Star Fox Adventures

Star Fox Adventures is a Video Game produced by Rare for the Nintendo GameCube, and the oddball in the Star FOX series. Originally an unrelated Nintendo 64 title called Dinosaur Planet, the game contains very little of the shooting and spaceship-piloting that the series was known for, relegating these aspects to mini-games between large chunks of action-filled adventuring gameplay.

The Star Fox crew (this time consisting of Fox McCloud, Peppy Hare, Slippy Toad, and R.O.B. the Robot Buddy) intercepts a distress call from the mysterious planet Sauria and set out to investigate. There, they discover a world inhabited by sentient dinosaurs and other strange creatures, and learn that the planet is suffering under the tyrannical rule of the villainous General Scales. Under the prospect of a hefty pay needed for the maintenance of their ship (the effects of which are seen in StarFoxAssault with the newer, sleek designs) offered by General Pepper, Fox accepts the mission to explore the planet and save it from destruction. This is the game that introduced Krystal to the series.

For those who are curious about the game's original incarnation as Dinosaur Planet, a text file has been ripped from the game and can be found here, and contains a decent amount of original content before becoming Star Fox Adventures. Be warned as it contains spoilers both major and minor for the game.

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Tropes used in Star Fox Adventures include:

• A God Am I: Andross.
• All Animals Are Dogs: Tricky plays fetch, responds to "Heel" and "Stay" commands, and spins around a few times before nodding off when idle.
• Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: Tricky has some alternate color schemes that are pretty loud.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: The Sharpclaw Tribe, right down to the concentration camps for all of Scales' enemies as well as the implied threat of genocide and various war technologies the Sharpclaws had that were implied to be extremely advanced for the Dinosaur's time. Considering who Scales is being manipulated by, its not really much of a surprise.
• Anticlimax Boss: General Scales.
  • He's more of a Bait and Switch Boss, a fight with him was planned, but cut, as a result, you just take a swing at him and Andross hijacks the plot.
• Artificial Stupidity: Because you can't hurt the Red Eyes when you first meet them, they are made extra stupid and will only attack you if the see you in their patrol paths.
• Bad Boss: At one point, General Scales uses one of his own troops as a shield for blasters.
• Bag of Sharing: What little you can collect as Krystal (such as a bafomdad) will be passed onto Fox.
• Bare Your Midriff: Krystal.
• Big Bad: General Scales before he was thrown aside in favor of Andross.
• Big Fancy Castle: CloudRunner Fortress.
• Bleak Level: Dragon Rock.
• Bonus Feature Failure: The Cheat Tokens are used to buy such awe-inspiring rewards as an unmarked Sound Test and the option to play the game in monochrome.
• Chekhov's Gunman: You know that one grumbling Thorntail in Thorntail Hollow who doesn't want to talk to Fox? Yeah, he's Dragon Rock's gatekeeper and he's feeling down because his friends were sent there as prisoners.
• Crystal Prison
• Cutscene Boss: General Scales.
• Cypher Language: Dino language, which only requires substituting one letter for another except for names of people or locations.
• Decoy Protagonist: Krystal,
• Deleted Scene: The disc for Adventures contains several voice clips absent from the game itself which indicate that Krystal originally had a more prominent role and would have teamed up with Fox to help him navigate through the final dungeon (in the retail version, she is playable only for a few minutes at the beginning of the game, imprisoned, and then released just before the end). The romantic subplot between the two is also slightly expanded upon; after Andross is defeated, Fox asks Krystal to join Star Fox, and she agrees on the condition that he kiss her first. Samples and transcriptions of the deleted audio can be found here.
• Deliberately Monochrome: One of the Cheat Token prizes. See above.
• Dinosaurs Are Dragons: One of the bosses you face is a dino mutated into a flying, armored dragon, a fair bit of the scenery and Scales' weaponry have draconic motifs, and at least three Dinosaur tribes are capable of breathing fire.
• Disc One Final Dungeon: The second visit to Ocean Force Point. Forget about the Krazoa, Fox?
• Distress Call: Krystal reaches Sauria by following this.
• Damsel in Distress: Krystal.
• Dolled-Up Installment: It was originally Dinosaur Planet, starring a wolf named Sabre and a cat named Krystal. Nintendo noticed some similarities to their Star FOX franchise, and ordered Rare to turn their game into a part of that series (possibly to keep Rare, who were being bought out by Microsoft, from porting the game). The characters got a species lift and Sabre became Fox. The rest is history, for better or worse.
