16 Bits

Super Famicom box art

The Japanese version of Star Fox showcases all four pilots in their stuffed animal forms, whereas the US box art featured Fox alone.

Do an Aileron Roll!

Peppy’s “Do a barrel roll!” line has long been a pop culture catchphrase. However, the maneuver that players perform in Star Fox to reflect incoming enemy attacks is known as an aileron roll. The difference being that there is no discernible change in altitude when performing an aileron roll, but with a barrel roll the aircraft makes a complete rotation along both its longitudinal and lateral axes. The more you know!

Star Fox Micro

WarioWare: Smooth Moves featured a Star Fox micro-game that required players to pilot an Arwing through Corneria, Sector X, or Titania. R.O.B. appears as each stage’s boss, using an NES Zapper to attack.

Star Fox Virtual Boy

A Star Fox tech demo made its public debut at the Winter CES in 1995 but was never turned into a complete game. Red Alarm, a title with similar mechanics and visuals, was released instead.

Parachuting Pre-Orders

Nintendo famously delivered launch copies of Star Fox via Star Fox-branded parachutes to meet the record-breaking pre-order demand for the game. These highly sought-after pieces of Star Fox history are still used for actual skydiving to this day.

Starwing

Due to potential issues with a German company, Star Fox was originally titled Starwing in the UK. After Star Fox 64, known as Lylat Wars in PAL regions, the franchise globally retained the Star Fox moniker for all future releases.

Dinosaur Planet

The official description for Planet Fortuna says it is also known as the “Dinosaur Planet”. Near the turn of the millennium, Rare was developing an ambitious title for the Nintendo 64 called Dinosaur Planet. The game was eventually reworked to be Star Fox Adventures.

Krystal

The four pilots from the original Star Fox make up the main characters of all Star Fox games with one exception: following the events of Star Fox Adventures, that game’s co-protagonist, Krystal, joins the Star Fox crew in Peppy’s place.

Super NES FX

Developed too late to be included in the Super Famicom, the Super FX chip was considered for inclusion in the Super NES hardware before its launch. However, this idea was scrapped to keep the cost of the system down. Imagine a world where every SNES game had access to the same graphical possibilities as Star Fox and Yoshi’s Island.

Star Fox Wars

The Star Fox series has a number of references to the Star Wars films, including quotes such as, “I have a bad feeling about this!” The Official Nintendo Power Player’s Guide to Star Fox Assault noted the similarities between Fox’s and Falco’s personalities and those of Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, respectively, and the developers have acknowledged Star Wars as a direct influence.

Super Smash Fox

Fox McCloud is a recurring pugilist in Super Smash Bros. Falco and Star Wolf (aka Wolf O’Donnell) also make appearances in select Smash Bros. titles.

Weekend Competition

The Super Star Fox Weekend competition was an international event promoting the launch of Star Fox. Held at over 1,500 locations such as Macy’s and various toy stores in the US alone, the competition used a special cartridge with timed gameplay, logging each player’s total score after four minutes. The stages in the Super Star Fox Weekend were remixed to feature more enemies and obstacles, and displayed score gains in the game world, unlike the retail version of Star Fox.

Players who scored the highest at each location were awarded various prizes, such as pins and apparel, including a leather jacket for the top player. A random grand prize winner was then selected out of all the top players from every location and awarded either an all-expenses-paid trip for four to London, Paris, Sydney, or Tokyo, or a lump sum of $15,000. The winner, from Texas, opted for the cash.

Items from this event, along with the special yellow aprons worn by employees during the competition, have long been extremely rare collectors’ items.

Game Watch

Alongsidethe release of Star Fox, Nintendo partnered with Kellogg’s and Nelsonicto include an LCD-based Star Fox Game Watch for purchasers of Corn Flakes cereal. A promotional order form in each box needed to be mailed to receive the watch, which included four stages and the Attack Carrier boss.

Farewell, Beloved Falco

Star Fox: Farewell, Beloved Falco was a manga produced by Nintendo to coincide with the release of Star Fox Adventures. It focuses primarily on Falco and told the (at the time) canonical story connecting Star Fox 64 and Star Fox Adventures. The manga includes a lot of interesting character development and features supporting characters such as Katt Monroe, who has an unrequited romantic interest in Falco.

Star Fox Anime

In April of 2016, Nintendo’s official YouTube channel posted a 14-minute-long anime titled, Star Fox Zero – The Battle Begins. The anime was produced in collaboration with Shigeru Miyamoto, WIT Studios, and Production IG, the same studio behind animated films such as Ghost in the Shell, Blood: The Last Vampire, The End of Evangelion, and movies based on Pokemon: Black and White.

Soundtrack

The Star Fox Original Soundtrack was released on CD in 1994. There are three arranged tracks by Norimasa “Kisho” Yamanaka, in addition to Hajime Hirasawa’s genre-shattering original compositions. The final three tracks include live recordings of gameplay.