there's no remants of the original Walled City stage, suggesting it had been scrapped before any design work had been done on it.

Curiously, an unused briefing from Peppy Hare seems to indicate that Rare had considered repurposing the ShadowHunter tribe, who were previously from BlackWater Canyon (an area that was scrapped in the transition from Dinosaur Planet to Star Fox Adventures), as the secondary carnivorous antagonists of the Walled City along with the RedEyes, filling in for the HookClaw Tribe. This too was scrapped in the final game as only the RedEyes are present in the area, and the ShadowHunters only make a brief appearance in the Test of Fear.

One thing that's worth pointing out is that early promotional material for Dinosaur Planet depicted the RedEyes as more cartoonier and cuter in appearance, in comparison to their far more monstrous and realistic appearance in both the December 2000 build as well as the final Star Fox Adventures. It's very likely that the former was a remnant from the original Walled City concept, where the RedEye were described as not being completely evil. It's also been speculated within the Dinosaur Planet community that this particular render essentially is the Prince RedEye who was mentioned in the Condensed Story, as it's shown following Sabre from behind in one of the screenshots and was also prominently featured as a statue along with Sabre and Krystal for Dinosaur Planet's promotional E3 2000 material.

Throughout their quests in Dinosaur Planet, Sabre and Krystal could collect spell pages that were ripped from Randorn's spellbook by General Scales. These spell pages would grant them new magical abilities, such as firing ice or fire magic, disguising themselves as SharpClaw soldiers, or opening special portal doors.

In the final Star Fox Adventures, Fox periodically acquires these magic upgrades as well, but instead of collecting spell pages, he must seek magic caves spread throughout the maps which contain shrines, where he can upgrade Krystal's staff to unlock new abilities. The majority of these upgrades were repurposed from the spells from Dinosaur Planet with two subtractions: the Mind Read spell (which let Sabre and Krystal read the thoughts/minds of NPC characters) and a spell that unleashes a fiery mine that explodes and hurts enemies (that strangely is internally referred to as "Randorn Wizard"). In their place is a new ability called "Rocket Boost" that grants Fox the ability to boost himself straight upwards with the staff to reach higher ledges, should he find the corresponding Rocket Boost Pads.

One of the spells from Dinosaur Planet, the aforementioned Disguise ability that lets the player disguise themselves as a SharpClaw, appears in Star Fox Adventures but is unlocked in a completely different manner from the other upgrades: instead of finding a magic cave, Fox, after being imprisoned within CloudRunner Fortress by General Scales, communicates with Slippy who beams him the SharpClaw Disguise, which allows Fox to sneak past the nearby SharpClaw guard to reacquire his stolen staff. In comparison, in Dinosaur Planet, Krystal was granted this ability as a spell page given to her by the imprisoned BoneHead NPC (also known as "Gradabug").

This actually seems to be a leftover concept from an earlier version of Star Fox Adventures, where Krystal had been removed entirely and Fox would instead gain all of the abilities from Slippy, as the cutscene sequence posted by Kevin Bayliss shows Slippy beaming Fox the projectile upgrade in Warlock Mountain (in the final game, Fox unlocks this ability, now known as "Fire Blast", after landing in ThornTail Hollow and acquiring Krystal's staff, then finding the nearby magic cave), which would become Krazoa Palace in the final game.

The original Dinosaur Planet was supposed to have six total SpellStones for Sabre and Krystal to collect, three for each. After collecting one of these SpellStones (typically after defeating a boss), they'd have to trek back to their respective Force Point Temple, with Sabre's being the Volcano Force Point Temple and Krystal's being the Desert Force Point Temple, and deposit it there, in order to stop Drakor and General Scales from extracting any more of Dinosaur Planet's magic energy into the Kamerian Heart.

In the final Star Fox Adventures, this was reduced to four SpellStones for Fox to collect, two for each Force Point Temple. While the Volcano Force Point was brought in mostly in-tact from Dinosaur Planet, the Desert Force Point was reworked into the Ocean Force Point Temple, retaining most of the same layout and puzzles, but eschewing the industrial or technological aesthetic in favor of a underwater ruins theme.

One notable difference between the Desert Force Point and the Ocean Force Point is that in the former, Krystal uses an elevator to descend deeper into the temple, whereas in the latter, Fox just simply uses a teleporter to access the lower levels. The E3 2002 Star Fox Adventures kiosk reveals that Rare had still intended on using an elevator to connect the lower and upper portions of the Ocean Force Point like its Dinosaur Planet equivalent, but this was scrapped in the final game.

