Contrary to popular belief, Shigeru Miyamoto and Nintendo did not singlehandedly force Rare (who was never even fully owned by Nintendo) to convert Dinosaur Planet into Star Fox Adventures. It was merely an offer and suggestion Miyamoto gave to Rare, and many of the key team members like director Lee Schuneman and character designer Kevin Bayliss supported the idea, as they felt that using the Star Fox brand would give the game a higher profile, especially as a GameCube launch title. An October 2004 edition of Rare's Scribes says as such:

In an interview with Phil Tossell (the lead software engineer for Star Fox Adventures) within an issue of Retro Gamer, he admitted the development team thought the game may have never actually even been released because of the impending Microsoft buyout.

Shigeru Miyamoto had actually teased the existence of Star Fox Adventures at least an entire year before its actual announcement at E3 2001. In an interview with Miyamoto in a February 2000 issue of 64 Dream (so several months before Dinosaur Planet was revealed at E3 2000 that year), he had mentioned that, while a sequel to Star Fox 64 was not currently in development, he'd like to make a game titled "Star Fox Adventures" for the then-coming GameCube. Similarly, in an interview with Miyamoto at E3 2000, when asked about how he felt about Rare's recently unveiled Dinosaur Planet, he had this to say:


Further interviews reveal Star Fox Adventures' origins indeed actually came 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, who had created Fox McCloud and had been heavily involved with the series since the first game, had begged 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.

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.

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.

Star Fox Adventures notably takes place eight years after the events of Star Fox 64. In an interview with Nintendo Official Magazine in 2002, Takaya Imamura admitted that he 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.

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.

When Fox frees Krystal from her crystal prison at the top of Krazoa Palace in Star Fox Adventures, she immediately grabs her staff back from him and begins firing at the newly resurrected Andross as Fox runs off to his Arwing to confront the latter in Dinosaur Planet's orbit. Strangely enough, in the ending cutscene after Andross' defeat, Fox once again has Krystal's staff in his backpack. When asked about this in a January 10th, 2003 issue of Rare's scribes, the development team responded with:

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.

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.

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, during his visits at Rare, 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.

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.

The life bar icons for the SnowHorn and HighTop in Star Fox Adventures sport different, more cartoony designs from their respective in-game models. The reason for this is because they're clearly based upon their original N64 Dinosaur Planet models, which too are much more cartoonier than the final SFA models that go for a more semi-realistic look.

Phil Tossell, the lead software engineer for Star Fox Adventures, had mentioned that Dinosaur Planet had begun development before The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time had released, and thus the development team didn't start taking inspiration from it until afterwards. He also talked about how understaffed the development team was in comparison to most Zelda games, specifically mentioning how they initially had only five programmers, only adding in more later on. This resulted in the team facing many technical and design problems during the development of Dinosaur Planet/Star Fox Adventures:

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 character designer 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.

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.

The original Dinosaur Planet storyline had Sauria, the namesake Dinosaur Planet, a part a group of eight planets dubbed the "Majestic Eight". Said to be the first planets created when the universe began, the seven other were, as described by the Krazoa:

• Animus, the home world of Sabre, Krystal and Randorn
• Aleminach, the home world of the Krazoa
• Eridal, the home world of Drakor's race, the Kamerians
• Nibiru, the home world of the "Nephilim", and "a land of giants"
• Earth, the home world of the "newest universe members, a very evil race, the humans"
• Melqua, a planet of water with rings of gold
• Selaf, the home world of the "Anunnaki"

Interestingly, in place of Animus, the voice lines for the Krazoa in Warlock Mountain instead mention Corneria. Obviously, this was to accommodate the presence of Fox McCloud in the leaked December 2000 build of Dinosaur Planet, as it was beginning to transition into Star Fox Adventures.

Some of these reference actual myths and conspiracies, such as the Nibiru Cataclysm, a doomsday theory that states that Earth will catastrophically collide with another planet, typically believed to be an object known as "Planet X" or Nibiru. The "Annunaki" are a group of deities in ancient Sumerian myths that are theorized by some as aliens from a planet called Nibiru that came to Earth to harvest gold, and also were reptilian humanoids. The myths surrounding the "Nephilim" tend to vary: some say they were giants (as mentioned by the Krazoa in DP) while others say that they were fallen angels or the offspring of humans and angels.

