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After obtaining a gold medal on all levels, Expert mode will be unlocked. In Expert mode, Fox wears his father James McCloud's glasses.
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The way the characters in the game talk by opening and closing their mouths was inspired by Thunderbirds and other "English puppet dramas" (called "Supermarionation" by Thunderbirds co-creator Gerry Anderson). Shigeru Miyamoto was a fan of these shows and imagined that if the Star Fox series became popular enough, AP Films themselves would come from England to talk about turning it into a "puppet drama".
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The planet of Katina is a clear reference to the movie "Independence Day". Similar to the movie, you have to dog fight aliens that are invading the world and if you do not finish off the mother ship in time, it will destroy the base with a blue laser. The new partner you get in this fight, Bill Grey, is a reference to the General William Grey from the movie.
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On the title screen, you can use the analog stick to move the "64" part of the logo around. Fox and his crew will watch it as it moves.
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In the Macbeth level, there is a time limit to fighting the boss even if the player missed the Supply Depot ending that leads to Area 6. If the player gets far enough, the boss will state that the player was too slow, and dive bomb the player, killing them instantly. If using a cheat to have infinite health, then the boss will continue to bounce the player upwards until the game crashes.
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If the player takes too long to defeat the Golemech boss at the end of Venom's easy path (about seven minutes), the fight will end and the player will run into a wall, killing themselves and making the fight restart.
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In the European version, there is an extra language called "Lylat", a made up language which is similar to the gibberish spoken in the original Star Fox.
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The game's opening features the phrase "Star Fox in Nintendo 64". This was a translation error and is supposed to read "Star Fox on Nintendo 64". This was fixed in the 3DS remake.
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In the Japanese Versions of the game, after being shot down one of Fox's Teammates will shout out his name, similar to Star Fox Assault, but in the Western Versions, they instead shout "No!!!".
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The developers of the game were originally going to have Fox say "I guess it's your turn to be thankful" to make him sound cooler, but felt that the line was too showy for him. They instead gave the phrase to Falco, who says it after saving Fox from an enemy.
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One of Peppy's most well known lines, "Never give up. Trust your instincts.", was added because one of the developers, Mitsuhiro Takano, wasn't very good at the game and wanted to get some encouragement.
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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.
Nintendo Dream interview:
https://www.ndw.jp/starfox-game-230221/
Star Fox Nintendo Power comic:
https://imgur.io/gallery/5Vvlb
Snippet from the original Nintendo Dream 2011 Magazine interview:
https://www.reddit.com/r/starfox/comments/wo9lfo/so_heres_the_official_statement_regarding_the/
https://www.ndw.jp/starfox-game-230221/
Star Fox Nintendo Power comic:
https://imgur.io/gallery/5Vvlb
Snippet from the original Nintendo Dream 2011 Magazine interview:
https://www.reddit.com/r/starfox/comments/wo9lfo/so_heres_the_official_statement_regarding_the/
subdirectory_arrow_right Star Fox 64 3D (Game)
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IGN's English translation of Star Fox 64's Japanese manual:
https://www.ign.com/articles/1997/05/14/starfox-64-manual-translation-pt1
Star Fox 64 Official Japanese Character Bios:
https://www.nintendo.co.jp/n01/n64/software/nus_p_nfxj/member/index.html
惑星パペトゥーンの宇宙アカデミーでコーネリア防衛軍の士官候補生として学んでいたが、父親の志を継ぐべく、新チームのリーダーに着任した。= He was studying at the Space Academy on the planet Papetoon as a cadet for the Cornerian Defense Force, but he was appointed as the new team leader in order to carry on his father's legacy.
Star Fox 64 Japanese intro:
https://youtu.be/_imyPdEU0Mc?t=162
命からがら脱出したペッピーは、故郷の惑星パペトゥーンに戻り、ジェームズの息子、フォックスに父親の最後を告げた。= After escaping with his life, Peppy returned to his home planet, Papetoon, and told James' son, Fox, the end of his father.
https://www.ign.com/articles/1997/05/14/starfox-64-manual-translation-pt1
Star Fox 64 Official Japanese Character Bios:
https://www.nintendo.co.jp/n01/n64/software/nus_p_nfxj/member/index.html
惑星パペトゥーンの宇宙アカデミーでコーネリア防衛軍の士官候補生として学んでいたが、父親の志を継ぐべく、新チームのリーダーに着任した。= He was studying at the Space Academy on the planet Papetoon as a cadet for the Cornerian Defense Force, but he was appointed as the new team leader in order to carry on his father's legacy.
Star Fox 64 Japanese intro:
https://youtu.be/_imyPdEU0Mc?t=162
命からがら脱出したペッピーは、故郷の惑星パペトゥーンに戻り、ジェームズの息子、フォックスに父親の最後を告げた。= After escaping with his life, Peppy returned to his home planet, Papetoon, and told James' son, Fox, the end of his father.
