SNES classic Star Fox introduced the world to Fox McCloud and the rest of his anthropomorphic animal flight team, and it seems those characters have a deep connection to some notable Nintendo developers. In fact, Fox himself channels the "essence" of Shigeru Miyamoto.
Star Fox's character designs were originally "an extension of the whole F-Zero world," artist and character designer Takaya Imamura explains in Edge magazine issue 407, so it was a more realistic sci-fi world with "space pirates and that kind of thing. Then one day Miyamoto-san came along and said, 'Let's make these characters animals.'" Fox McCloud's species was settled on because near Nintendo HQ "there was a shrine called Fushimi Inari, which enshrines a fox deity."
