People - Star Fox Fan Page | Retro Community

Fox McCloud

Protagonist · Star Fox Team Leader

Fox McCloud is the leader of the Star Fox mercenary unit and the playable protagonist of the Star Fox series. The son of James McCloud — a legendary pilot betrayed and killed by Andross before the events of the first game — Fox carries the weight of his father’s unfinished mission. He leads Falco Lombardi, Peppy Hare, and Slippy Toad through the Lylat System’s most dangerous combat zones. Fox was designed by Shigeru Miyamoto, who drew inspiration from the kitsune fox statues at Fushimi Inari-taisha shrine near his Kyoto home. His visual design has remained consistent across the series: an orange-furred fox in a green flight suit, piloting the Arwing with a precision that matches his father’s legendary skill. Fox McCloud’s fame extends beyond Star Fox. As one of the original twelve fighters in Super Smash Bros. (1999), he became known to a generation of players who had never played a Star Fox game — his fast, technical playstyle and voice lines making him one of the game’s most competitive characters.

THE TEAM

Falco Lombardi — arrogant ace, Fox’s most capable wingman
Peppy Hare — veteran mentor, James McCloud’s closest friend
Slippy Toad — mechanic and technical expert

Shigeru Miyamoto

Producer · Character Designer

Shigeru Miyamoto is Nintendo’s most celebrated designer and the producer who shepherded Star Fox from its initial pitch to its 1993 launch. Born in 1952 in Sonobe, Kyoto Prefecture, Miyamoto grew up exploring countryside that he has cited as a formative influence across his career. He joined Nintendo in 1977 and went on to create or produce Mario, Zelda, Pikmin, and Star Fox among others. Miyamoto’s direct contribution to Star Fox was character design. When Argonaut brought Nintendo the Super FX chip concept, Miyamoto decided on anthropomorphic animals as the franchise’s protagonists — drawing on the kitsune fox statues at Fushimi Inari-taisha shrine near Nintendo’s Kyoto headquarters. He designed Fox, Falco, Peppy, Slippy, and General Pepper. His instruction to Argonaut was that the characters should feel like they had been flying together for years — their radio banter during missions reflecting genuine familiarity.

A Legacy in 3D — the 30th anniversary documentary featuring Miyamoto’s influence

Jez San OBE

Argonaut Software Founder · Super FX Co-Creator

Jez San is the founder of Argonaut Software and the man whose persistence made Star Fox possible. Born in 1966 in London, San became a self-taught programmer in the early 1980s, writing games for the BBC Micro and Commodore 64 before founding Argonaut Games at age 16. The company became known for technically ambitious titles — Starglider (1986) and Starglider 2 (1988) used real-time 3D polygon rendering on home computers before it was standard anywhere. San arrived at Nintendo of America without an appointment, demonstrated his 3D chip prototype, and was flown to Kyoto for a meeting with senior engineers. Nintendo commissioned Argonaut to co-design a production version of the chip for the SNES — the Super FX GSU-1. San assembled a hardware team that built the processor while his software team, led by Dylan Cuthbert, built the game. San received an OBE (Order of the British Empire) in 2022 for services to the video games industry.

Dylan Cuthbert

Lead Programmer · Director (Argonaut Software)

Dylan Cuthbert is the programmer who built Star Fox. Selected by Jez San to lead software development at Argonaut, Cuthbert relocated to Nintendo’s Kyoto offices as a teenager and spent two years working alongside Nintendo EAD. He implemented the 3D engine that ran on the Super FX chip, designed the Arwing’s flight dynamics, and built the game’s structure from scratch. Cuthbert became fluent in Japanese during the development period and formed relationships with Nintendo engineers that lasted decades. After Star Fox shipped, he worked on Star Fox 2 before founding his own studio — Q-Games in Kyoto — which developed the PixelJunk series and Star Fox Guard (2016). His technical contribution to Star Fox was singular: the Super FX chip provided the processing capability, but Cuthbert’s engine determined how every polygon was sorted, animated, and rendered within the chip’s 10.5 MHz constraints.

Dylan Cuthbert on Star Fox and Q-Games — 30th anniversary Q&A

The Star Fox Team

Fox McCloud

Shigeru Miyamoto

Jez San OBE

Dylan Cuthbert