• Down the Drain: Ocean Force Point.
• Dug Too Deep: Portions of Darkice Mines.
• Dummied Out: A lot of things was dummied out both as Dinosaur Planet and during its transition as Star Fox Adventures.
  • Parts of the story are vastly changed too, including how Tricky had a twin named Rocky who joined Krystal in the first boss fight before she gets Kyte, how the queen cloudrunner is killed in her encounter with Scales (that Fox witnesses in Adventures) and Kyte would've taken her place end-game, how Sabre would've been trapped with Galdon with a choice between freedom or the Spellstone before Galdon is killed, many dropped characters (such as Sabre's brother, father, and Randorn), an actual fight with Scales, Andross and the arwing segments being nowhere in sight, and it being Fox's choice to save Krystal (complete with extra dialogue for her) rather than needing all the krazoa spirits to save the planet in addition to the spellstones (also, Krystal may have been released much earlier).
  • A boss fight for General Scales was also originally planned for the game. However ownership of Rare shifted to Microsoft, forcing them to rush development and replace this battle with the cutscene we got in the final product. Unused audio also implies that Falco would help Fox take down Scales.
• Exact Words: Scales threatens Garunda Te and Belina Te with genocide against the Snowhorns if they don't allow him to return the spellstone to Darkice mines. He kept his word when he spared the race from extinction. However, he never said that he'd let them go free, either, and thus forced them to work at the mines.
• Expy: Tricky shares the name and species of another triceratops that appeared in another rare game, Diddy Kong Racing.
  • Rocky, Tricky's non-existant twin also looks and acts exactly like Tricky.
• Exploding Barrels
• Everything's Better with Dinosaurs
• Fictionary: The Saurian language, which is just simple letter substitutions. See here.
• Floating Continent: Dinosaur Planet's parts you have to put back together like gargantuan puzzle pieces.
• Free Sample Plot Coupon: When the EarthWalker tells Krystal about the importance of retrieving the Krazoa Spirits, the Shrine that guards the first of them is opened, and is only a few steps away from them.
• Giant Space Flea From Nowhere: At the last minute, Andross was revealed to have been adding Scales the entire game, explaining the technology he and the Sharpclaws had, and forces out the last Krazoa spirit. Turns out that everything was just a plan by Andross to get the Krazoa's spirits in one spot and use them to revive himself.
• Green Hill Zone: Thorntail Hollow.
• Hailfire Peaks: Darkice Mines, which has a snowy exterior hiding a lava-filled mine. Apparently, it is a Hailfire Peak.
• Hammerspace: All the items Fox carries are almost entirely unseen on his person until he uses them. Even the ones shown to be far bigger than him (just they somehow shrink in size until he uses them, like the cog). Krystal's staff is a subversion because it is visible that the staff can shrink down in size and is seen sticking out of Fox's pack.
• Hidden Elf Village: Lightfoot Village.
• Hijacked by Ganon: Andross turns out to be the final boss.
• I Got You Covered: Falco eventually comes around and does this while Fox is fighting the Big Bad
• Interface Spoiler: The Genre Savvy will quickly spot that you'll eventually come back to the Walled City, because, while there the first time, you can clearly see two areas you can't actually get in to.
• Item Get: To the ridiculous extent since it's longer and more awkward than many of those in Zelda games. Spoofed by VG Cat.
• It May Help You on Your Quest: Many of the "rewards" you get for heroing may as well have been some random trinket the NPC found lying on the ground, and in several cases that's exactly what it was. They are, of course, all immensely and immediately vital to your progress.
• Just a Kid: Tricky.
• Just Eat Him: Galdon. Doesn't end well for him.
• Late to the Party: Falco doesn't appear until near the end of the game.
• Lethal Lava Land: Volcano Force Point, and portions of Darkice Mines.
• Live Item: And how. Let's see, there were the bafomdads, the blue and white grubtubs you feed to Tricky and his mom respectively, the lantern fireflies, the krazoa spirits, scarabs...
• Lizard Folk: Some of the inhabitants, to an extent.
• Love At First Sight: What happens to Fox when he first sees Krystal. And judging by the way she looks into his eyes when he saves her from falling to her death at the end of the game, it's implied the same is true for her.
• Marathon Level: Darkice Mines.
• Meaningless Lives: A Let's Play of the game proved that you're bound to find far more bafomdads than you will times you'll need them, and besides that you'll find far more of the little gerbils than you can carry.
• Ms. Fanservice: Krystal.
• Mook Chivalry: Sharpclaw soldiers will, regardless of number or strength, engage you one at a time.