The music that currently plays in the Ocean Force Point Temple is the track that was intended for the Golden Plains, a desert area in Dinosaur Planet that Krystal would have to trek through in order to access the Desert Force Point Temple. This area was removed in the final Star Fox Adventures, and Fox now accesses the Ocean Force Point Temple through Cape Claw.

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.

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.

Contrary to popular belief, General Scales was never actually intended to be the primary antagonist and final boss of Dinosaur Planet, even before the transition to Star Fox Adventures, which jammed in Andross in the climax. That role would belong to Drakor, who appears in the final Star Fox Adventures as a turret boss in Dragon Rock.

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, recently banished by his people who deemed him a threat to their society, 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 go back in time to the time of the Great War in Krazoa Palace, Krystal and Kyte discover that the Krazoa 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 and depositing them at Warlock Mountain, planning on aligning the Majestic Eight planets their home world Animus and Dinosaur Planet belong to, 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, posing as one as he manipulates Fox into finding the Krazoa Spirits in promise of rescuing Krystal from her prison atop of Krazoa Palace (which was reworked from DP's Warlock Mountain), all of which results in his resurrection as the game's final boss.

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.

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.

DarkIce Mines, the first SpellStone area in Star Fox Adventures, was another area that was more complex in design in earlier iterations of the game than in comparison to the final release. The leaked December 2000 build of Dinosaur Planet showed that the lower underground mines portion of DarkIce Mines was meant to have an extra set of puzzle rooms on the right side of the map that would wound up connecting back to the waterfall room. These extra areas were also present in the E3 2002 kiosk for Star Fox Adventures, suggesting that they were very late cuts, very likely as the development team was being crunched to get the game out in time of the Microsoft buyout in late 2002, similar to what happened with Dragon Rock.

One of the most notable cuts in terms of characters going from Dinosaur Planet to Star Fox Adventures was the character of Randorn the Wizard.

Randorn, along with his two children Sabre and Krystal (biological and adopted respectively), all came from a planet named Animus that comprised of two warring tribes: the Wolvens (that Randorn and Sabre belonged to) and the Vixons (which Krystal belonged to). As the leader of the Wolvens, Randorn had another older son (thus Sabre's older brother) that he sent into battle against the Vixons, only for him to end up killed. Overwhelmed with grief and guilt, Randorn abandoned his tribe and Sabre, and proceeded to go on a murderous rampage, destroying any and all Vixon tribes he came across with his magic.

That was, until he came across an orphaned six year Vixon child. Realizing the monster he became, and also feeling guilt about killing her parents, he adopted the child and named her Krystal, raising her as his own daughter. After several years of exploring the woods together, Randorn and Krystal would eventually come across a hidden temple with a technological device known as the "communication chamber", and from there they received an SOS from the King EarthWalker from a world known as Dinosaur Planet, asking for their help against General Scales and the SharpClaw who have begun to take over the planet. Wishing to atone for his past transgressions, Randorn ordered Krystal to find his son Sabre and then jumped into the swirling vortex that teleported him to Dinosaur Planet, where he battled General Scales only to get mortally wounded, now only barely being kept alive by the magical energies of Warlock Mountain. He leaves Sabre and Krystal behind a message, saying that they must come to Dinosaur Planet and rescue Prince Tricky of the EarthWalkers and Princess Kyte of the CloudRunners from the SharpClaw, who plan on making their respective tribes fight and blame each other.

For the rest of the game, he would reside at Warlock Mountain, and the player would visit him every time they had to return with a Krazoa spirit, sometimes giving advice and also magic energy in case the player is running out. According to the leaked condensed story, the player would eventually have to make a choice to save the dying Randorn by planting MoonSeeds in special locations. If they do, he'd be brought back to health and have a "special surprise" for Sabre and Krystal. There doesn't seem to be any sign of this feature in the leaked December 2000 build of Dinosaur Planet, possibly indicating that this was scrapped.

The aformentioned December 2000 Dinosaur Planet build, which already was beginning to incorporate Fox McCloud as a replacement for Sabre into the game, suggests that Rare actually at least experimented with keeping Randorn in the game even with the new focus on Star Fox, down to creating new voice overs and rewriting the dialogue to suggest that Randorn was previously friends with the McClouds, even expressing guilt over not going along with the original Star Fox team to their investigation of Venom that led to James' death at the hands of Andross and Pigma (Randorn even directly mentions the latter, claiming that he suspected he was a traitor all along).

