When Assault was initially announced by Nintendo and Namco, it was also rumored that an arcade game was under development,[4] but it was never officially revealed to the public.

As in previous games, main character Fox's wing mates occasionally call for help when chased by enemies, requiring the player to save them.

The game features a number of weapons, such as the blaster, machine gun, Homing Launcher, sniper rifle and the hand grenade.

[3] In the Japanese version, collecting all bronze and gold medals will also unlock the Famicom games Battle City and Star Luster respectively.

This mode starts off very limited, with only a few playable characters, weapons, items, and maps; but many more can be unlocked by either playing a certain number of multiplayer games or achieving certain accomplishments in-game.

Other supporting characters include Cornerian commanding officer General Pepper and Slippy's scientist father, Beltino Toad.

General Pepper orders an attack on Oikonny's forces, hiring the Star Fox team to assist the Cornerian Army.

After Fox destroys the creature, he recovers its damaged Core Memory unit, and Slippy's father, Beltino Toad, makes research on it.

Beltino explains the creature is a member of a race of robotic insectoids called Aparoids, one of which ravaged the Cornerian fleet seventeen years prior.

Fearing an invasion, Beltino asks Star Fox to recover an undamaged Core Memory so that they might find a way to stop the Aparoids.

Wishing to find Pigma, the team attack the base of his former cohorts, Star Wolf, in the asteroid field, and get them to reveal his hideout's location.

The team returns to contain the threat, aided by the unexpected arrival of Star Wolf, who seek to eliminate their common enemy.

He begrudgingly defeats him, but Peppy flies in an Arwing to soften Pepper's landing, saving his life but getting injured in the process.

Meanwhile, the Great Fox is swarmed and severely damaged by the Aparoids and Peppy has been infected, so he and ROB sacrifice themselves by crashing it into the shield to create an opening for the two teams to enter, causing the ship to get destroyed in the process.

Although upset by the possibility of losing his father figure, Fox keeps his composure and leads his despairing teammates to attack and not let his sacrifice being in vain.

While Star Wolf takes care of the remaining Aparoid forces, Fox and his allies reach the planet's core.

After a long battle, Fox launches the self-destruct program into the Queen, but she resists it and attempts to escape to create an antibody.

Successfully evacuating, the Star Fox team reunite with Peppy and ROB, who survived the crash via an escape pod and reveal the other infectees have been cured, including General Pepper.

The initial press release gave the game a tentative release date of April 2003, while also claiming that it was being developed by the same employees who worked on Ace Combat 2 at Namco;[4][8] neither of these came to pass, with the game receiving multiple delays until 2005 and also being produced and directed by other Namco staff members outside of the Ace Combat development team, particularly those that worked on the Klonoa series, such as Tsuyoshi Kobayashi and Toshiyuki Nakanishi.

[7] Reportedly, the development team had put much of their effort and resources into the battle mode, and even questioned creating a single-player mode at all, explaining why the game's initial reveal trailer in E3 2003 exclusively focused on the multiplayer;[10] According to Electronic Gaming Monthly, this particular video was booed by viewers, and EGM itself said the video was "remarkably unimpressive".

[9] However, Nintendo staff, particularly Imamura, would also provide requests and inputs on how the Star Fox characters and world would be portrayed.

For example, the inclusion of new female pilot Krystal, first introduced in Star Fox Adventures, was requested by Nintendo; according to Imamura, this was partially because he wanted players to see the characters grow and evolve over the course of the series, and thus there was a desire to acknowledge Adventures, despite it being considered to be something of a side story within the Star Fox series.