Perhaps one of the Super Famicom's best known games was Star Fox. A huge marketing campaign in anticipation of the game lead players to preorder the game in the millions. This would be the first game that Miyamoto developed alongside a foreign company (British developer Argonaut Games). The game is not possible on typical SNES hardware. Instead, Nintendo allowed the team in England to develop the Super FX chip, which expanded the abilities of the console and was the first 3D graphics accelerator sold to consumers. Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka designed the game while the crew back in the United Kingdom handled the technical work. From the beginning Miyamoto abandoned the idea of having the game feature cliched science fiction elements and instead opted for animals to be the stars.
I read this part of the fantastic Miyamoto personnel profile and did find it missing some bits. I will list what i know as fact here.
- The FX team and Japanese Nintendo team worked together on the FX chip. It was mainly argonaut providing the new polygon technology with the EAD/R&D2 guys providing SNES hardware background. I am not sure exactly how the multiple groups worked together.
- Separate from that, Nintendo contracted some Argonaut employees to fly to Kyoto and program the game internally with the EAD designers. Dylan Cuthbert and Giles Goddard worked inside Nintendo's offices as contracted programmers. Star Fox programmers and the FX technology team were not the same. But i am sure it provided an advantage that Cuthbert and Goddard were familiar with the technology.
- Tezuka did not have much involvement in the game. Matter of fact, it has been stated that Tezuka does not participate much in 3D development at all. Apparently he does not play the games well and therefore feels he is not an expert in the field. Miyamoto is more philosophical in his 3D design as well.
- Both Cuthbert and Goddard were directly employed by Nintendo Co., Ltd at some point, aside from the contract. But Cuthbert I believe only lasted 1.5 year during his Star Fox 2 tenure, while Goddard stayed MUCH LONGER. It is all in their linked in.