Nintendo says Dr. Kawashima's polygonal face was inspired by StarFox's Andross

Ever since Dr. Kawashima first appeared in the Brain Age series, he's sported a very polygonal face. It's a look that Nintendo has stuck with for every iteration of the character, and now we know where it comes from. In an interview with Nintendo and Dr. Kawashima himself, Nintendo developer and producer Kouichi Kawamoto reveals that none other than Andross from StarFox was the team's inspiration. Check out the details below, as translated by Oni Dino.

In our initial proposal, we planned to use Dr. Kawashima’s actual likeness, but it felt really strange having his actual face appear in the DS game. So afterward, we put together another idea that had Dr. Kawashima illustrated as a character with a graduation cap on, but our department head at the time, Takahashi, saw it and said, “Nah, this is no good.” He gave us a few suggestions and from there we imagined the final boss from “Star Fox”, and that’s how we decided on this rough, polygonal look.

...but we of course had to make some changes to make him more of an amusing character. Takahashi and the head designer put a lot of love into it, but I was still worried if Dr. Kawashima would give us his approval on the design. Many university professors are quite serious, right? I remember being on my way to the university to talk with him, figuring he was going to hate it.