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It turns out the development team had planned on including another variation of Venom for the Normal route, where Fox McCloud would jump out of his Arwing and battle Andross on-foot with a bazooka. According to the staff, this was scrapped due to time constraints. The pilot mode option seen in Star Fox 64's battle mode is actually the repurposed remnants of this idea.
User's English translation of a developer interview from an official Japanese guidebook for Star Fox 64:
https://www.reddit.com/r/starfox/comments/x938ib/behold_an_attempt_at_translating_an_interview/
Details of scrapped third route:
https://www.reddit.com/r/starfox/comments/10gmwe9/fox_was_going_to_fight_andross_with_a_bazooka_a/
https://www.reddit.com/r/starfox/comments/x938ib/behold_an_attempt_at_translating_an_interview/
Details of scrapped third route:
https://www.reddit.com/r/starfox/comments/10gmwe9/fox_was_going_to_fight_andross_with_a_bazooka_a/
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• 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.
Official Japanese Nintendo website Star Fox 64 character bios:
https://www.nintendo.co.jp/n01/n64/software/nus_p_nfxj/member/index2.html#frog
English translations of above website:
https://www.reddit.com/r/starfox/comments/y8v1vn/more_translation_fun_from_the_old_japanese_sf64/
Star Fox 64 Nintendo Power Official Strategy Guide:
https://archive.org/details/Starfox64NintendoPowerOfficialStrategyGuide/page/n15/mode/2up
Official American Nintendo website Star Fox 64 character bio for Slippy:
https://web.archive.org/web/20011020022648/http://starfox64.com/slippy.html
https://www.nintendo.co.jp/n01/n64/software/nus_p_nfxj/member/index2.html#frog
English translations of above website:
https://www.reddit.com/r/starfox/comments/y8v1vn/more_translation_fun_from_the_old_japanese_sf64/
Star Fox 64 Nintendo Power Official Strategy Guide:
https://archive.org/details/Starfox64NintendoPowerOfficialStrategyGuide/page/n15/mode/2up
Official American Nintendo website Star Fox 64 character bio for Slippy:
https://web.archive.org/web/20011020022648/http://starfox64.com/slippy.html
subdirectory_arrow_right Star Fox Adventures (Game)
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Imamura would touch upon this again in an 2002 Nintendo Dream interview regarding Star Fox Adventures. 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 the same interview, Imamura had already stated some years prior he'd like to make a sequel to Star Fox 64 taking place 20 years later (Fox would be 38 years old) in the official Japanese guidebook for Star Fox 64 released in 1997.
Nintendo website developer interview:
https://web.archive.org/web/20030416023122/https://www.nintendo.co.jp/nom/0210/fox_03/page03.html
English translations of above NOM interview:
https://www.reddit.com/r/starfox/comments/18rek3h/just_throwing_out_a_translation_of_this_old/
Nintendo Dream interview:
https://shmuplations.com/starfoxadventures/
User's English translation of an official SF64 Japanese guidebook:
https://www.reddit.com/r/starfox/comments/y8cwc9/finally_got_around_to_doing_translations/
https://web.archive.org/web/20030416023122/https://www.nintendo.co.jp/nom/0210/fox_03/page03.html
English translations of above NOM interview:
https://www.reddit.com/r/starfox/comments/18rek3h/just_throwing_out_a_translation_of_this_old/
Nintendo Dream interview:
https://shmuplations.com/starfoxadventures/
User's English translation of an official SF64 Japanese guidebook:
https://www.reddit.com/r/starfox/comments/y8cwc9/finally_got_around_to_doing_translations/
subdirectory_arrow_right Star Fox Command (Game)
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Nintendo Dream interview:
https://www.ndw.jp/starfox-game-230221/2/
English translations of above interview:
https://www.reddit.com/r/starfox/comments/1151lkd/nintendo_dream_republishes_some_of_their_old_star/
https://www.ndw.jp/starfox-game-230221/2/
English translations of above interview:
https://www.reddit.com/r/starfox/comments/1151lkd/nintendo_dream_republishes_some_of_their_old_star/
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subdirectory_arrow_right Star Fox Command (Game), Star Fox 2 (Game), Star Fox Zero (Game), Star Fox (Franchise)
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• 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.
Star Fox 64 Nintendo Power Official Strategy Guide with Shigeru Miyamoto interview:
https://archive.org/details/Starfox64NintendoPowerOfficialStrategyGuide/page/n119/mode/2up
Nintendo of Europe Takaya Imamura interview:
https://www.nintendo.co.uk/News/2007/Interview-Star-Fox-Command-249670.html
https://archive.org/details/Starfox64NintendoPowerOfficialStrategyGuide/page/n119/mode/2up
Nintendo of Europe Takaya Imamura interview:
https://www.nintendo.co.uk/News/2007/Interview-Star-Fox-Command-249670.html
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