Lots of people are extremely happy about the return of Fox McCloud in Star Fox, the character’s first brand new game since Star Fox Zero. But perhaps no one is happier than Takaya Imamura, the original character designer of McCloud and co.

Imamura-san has been sharing his thoughts on the movie on social media, which are all pretty positive, but he’s also been answering fan questions about the gang’s new look (thanks, Nintendo Everything!).

Fox and friends have had two new designs in the past few months, with the first come in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. Lots of viewers were fans of Fox’s revised look, keeping a cute-ish Nintendo vibe. The Switch 2 game seems to be going for a more realistic look.

“I wake up in the morning. A ton of messages have come in. Oh! Star Fox is finally making a comeback…” (via Google Translate) reads one of Imamura’s messages; “wait, this isn’t a dream, right?” Not it is not, sir.

One fan responded to the tweet, asking him what he thought of the new character designs. And Imamura’s reply is muted but positive: “I guess this is how it turns out if I’m not supervising… or something like that. I think the concept is good.”

Imamura has worked on the Star Fox series up until Guard and Zero, where he acted as supervisor. He eventually retired from Nintendo in 2021, after 32 years at the company.

In another response, Imamura told a separate fan that “Personally, I prefer the movie version [of the characters], but I thought this one [the game] was good in its own right–it had a clear direction!” So, while Imamura appears to like both versions, he slightly prefers the movie design, it appears.

Meanwhile, we’re running a poll that compares different video game designs for Fox, Falco, Slippy, and Peppy (plus a couple of other Star Fox staples), and at the time of writing, most of you seem to prefer Star Fox’s Switch 2 look to previous iterations, or you at least like them a lot.