Unfortunately, Randorn would end up being removed entirely in the final Star Fox Adventures game.

Dinosaur Planet was originally meant to have eight collectible Krazoa spirits, four for Sabre and four for Krystal, and each of these spirits would be obtained by each character finding various Krazoa shrines found throughout their respective maps, each containing a challenge or trial testing their abilities or even character. Sabre would partake in the Tests of Strength, Skill, Magic and Sacrifice while Krystal would partake in the Tests of Combat, Character, Fear and Knowledge.

In the final Star Fox Adventures game, this was cut down to only six Krazoa spirits and shrines for Fox to find, with only five of them even being proper tests, those being the Tests of Skill (renamed to Observation), Combat, Fear, Strength and Knowledge. The final "test" is a rather anti-climatic "boss fight" with General Scales, which is interrupted by Andross forcing Scales to hand over the last Krazoa spirit. Unused voice clips and also hints found within the 2002 E3 SFA kiosk, as well as comments from SFA developers on Rare's scribes, indicate that the dev team planned on General Scales having a true boss fight: essentially a rematch against his flying galleon like in the game's prologue, though instead of playing as Krystal flying on the CloudRunner, it'd likely would have been Fox in his Arwing.

As such, looking at internal files for SFA (as well as its E3 2002 kiosk), Rare had also intended on there being one final true test: the Test of Sacrifice, which fittingly enough was Sabre's final test in Dinosaur Planet and its overall final spirit in general. In both versions of the game, it would have involved Sabre or Fox having to "sacrifice" themselves in order to save an apparition of Tricky. Unused hint texts found within the E3 2002 kiosk heavily imply that Fox would have partaken in the Test of Sacrifice right where the General Scales encounter is today, before he freed Krystal from her prison at the top of Krazoa Palace and also before fighting Andross, who he unknowingly resurrected by releasing all of the Krazoa spirits. The music track that was (as revealed by the leak Dinosaur Planet N64 ROM) intended for the Test of Sacrifice even appears as an unused track found within SFA's sound test, and there's also unused voice clips of Tricky begging Fox for help that very likely pertain to this test. Both of these indicates that this was a very late cut.

Internally, the General Scales "boss fight" shrine is referred to as "nwshrine", which adds up considering that the Test of Sacrifice was meant to be found by Sabre at the Northern Wastes (now now as SnowHorn Wastes) in Dinosaur Planet.

While merely referred to as the King EarthWalker in the final Star Fox Adventures, voice clips from Dinosaur Planet on the Nintendo 64 indicate that he was intended to have a name: "Albada". Both the Queen EarthWalker and Sabre have voice clips that refer to him as such.

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.

According to Takaya Imamura in a 2002 interview with Nintendo Dream, a lot of time was spent between Rare and Nintendo brainstorming on what kind of equipment and weaponry Fox should have during the transition from Dinosaur Planet to Star Fox Adventures. Imamura wanted Fox to use a gun, similar to his original EAD-created prototype of Star Fox Adventures before it was merged with Dinosaur Planet. However, this was not well suited for the Zelda-esque framework established by Dinosaur Planet, so this was abandoned and they embarked on a long period of trial-and-error to determine what weapon Fox should use.

After experimenting with ideas such as a whip, or a gun and sword combo (possibly based on how Fox was already using Sabre's sword in the leaked Dinosaur Planet build), Rare and Nintendo finally settled on Krystal's staff. Imamura claims that this was decided upon because it was a weapon that doesn't require the player to slash the enemy, as he felt uncomfortable with the idea of an animal character like Fox being able to decapitate opponents.

There's a fairly common misconception that the character of Krystal was originally meant to be a cat in Dinosaur Planet, prior to being redesigned as a vixen when the project was transformed into Star Fox Adventures.

The reality is that despite having a somewhat feline look, Krystal was always intended to be a fox as early as Dinosaur Planet, her original backstory even claiming that she belonged to the "Vixon Tribe" on planet Animus (Sabre and Randorn on the other hand belonged to the "Wolven Tribe", as they were both wolves). Former Rare artist Kevin Bayliss has stated multiple times that she was meant to represent a stylized arctic fox in particular.