Star Fox · Protagonist · Debut: 1993 · Super NES · Created by Shigeru Miyamoto (designed by Takaya Imamura)
The leader of Team Star Fox was inspired by the fox statues of Kyoto's Fushimi Inari Shrine. He debuted in the polygon shooter Star Fox in 1993 and has been in every Super Smash Bros. game since 1999.
Fox McCloud was created by Shigeru Miyamoto and designed by Takaya Imamura for Star Fox, released on the Super NES in 1993. Miyamoto conceived the character after visiting the Fushimi Inari Shrine in Kyoto, a short distance from Nintendo's headquarters, which is famous for its many fox statues. The idea of an animal pilot gave the polygon-based shooter a simple, readable cast at a time when 3D graphics could show very little detail. Fox leads Team Star Fox, a squadron of mercenary pilots completed by Falco Lombardi, Slippy Toad and Peppy Hare. His father, James McCloud, was also a mercenary pilot, now dead, and Fox has followed him into the profession. The characters' personalities came through mainly in radio chatter between missions and during combat, an approach that became much more prominent in Star Fox 64 (1997), the first fully voiced entry, in which Mike West voiced Fox in English. Fox reached an even wider audience through Super Smash Bros. He has been playable in every game in the series, starting with the first in 1999. In Super Smash Bros. Melee his speed made him so dominant in competitive play that "No items, Fox only, Final Destination" became a widely repeated internet joke about hyper-competitive players.
Star Fox's Super FX graphics could draw only simple shapes, so the cast had to communicate through silhouettes, portraits and voices rather than detailed models. A team of animal pilots solved that neatly, and the radio chatter between Fox and his wingmen became one of the series' defining features.