Viewing Single Trivia
▲
2
▼
Originally, the development team behind Star Fox 64 themselves actually tried to provide the voice lines for the characters:
As mentioned by Takaya Imamura above, this was met with negative reception internally and thus they switched over to using professional voice actors. What remains of this lost developer dub was recently discovered within the Nintendo gigaleak from 2020.
The official Japanese Star Fox 64 guidebook reveals that it was programmer Nobuhiro Sumiyoshi who provided the original voice for Leon Powalski, who is voiced by Shinobu Satouchi (who also voices Fox McCloud) in the final Japanese version of Star Fox 64. Takaya Imamura later revealed in a tweet in 2024 that he provided the initial voice for Fox.
—Back in the day, a lot of Nintendo’s games used voices provided by the staff.
Imamura: We dubbed Star Fox 64 ourselves at first, too. We were all like, wow, this is gonna be so cool! But when we showed it to people outside the team, they responded with “laaaame” (laughs). We were told “this is unforgivably bad” (laughs), and so we switched to professional voice actors.
—Ahahaha! But, now I want to hear it for myself… (laughs)
Imamura: Rare did the same thing with their game, except they were really good at it (laughs)
The culture around voice acting isn’t cemented in the US to the extent that it is in Japan; in the US, voice acting is performed by regular actors, whereas in Japan, voice actors have a very specific and distinctive style of delivery, and it could be that it’s left such an impression on us that we’re not as capable of tolerating amateurish voice acting.
What’s funny is that some of the sales people who didn’t like our N64 dub told us that the Super Famicom “buh-buh-buh-buh” voices were cooler, so as a trial, we looked backwards and imported those SFC-style “buh-buh-buh”s, but the reaction was, “nah, that sucks” (laughs). We really did experiment with the animal language (laughs).
Imamura: We dubbed Star Fox 64 ourselves at first, too. We were all like, wow, this is gonna be so cool! But when we showed it to people outside the team, they responded with “laaaame” (laughs). We were told “this is unforgivably bad” (laughs), and so we switched to professional voice actors.
—Ahahaha! But, now I want to hear it for myself… (laughs)
Imamura: Rare did the same thing with their game, except they were really good at it (laughs)
The culture around voice acting isn’t cemented in the US to the extent that it is in Japan; in the US, voice acting is performed by regular actors, whereas in Japan, voice actors have a very specific and distinctive style of delivery, and it could be that it’s left such an impression on us that we’re not as capable of tolerating amateurish voice acting.
What’s funny is that some of the sales people who didn’t like our N64 dub told us that the Super Famicom “buh-buh-buh-buh” voices were cooler, so as a trial, we looked backwards and imported those SFC-style “buh-buh-buh”s, but the reaction was, “nah, that sucks” (laughs). We really did experiment with the animal language (laughs).
As mentioned by Takaya Imamura above, this was met with negative reception internally and thus they switched over to using professional voice actors. What remains of this lost developer dub was recently discovered within the Nintendo gigaleak from 2020.
The official Japanese Star Fox 64 guidebook reveals that it was programmer Nobuhiro Sumiyoshi who provided the original voice for Leon Powalski, who is voiced by Shinobu Satouchi (who also voices Fox McCloud) in the final Japanese version of Star Fox 64. Takaya Imamura later revealed in a tweet in 2024 that he provided the initial voice for Fox.
Star Fox 64 rejected developer dub discovery Reddit thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/starfox/comments/10m7vj8/found_the_terrible_awesome_rejected_developer_dub/
Rejected developer dub:
https://youtu.be/bpsHjFBK164
2002 Nintendo Dream interview:
https://shmuplations.com/starfoxadventures/
User's English translation of official Japanese Star Fox 64 guidebook:
https://www.reddit.com/r/starfox/comments/y8cwc9/finally_got_around_to_doing_translations/
Imamura revealing that he voiced Fox in this dub:
https://x.com/ima_1966/status/1798369161917378853
https://www.reddit.com/r/starfox/comments/10m7vj8/found_the_terrible_awesome_rejected_developer_dub/
Rejected developer dub:
https://youtu.be/bpsHjFBK164
2002 Nintendo Dream interview:
https://shmuplations.com/starfoxadventures/
User's English translation of official Japanese Star Fox 64 guidebook:
https://www.reddit.com/r/starfox/comments/y8cwc9/finally_got_around_to_doing_translations/
Imamura revealing that he voiced Fox in this dub:
https://x.com/ima_1966/status/1798369161917378853
Comments (1)

Nintendo's very first game to have full voice acting almost had the characters voiced by the development team. I suppose this intention was before Nintendo tasked Seattle based voice actors for most of their games when they started to use voice acting, though it can explain why Leslie Swan would voice Peach in the western versions of SM64 and MK64.
You must be logged in to post comments.
Related Games
Star Fox
Star Fox 2
Star Fox Wii
Star Fox: Assault
Star Fox Adventures
Star Fox Zero
Star Fox Command
Star Fox Guard
Star Fox 64 3D
Super Smash Bros.
Super Smash Bros. Melee
Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
New Trivia!
Super Smash Bros. for Wii U
Star Fox
Pokémon Ultra Sun
Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!
1080° Snowboarding
Dance Dance Revolution Mario Mix
Dragon Warrior
Super Paper Mario
Balloon Kid
Diddy Kong Racing
Street Fighter Alpha 2
StarCraft 64
Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze
Pokémon Yellow Version: Special Pikachu Edition
Mario Sports Mix
Advance Wars: Days of Ruin
Ripened Tingle's Balloon Trip of Love
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
Mario Kart 64
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games
Nintendogs + Cats: Toy Poodle & New Friends
Radar Scope
amiibo Tap: Nintendo's Greatest Bits
Yoshi's Safari
Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories
Golden Sun: The Lost Age
Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
F-Zero
Vs. Mach Rider
Luigi's Mansion
New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe
Pokémon Stadium
Pokémon: Let's Go, Eevee!
Mission: Impossible
Wario World
Super Mario Bros.