Recently, Xplay sat down with former NOA president Reggie Fils-Aimé. In part 1 of the interview about his time at Nintendo and his recent book, Disrupting the Game, the interviewer brings up Star Fox Adventures, to which Reggie responds:

Ah there you go, which is a very good game! Under-loved, under-appreciated!

I have to agree, Reggie. And not just because it brought Krystal into the world. For its time, it was a technical masterpiece and a genuinely fun game. It just had the misfortune of being very far from what some fans expected.

GoNintendo gave a rundown of this and other stuff in the interview. Thanks, very cool.

A couple of you found her already, but it looks like Estelle Ellis, Krystal's original voice actress from Star Fox Adventures, is now ready to announce to the world that she has a Twitter account. Her Twitter handle checks out. I can personally confirm that yes, this is really her account. She introduced it with a fun little custom video featuring animation and the model from the Half Life 2 mod. In it, she teases that she may work on other Krystal-related projects, and also, that Command isn't Canon (oof).

She'll be interacting with people through this account, so feel free to follow her and say hi. I hope to do some projects with her in the future myself.

twitter.com/RealKrystalFox

Site reader Doğancan recently did a presentation for his artificial intelligence class, and decided to include some automatically generated Krystal artwork. This was shown during class as one of the multiple examples of using artificial intelligence networks with sample data to generate new imagery that has never existed before. As you can see, these systems can generate pictures that clearly depict Krystal's likeness, though they are still having a little trouble detecting jewelry. (Inspired by that bottom-right one, an artist is currently working on a fanart of Krystal with a third eye in her forehead.)

With the success of his presentation, Doğancan is preparing his presentation research as an academic paper. It's still in the review phase, but it may be published later if accepted. That's right, there's a good chance that Krystal will have a place in published scientific research!

AI image generation has progressed a lot in recent years. Just 3 years ago, in early 2019, the state of the art in generating anthropomorphic portraits was... let's just say a valiant effort, but would never fool anyone. Check out this video by CodeParade for a rundown of one attempt to do this in early 2019.

The AI image generation used in Doğancan's presentation is from the AI website ArtBreeder. The idea is that many people upload their own tagged images and the site adds them to its ever-expanding library of data. From there, you can search for specific things and get tons of generated variations of it. Further, you can combine images together to create even more images, combining the aspects of each. This is the "breeder" part of "ArtBreeder". I searched for Krystal myself on this site and found tons more images. Krystal can be generated pretty well, as you can see in Doğancan's presentation, but of course there are many other things named "Krystal". Now, if you search for "Renamon", almost 100% of the results look like Renamon, most of them have no weird glitches either. Amazing! I'm told furry artists are already using this tool as inspiration for their own works or to help with the creation process itself, allowing the AI to do some of the heavy lifting.

For additional furry AI stuff, check out This Fursona Does Not Exist.

MidnightPremiere recently finished a commission for me. As is my custom with my commissions, she was encouraged to draw Krystal in her style and be creative with the pose. She made two variations, one with text and one without. She even made a short animated version, which animates the text like an in-game dialog. Thanks so much, MidnightPremiere!

There are two variations, available at full resolution:

• Without Text
• With Text

Summerset Banjo (or Sunnyside) has been posting a bunch of video content from the leaked version of Dinosaur Planet, including voice line audio from various characters in the game. Recently, he has posted Krystal's lines, along with a bunch of behind-the-scenes concept art. Unfortunately, I can't embed it at this time. Have a listen. You'll be able to hear a bunch of plot points and clear references to the fact that Fox McCloud had already replaced Sabre in the dialog, as well as mentions of Andross.

LuckyFox has begun work on a mod for Cave Story+ (from Steam or Epic game stores) which will replace the alternate story mode in Cave Story with Star Fox characters, visuals, and sounds. For those who don't know, in Cave Story+, you could play the game from the perspective of Curly Brace instead of Quote, which is largely the same as the regular mode, except that dialog sequences are a little different. You can see concept art and the work in progress version of the in-game sprite in the image above.

In the mod, Krystal replaces Curly Brace, Fox will replace Quote, the Blade weapon will be replaced with Krystal's Staff, and the Spur weapon will be replaced with a Blaster. LuckyFox is also working to remix some of the game songs to be more Star Fox like while still retaining the Cave Story style. LuckyFox sent a sample remix song of Mimiga Village.

LuckyFox is working on the dialog portraits now, but this is still pretty early in the mod's development. Right now, the modded mode is called "Krystal's Story", but in the end, it will probably be called "Krystal's Path". You can follow LuckyFox at @AizaFoxy on Twitter for news and updates on the mod.

Best of luck on this endeavor, LuckyFox!

Boy... that escalated quickly.

So the post I made a couple days ago about Gagnetar's Half Life 2 mod that involes Estelle Ellis to voicing lines has somehow caught the attention and imagination of the wider gaming press and literally thousands of gamers. Never had a story go viral before. Now that things have calmed down a little, there's a few things that need to be cleared up after seeing some of the comments and questions people had.

