In a recent issue of Edge Magazine, the Star Fox artist and character designer Takaya Imamura shared some details on how the game's iconic cast came to be. This included offering an insight into how he modelled the character of Fox McCloud on the "essence" of the game's producer Shigeru Miyamoto.
The story was shared in issue 407 of the magazine, which featured an interview with the Star Fox developer, and was later picked up by the online publication GamesRadar.
In the interview, Imamura shared the familiar story of how Miyamoto's visit to the Fushimi Inari shrine on the outskirts Kyoto ended up inspiring the team to switch from "realistic space pirates" to anthropomorphic characters, before revealing that he had designed the Star Fox team based on members of the game's staff.
Speaking to Edge, Imamura shared, "The [designs] are [...] not like a caricature of them so much as their essence. Fox is based on Miyamoto-san, and the rabbit, Peppy, is based on the game's director [Katsuya] Eguchi-san. I think, if you look closely, you can see the similarities.
He also continued, "Falco was based on [Tsuyoshi] Watanabe-san on the graphics team. When I looked at his face, his nose was quite big, like a Roman nose. And Slippy was based on the assistant director, [Yoichi] Yamada-san - he just kind of gave me that impression, and he liked frogs as well."
According to Imamura, none of the staff seemed to react much to having a character based on them, which he attributes as likely being down to the team being in the midst of development.
Interestingly, this isn't the first time we've heard a member of the Star Fox team talk about the influence of the development team on the designs of the Star Fox crew.
Back in 2007, the Star Fox programmer Dylan Cuthbert shared a similar story while talking to the Nintendo magazine NGamer adding, "You can blame me for all the names, apart from Falco Lombardi, which was Mr Imamura, the 2D artist and scenario designer."
Do you notice any similarities between any of the characters and their inspirations? Let us know in the comments!