Wolfamiibo has recently posted about his new Acrylic Krystal Charms. They sparkle most brilliantly! They can be bought on Etsy for $10.

This is amazing! Finally! After years of having only printed and extremely low resolution versions of this promo image, someone found a copy of the original. This is at glorious 1771 by 2500 pixels!

Backstory time. When Star Fox Assault was being released, Nintendo and Namco provided promotional images to promote the game. These were sent out to websites and media outlets in high resolution so they could have visuals big enough to print or use in online graphics. This particular one, of Krystal holding her gun over her shoulder, was only ever publicly published online (to my knowledge), on the official Japanese website for Star Fox Assault, and at a very low resolution. However, it did exist in higher resolutions. The various Star Fox Assault Player's Guides in Japan featured this image in much higher resolution and I even found it used by this French publication.

But what about America? Well, I actually managed to obtain the official press kit for that year's E3, which contained a lot of high resolution renders from Star Fox Assault. But that one? That one wasn't in there. I guess Nintendo decided to keep it out of the North American market, perhaps because it was considered too sexy. Whatever the reason, it was never published anywhere that could easily be obtained. I floated the idea of contacting the publishers of the various Japanese Player's Guide companies to see if they would send out the image, but I was never able to get a good Japanese-speaking contact.

Then, a few days ago, this topic on Reddit showed up. I was surprised to find it to be the full resolution. I had thought it was my original ripped image that I had cleaned up and removed the background from. But it was much too detailed. An artist's reproduction, perhaps? No! This was the original, or at least a resized version. The original post creator pointed me to this page on the Star Fox Wiki. You can see that it was retrieved directly from "Nintendo of Europe", which probably means their media distribution website. The real questions now are, who had access to that media site, and what other Star Fox materials can be obtained there? I have already confirmed that their version of Krystal with the minigun is higher resolution than my already high resolution version.

All this was done last year, in January 2019! Amazing that so many years later, we're still discovering new things.

Hugo Peters is a reclusive programmer and game developer who has been exploring Star Fox Adventures and Dinosaur Planet code for a hobby over the last several years. He has made many discoveries, some of which we talked about before. He's also responsible for several tools that help extract data from Star Fox Adventures and the Kiosk version. All this is culminating in what appears to be a fangame designed to be a playable tribute to Dinosaur Planet, featuring a custom engine and references to never-before-seen content from the game. If you look closely, you can even see a nice little Dinosaur Planet Krystal model he appears to have made from scratch.

Very excited to see where this goes and what it can reveal of the history of Dinosaur Planet and the development of Star Fox Adventures! Check out the original post where you can keep up to date on his releases. You can also check out his Dinosaur Planet related page on his website.

I just got off the phone with FoxType1973's sister. She wanted me to let everyone know that her brother, who also went by Richard and Volpfoxtoon on Twitter, has passed away. After many many years of cancer and associated medical treatments, he finally succumbed. What's remarkable about him was that he had been given just a few months to live by doctors some 4 or 5 years ago. Throughout his life, he constantly defied doctor expectations and lived through terrible medical problems that would have killed most other people. This final bout with illness, which started in 2013, eventually lead to the issues that took him. He took a turn for the worst on Monday. A few minutes after getting to visit with his sister and mother, he passed away, peacefully, on Monday night (fittingly on May the Fourth, Star Wars Day).

For those who didn't know him, FoxType1973 was an older gentleman who frequented a lot of different furry conventions and often served as a cameraman for Ayano Harumaki, a Krystal cosplayer. He has provided the Krystal Archive with lots of footage and photographs of Ayano at many different events over the years. When I met up with him and Ayano in person at a convention, FoxType1973 and I collaborated to help make Ayano Harumaki's gatling gun prop a reality, no easy feat considering the logistics of shipping something so large to Japan. Before that, FoxType1973 also made a guest appearance on the Krystal Archive Podcast, Episode 26. The last time I got to see him was in May of last year, when he was in good spirits and seemed to be recovering.

Richard was a man of many interests. He loved the technical mechanics of cameras and spacecraft. He spent his days working on video equipment and doing video editing. He was a big fan of Star Wars and Star Fox. He loved to go to conventions and visit the Disney parks. He'll be missed. His family is doing ok. They are at peace knowing that Richard's suffering is over now. Please keep them in your prayers.