Each of the eight spirits Sabre and Krystal were told to collect by the Krazoa during their adventures were meant to represent these eight planets. The ultimate endgame of the Krazoa in Dinosaur Planet's original narrative was to align these Majestic Eight worlds by reuniting the eight spirits of Quan Ata Lachu (a deity the Krazoa worship) at Warlock Mountain in order to revive their people and bring "peace" to the universe. In reality, as Drakor describes it, this will result in the most deadly weapon in the universe, as the alignment of the Majestic Eight gives the Quan Ata Lachu (described by Drakor as being "a rare lifeform of pure evil") the opportunity to utilize the immense powerful energy that this will produce, and it will be focused through Warlock Mountain, creating the ultimate weapon of destruction that will allow the Krazoa to remold the universe into their image/liking, spreading disease, terror and chaos as they please. This is why Drakor has come to Sauria to revive the Kamerian war dragon that fell in battle against the Krazoa at the beginning of the universe, to prevent this from happening and exact revenge against the Krazoa.

This plotline would be revised and ultimately dropped in the final Star Fox Adventures game, as Dinosaur Planet is said to just simply exist in the Lylat System, and Krystal's home planet was renamed to Cerinia and was said to be mysteriously destroyed, hence why she's searching the galaxy for the truth of the death of her family (though this was omitted in the Japanese version). The plotline of Fox collecting the Krazoa spirits in promise of something good (in this case, saving Krystal from the top of Krazoa Palace and ultimately putting Dinosaur Planet back together) would in someway remain, but would instead result in Andross reviving himself as the true final boss of Star Fox Adventures.

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.

The SpellStones and Force Point Temples served a difference purpose lore-wise in Dinosaur Planet than in Star Fox Adventures. After their intergalactic war with the Kamerians, the weakened Krazoa settled on Dinosaur Planet (Sauria), which housed the universe’s richest magical energy. To heal and enter stasis for the next billion of years, they built the Force Point Temples to concentrate this energy, which the dinosaurs later used to power their world.

Following the fall of the last great Kamerian war dragon on Sauria, the SpellStone Guardians were formed to protect the SpellStones. If the planet was threatened, these Guardians were to place the SpellStones into the Temples to shut down magic extraction. Drakor, a surviving Kamerian, plotted to seek vengence against the Krazoa and revive his ancestor using Sauria’s magic by aiding General Scales and the SharpClaw with advanced tech, enabling them to take control of the Temples and funnel the energy into the Kamerian heart at Dragon Rock. Sabre and Krystal’s goal was to retrieve and activate the SpellStones to stop this.

Early concepts included five guardians:

• Garunda Te, the leader of the SnowHorn Tribe.
• Shabunga, the Willow Grove mutant.
• The leader of the ShadowHunter Tribe from BlackWater Canyon.
• Two unknown guardians found with in the Walled City and CloudRunner Fortress.

By the December 2000 build, this was reduced to four:

•Garunda Te
•Shabunga
•King EarthWalker (aka "Albada")
•A BoneHead (or "Gradabug" as he's called in Star Fox Adventures) imprisoned within CloudRunner Fortress

By this point, the ShadowHunters were rewritten as mere scavengers within BlackWater Canyon, and Krystal was to use the Tree of Souls to activate the area's SpellStone instead. Her final SpellStone at Krazoa Palace would require time travel, as it had disappeared due to several tears in time and space occurring because of the huge quantity of magic energy being extracted.

In Star Fox Adventures's version of the story. The Krazoa still built the Temples and SpellStones, but now to prevent dark magic from tearing the planet apart. General Scales stole the SpellStones and returned them to the lands they were forged in (DarkIce Mines, CloudRunner Fortress, Walled City, Dragon Rock), breaking the planet into floating pieces. The Guardians became “GateKeepers,” charged with opening portals to these lands:

• Garunda Te, retaining his role from Dinosaur Planet.
• The Queen CloudRunner, taking over the BoneHead/Gradabug's intended role.
• The King EarthWalker, retaining his role from Dinosaur Planet.
• A generic quiet ThornTail, taking over Shabunga's intended role.

Fox’s mission was to locate the GateKeepers, use their power to reach the floating lands via the Arwing, retrieve the SpellStones, and return them to the Temples to restore the planet. These changes were likely done to justify including Arwing segments in the otherwise adventure gameplay framework established by Dinosaur Planet.

The WarpStone, despite living on a planet filled with dinosaurs, is infamously somehow incapable of warping them, hence why Tricky can't accompany Fox to Krazoa Palace.

In the Japanese version of Star Fox Adventures, the WarpStone, whose Japanese name is ワープ魔人 (Wāpu majin) or Warp Demon, offers a different explanation of why he can't warp Tricky through Japanese subtitles:


Essentially, it's not that the WarpStone can't teleport dinosaurs like Tricky, it's just that they're merely afraid of being warped.