Players can also record their own voices into the game's "gibberish generator" using the built-in DS microphone where it is converted into the garbled speech of the various characters.

[citation needed] The game is set in the Lylat system, using a similar map as Star Fox 64 to switch between each areas.

ROB 64 pilots the Great Fox when on the map screen, while Slippy's father Beltino Toad makes an appearance during a mission briefing.

In addition to primary antagonist the Anglar Emperor, Andrew Oikonny, Pigma Dengar, the ghost of Andross,[8] and F-Zero series racer Octoman can all appear as bosses depending on the player's route in gameplay.

Peppy has succeeded General Pepper as commander of the Cornerian army; Falco has become an independent mercenary; Slippy has retired from active flying to spend time with his fiancée Amanda; and Krystal has joined the Star Wolf team after breaking up with Fox.

While patrolling the galaxy with ROB 64, Fox learns of the appearance of the Anglars, a race of aquatic beings that had been bioengineered by Andross and living beneath the acidic seas on the planet Venom.

The player is able to select Fox's actions through dialogue choices, which affect the progression of stages, the characters that appear, and the events of the story itself.

Dylan Cuthbert and Takaya Imamura stated in an interview with IGN in 2006 that if this storyline was continued, it would "start in the middle", not relying on any of the game's endings.

[10] In a 2018 Reddit post, Cuthbert stated that "canon is something the fans like to try to follow but Command was meant to be an alternate timeline kind of game, hence the choices you make.

Q-Games was working on a puzzle game called Digidrive for Nintendo when they were approached by Shigeru Miyamoto, who suggested that they'd do a concept demo for Star Fox for the then-coming Nintendo DS, which lead to the team spending a couple of months creating a "space elevator" demo styled after the original Star Fox.

Once Command's direction was decided upon and the main development began, Q-Games would handle the main game design, but the music, sound, story and characters were handled in-house by Nintendo EAD, with Hajima Wakai (who previously composed Star Fox 64's soundtrack) returning as the composer, and Imamura being responsible for the characters, enemies and storylines, and their respective endings.

[12] Imamura had originally intended on creating a single, linear narrative somewhat similar to the one presented in Command's predecessor, Star Fox: Assault, but Cuthbert would ultimately convince him to turn it into a larger, branching storyline with multiple pathways and endings,[15] inspired by choose your own adventure gamebooks such as the Fighting Fantasy series.

[12] According to Imamura, when approaching the multiple story arcs in Command, he was influenced by the TV drama show 24, with its focus on character development and intertwining plot-lines.

While the team investigated the possibility of utilizing the game's strategy gameplay elements in the Wi-Fi mode,[14] it was ultimately decided early on to incorporate only dog-fighting, as they were looking for something that simple and easy to play, and also because of the positive reception towards the dogfights in Star Fox 64.

[15] As online was new territory for the team, this part of the game's development reportedly took a bit longer than expected, having to deal with issues such as keeping all players in sync.

[22] Star Fox Command received IGN DS's August 2006 Game of the Month Award for capturing the fun and essence that made the series significant.