Update: FoxType's sister wanted me to let you all know that if you are interested in sharing condolences or stories of her brother, please email her at adjmaus@aol.com. She will be making a memory book for her family about him.

NYALICE continues to work on the Krystal cosplay project. With the head mostly done, the next part being attacked is the armor. After posting, sketched patterns, the actual armor pieces were made. They appear to be made of cut and textured EVA foam that was then given a base-coat of gold paint followed by airbrushing details.

From the sound of some of NYALICE's tweets, there's some medical and family issues that are causing a lot of stress and pain over there. Please keep NYALICE in your thoughts and prayers.

Here's the rundown. Musician daniwell used the vocaloid Hatsune Miku to create a new song, Wonder of Wonder. He then went to the trouble of creating a website where anyone can sketch their own character and artwork to have it dance along to the song in 3D. It's all very cool, and very very cute! J-Fujita decided to draw Krystal, with particle effects of General Scales and Fox (or maybe it's Wolf?). Watch it here!

Fictional craft reviewers Spacedock set their sights on the Arwing from Star Fox. This is a rough overview of the tech specs and capabilities of this air and space superiority fighter.

Check out this chilled out groove of some of our favorite tracks from Star Fox Adventures, remixed by Metal Fortress. Tracks are:

1. Krystal is captured
2. Thorntail Hollow (Night)
3. Ancient Well
4. Cape Claw
5. Thorntail Shop
6. Ocean Force Point Temple
7. Krazoa Palace

Metal Fortress has done a couple other Star Fox songs, which I will post later. Though the medley itself doesn't appear to be available for download, the MIDI of "Krystal is Captured" is available for download on his site.

If you've been wondering where I've been or what I've been doing for the last two weeks, here's your answer! I've been spending all my spare time (and some of my sleep schedule) working on the extremely complex embossing pattern for the staff. Just to give you a taste of it, here's what I had to do to generate the image above:

1. Take my existing staff texture SVG and remake it with single curves.
2. Import the SVG into Blender.
3. Manually create geometry for the surface of the curve (which involved several false starts and issues). This manual process was done using the very complex and detail-focused vertical-only polygon method, since the structure would need to be wrapped around a tube.
4. Manually extrude the geometry and bevel it by hand (because the built-in tools couldn't handle it for some reason).
5. Made sure dimensions were correct.
6. Added subdivision detail.
7. Wrapped the model around a tube.
8. And finally scaled it appropriately to the real size of the tube.

All this had to be done before I could begin chopping the pieces up for 3D printing. Fortunately, that process was much faster. Over the last three days or so, I've been able to print one copy of ALL the parts. I wrapped some tape around a tube, sticky side out, to allow me to position the 3D prints where they would normally be glued on. As you can see below, it worked beautifully.

The inclusion of these embossed parts makes the prop feel quite special in the hand. It's very "alien", if you will, and very exciting to have something so intricate to show off.

The next steps will involve gluing these pieces together, followed by smoothing and prepping their surfaces. Once I have one good copy of all the pieces, I will make a silicon mold of them (something I've never done before), so that I can make colored resin copies, perfectly duplicating them. Each shaft will take about 3 sets of these pieces in a repeating pattern. With the three copies, I will be able to start gluing them to the shaft (covered in blue window tint). When everything is attached, I will probably apply some kind of clear lacquer to the outer surface to ensure that the glued pieces stay in place by basically covering the entire surface with a thin layer of plastic. This will also protect the coloring of the embossed parts.

Here's what the SVG pattern ended up looking like:

So still a lot of work to do, but it's now really starting to look like Krystal's Staff!

PS - Is anyone interested in the 3D files I made? I can make the SVG pattern, the 3D embossed files, and the 3D printable embossed parts available if anyone is interested. Perhaps to make your own highly accurate in-game model.

With sorrow, I report what you probably already have heard: Rick May, the iconic voice of Peppy Hare and Andross from Star Fox 64, as well as numerous other characters, has passed away today. He was 79, living in Sweden after a lifetime of acting and performance. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and close friends.