News Coverage

A bunch of news outlets and other sources picked up the story about the mod. Here's some of them:

• Polygon Story
• PC Gamer Story
• TechRaptor Story
• Metro.co.uk Story
• GoNintendo Story
• Large Post on Half-Life 2 Reddit

I wanted to thank a lot of them for linking back here to the Krystal Archive and making a special note that the site is safe for work. Thanks to everyone who took the time to check.

The Mod

Right off the bat, the original Tweet that went viral didn't mention that Gagnetar has a Twitter account. That was my mistake. I had forgotten that it was his Twitter account. I corrected that in another tweet.

I didn't make the mod, that was Gagnetar. Neither Gagnetar, nor I, are "rich."

A lot of people complained about the jiggle physics. These had already been toned way down before the story was posted, but one of the original videos was created before that change was implemented.

The model the Krystal rig is based on is by Warfaremachine. These models have had several variations throughout the years. Unfortunately, some of those variations were used in NSFW ways. However, the rig used for this mod is specifically the SFW version I originally commissioned partially for usage in this mod. You can download it yourself and use it for free right now, so long as you don't modify it to be NSFW.

The mod already exists and is available for download right now, just without the altered voice lines and other new features still in development. You can get the V2 Mod here, and Gagnetar's older V1 Mod here. The V1 Mod uses an older version of the rig. In BOTH mods, the rig is SFW. There are no explicit parts. We checked.

The reason why this rig in particular was used instead of one that more closely matches Krystal's appearance in Star Fox Adventures is because only this rig has the facial animation system necessary to sync the lip movements to the voice acting.

All of the voice lines for Half Life 2 are complete. They're partway done with Half Life 2 Episode One now, and they haven't yet started on the lines for Half Life 2 Episode Two.

I doubt Nintendo knows or cares about this mod. In the grand scheme of things, it's relatively minor.

When the mod is ready to be released, it will be hosted here as well as other places, in case one goes down.

Gagnetar made an update video talking about his reaction to all this news and clearing some things up. Check it out! (Small language warning.)

The Krystal Archive

For those of you just learning about this website, welcome! I hope you enjoy your stay. This is the Krystal Archive, a Krystal and Star Fox focused fansite I've been running since 2006. I want to reiterate that the Krystal Archive is designed to be safe for all ages as we celebrate our favorite characters.

I am "Mr. Krystal" or "Mr. K", which is just an alias designed to be boring. The site is about Krystal, not me. I have a day job doing web development. I consider myself a furry fan, but you wouldn't know it by talking to me in real life. As many of you have determined, I am quite a dedicated and focused individual, having run a site on such a specific thing for so long. I didn't plan for this to happen, but here we are.

Again, I am not the mod's creator, that's Gagnetar. I know him as well as Estelle Ellis. If you want more content about Estelle Ellis, I did an interview with her about her time at Rare and her role as Krystal a few years ago. You can listen to the interview on YouTube.

Lastly, yes, Nintendo is aware of this site's existence, and they think it's cool to have fans so dedicated. They have never sent me a cease-and-desist letter. That was an April Fool's joke.

Gagnetar is working on updating his Krystal mod for Half Life 2 to include a complete rework of Alyx's lines by the original Krystal voice actress, Estelle Ellis! Even after all this time, she sounds lovely as Krystal. For that extra bit of polish, Gagnetar even took the trouble to rewrite some of the lines to fit better with Krystal as a character in the game world, rather than simply doing a word-for-word recreation.

The mod apparently contains some additional features that Gagnetar wouldn't divulge, "everyone will just have to wait and see." Even I don't know what they are. He's planning to release the mod on Star Fox Adventure's 20th Anniversary, which probably means September 23, 2022.

Check out the example videos where Gagnetar shows off his ongoing work on the game and some commentary on different aspects of the mod as he encounters features in the gameplay.

Wow, this is really cool! It's a reanimated sequence that appears in both Dinosaur Planet and Star Fox Adventures where the LightFoot ambush the player (Krystal in Dinosaur Planet). Using a combination of Star Fox Adventures and Dinosaur Planet models, a custom Krystal model, and voice lines from Dinosaur Planet, Jo Lumaya has recreated what might have been in glorious high resolution!

Unfortunately, I can't embed the video here, so watch it on YouTube.

The releases of new models to The Models Resource continue to march on, with several new (or new to me) Krystal-related 3D models ripped and ready for download. I'm pretty sure one of them is the in-game playable model for Krystal from Dinosaur Planet.

• Dinosaur Planet Krystal Model - Released April 2nd by Models124717
• Dinosaur Planet Krystal's Hands Model - Released April 2nd by Models124717
• Dinosaur Planet Krystal's Staff Model - Released November 6, 2021 by Models124717
• Assault Krystal Model - Released July 6, 2019 by starweed69
• Assault Krystal Head Model - Released a date I couldn't determine, by Models124717