• My Sensors Indicate You Want to Tap That: Variant said about Fox by ROB when Krystal shows up to say thank you at the end of the game.
• Noob Cave: The bottom of the Thorntail well.
• Nubile Savage: Krystal.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Andross seems to really have lost it by the time he's revived, seeing how he mentions that he intends to destroy the Lylat System shortly after revealing himself to Fox. Originally, he was simply content with ruling the Lylat System. It's also heavily implied that he's the reason why Krystal is the last Cerinian left.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Fox, though he keeps his American accent pretty straight most of the time, has a tendency to lapse into British pronunciations.
• Palette Swap: By playing fetch with Tricky, you can change his color scheme around. They all look the same, they're just different colors, ranging from the muted to the garish.
• Palmtree Panic: Cape Claw.
• Petting Zoo People
• Plot Coupon: The Spell stones and Krazoa spirits.
• Precursors: It's implied that the Krazoa are these. Considering its set on a Science fiction universe and Clarke's Third Law its quite plausible they are.
• Record Needle Scratch: Happens when Fox first sees Krystal. After a little while gawking at her beauty and thinking what an idiot he'd been, he is snapped out of it by Peppy, reminding him he still has a job to do. When it happens, the Sexophone music playing in the background cuts out with a scratch.
• Scarabs For Nothing: Aside from a few plot-important items, and a Broken Bridge or two, scarabs are pretty meaningless. About the only item for sale that's not easy to come by on its own are Fireflies, but you rarely need those and they're not technically necessary anyway.
• Scenery Porn: You certainly can't say it's not a pretty game.
• Schizo-Tech: Scales and the rest of the Sharpclaw are running around with steel weapons, artillery, and hoverbikes. The Cloudrunner fortress is powered by Magitek. The Lightfoot tribe seems to thrive on Bamboo Technology. And at least one member of the Thorntail tribe is utterly fascinated by the "metal bird" you fly around in.
• Sexophone: Features when Fox first sees Krystal.
• Shout-Out: Fox being eaten the first time by Galdon (not to mention Galdon itself) heavily resembles Kay being eaten by the Bug as well as the Bug itself, respectively in the climax of Men in Black.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: SnowHorn Wastes and portions of Darkice Mines.
• Solve the Soup Cans: Oh yes indeedy.
• Stuff Blowing Up: If it's not Bomb Flowers, it's cannons. If it's not cannons, its heavy machinery that explodes when they malfunction. If its not that, it's the bomb barrels. If it's not that, then its whatever that gets in the way of the aforementioned hazards. Except the dinos.
• Temple of Doom: Ooooooh boy. No less than four: Walled City, Volcano Force Point, Ocean Force Point, and Krazoa Palace. The latter three double up with another level type: Lethal Lava Land, Down the Drain, and Gusty Glade, respectively.
• Translation Convention: Both played straight and averted. During Krystal's prologue, everyone was speaking in the Dino language instead of English, with the subtitles translating what they are saying. In Fox's chapter, any attempt to talk to the dinosaurs will have them speaking their native tongue (the translator Slippy invented was not quite ready yet) until Fox met up with Tricky.
• Tyrannosaurus Rex: General Scales and his cronies are antropomorphic, "fun-size" (relatively) versions. The Red-Eye tribe, and especially their boss, are more traditional versions.
• Unexpected Shmup Level: Most of Dragon Rock is a series of these, including the boss.
• The Unfought: Scales will be whisked away before either of you can really beat down each other.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: You can shoot many of the friendly dinos or otherwise get them caught in cross-fire or hurt them on purpose because they won't move from the site of a bomb-plant spot or away from a mook, but while they'll react they won't actually be harmed and can't be killed.
  • Tricky is also susceptible to this, but if he's harmed enough and knows the Flame command, he can attack back.
• What Could Have Been: The original Dinosaur Planet concept seemed interesting in its early stages. How the game would have fit together without shoehorning the Star FOX universe into it will forever be a mystery.
• What Happened to the Cloudrunner?: During Krystal's tutorial stage, she finds a Cloudrunner in a cage on Scale's ship and tries to rescue it. She is tossed overboard and goes directly from there to the distress signal. Neither the ship nor the fate of the caged Cloudrunner is ever mentioned again.
• Where It All Began: The game ends where it begins: Krazoa Palace.
• Wizard Needs Food Badly: Tricky becomes this if overused and underfed. He'll refuse to do anything if he isn't fed grubtubs and his meter drops.
• X Meets Y: The Legend of Zelda with furries and dinosaurs.