Star Fox 2 Almost Featured A Human Woman Pilot With Incredible Hair

The recent Nintendo leaks have revealed numerous old designs for SNES and Nintendo 64 games, including a janky-looking Yoshi and our first look at a Luigi model inside of Super Mario 64. One leak is for a game that, while designed for the SNES, didn't release until 2017--Star Fox 2.

As Kotaku reports, one of the early designs that has leaked for the game shows off a different co-pilot line-up. One of them is a human woman, and her hair is incredible. We don't know much else about her, but considering the absence of humans across the rest of the Star Fox series, it's certainly interesting to see one here.

The woman is Black, too, which is significant as Nintendo has historically had few Black characters. It was only the most recent Animal Crossing, for example, that started to allow you to choose Black skin for your villager. On the SNES, she would have been even rarer.

Unfortunately the game's lead designer, Dylan Cuthbert, does not remember this character. "This is all very early on prototype stuff, we switched around a ton of stuff," he said on Twitter. Unfortunately we'll probably never know more about this character, although we're glad to know that, at one point, she existed in the game.

Star Fox 2 is available now through Nintendo Switch Online. Unfortunately, this character does not appear in it. The game received a 5/10 in GameSpot's review, as it has not aged well. "Framerate issues and tech that wasn’t suited for this style of game prevent Star Fox 2’s vision from being fully realized, but it’s an important piece of gaming history kept alive with an official release," wrote reviewer Michael Higham.