|
Falco Lombardi (ファルコ・ランバルディ Faruko Ranbarudi) is an expert pilot of the Star Fox team, and a close friend of Fox. Falco Lombardi is often cocky and smart-mouthed.
Personality and Traits[]
Falco is one of the most respected and skilled pilots of the Star Fox Team. He is often portrayed as brash, overconfident and cocky and possesses an uncooperative attitude, though he is devoted to his teammates and is always delighted to work alongside them when they need him. Falco has incredible nerves, and can accurately predict the tide of battle. He also refers to his as "prey," as seen in Star Fox Command, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and Star Fox 64. He also has a preference to flying aircraft over any other vehicles, as shown during the conclusion of the Aquas campaign in Star Fox 64, where he says that he will always take the sky any day after the Blue-Marine managed to pass with flying colors upon destroying Bacoon, as well as his activation quote when activating his Final Smash in Super Smash Bros. Brawl , Super Smash Bros. 4, and when Fox suggests that he comes down, he refuses to do so during the Titania mission in Star Fox 64, its 3DS remake, and Star Fox Zero, "Personally, I prefer the air". He stays true to his preference in Star Fox Assault and never once had a ground mission with Fox like the rest of his teammates do, while he helps save Fox during the Fichina mission in the comfort of his Arwing by letting him ride on his wing, coupled with the fact that he does not like being subjected to low temperatures. However, in the latter game during the Sector Alpha mission, if Fox manages to take out all enemies in the first room of phase 2, Falco will comment that the Walker is fine to work with even though it's technically not an aircraft.
Although overall during his career on the Star Fox Team, he was significantly cocky, he has mellowed out over time. In some cases, he also has some extent of being aware of something he finds rather off. This was especially shown during a mission in Sector X in Star Fox 64, where upon witnessing that the base in the region was destroyed, he continuously voices his suspicions and fears that something is seriously wrong, especially wondering who took out the base, and even proceeding to warn Fox to look behind him upon spotting the entity who was the source of the destruction of the base, which is revealed to be Andross's secret weapon Spyborg. As the team's ace pilot, Falco is the best Arwing pilot in the team, making him very handy in battle. However, he has a tends to not follow advice, usually because he dislikes authority, and also likes to be late and appear at the last minute to save the day as seen in the end of Adventures, and in several missions in Command. This distaste is frequently subtle as shown when pays no attention to anyone in a higher position, such as when he does not look in General Pepper's direction during the ending of Star Fox 64, and in Star Fox Assault he acts pretty indifferent to Beltino before going through the Orbital Gate to reach the Aparoid Homeworld.
Physical Appearance[]
Falco is a blue-feathered avian with long blue tail feathers and red patches around his blue (or green starting from Star Fox Zero) eyes with yellow eyelids. He also has an athletic and slender build, and is shown to be taller than Fox, as seen in the Super Smash Bros. games, and Star Fox: Assault. Falco's name comes from the name of the falcon genus. Although Falco is in appearance a bird, he seems to lack the ability to fly due to his human-like appearance. Falco is the tallest Star Fox team member.
His regular outfit consists of a usually orange G-suit (except in Star Fox, in which the suit is brown), white flight jacket and white or silver boots. In Star Fox Adventures, he wore a green leather jacket over a white shirt, green leather pants, a white headband, and sunglasses. In Star Fox Assault, he wore a flashy red and silver long-sleeve jumpsuit with large shoulder guards. In Star Fox Command, he returned to his Star Fox 64 attire, but his white jacket is more detailed and his G-suit is red.
History[]
Pre-Star Fox Years[]
Little is known about Falco's childhood life or if he had any relatives to speak of, as he seems to treat this as a private matter and avoiding any talk about what he did prior to joining the Star Fox team. He is likely born on Corneria, though his horror at the state of Zoness seems to imply that he is likely born there, or visited the planet and either spent a good amount of time there to know what it originally looked like before it was badly contaminated. During his teenage years, he possibly enlisted in the Cornerian Flight Academy, but at some point dropped out to become a rogue pilot, where it was full of recklessness and adventure. Falco formed a group of space hot rodders with himself as their leader and has led them for a couple of years, up until he was asked by his old friend Fox to join the Star Fox team, which Falco took up the offer, although him joining the team may have been the result of having a fallout between him and Katt Monroe, which he has expressed irritation about always having to save her that led him to leave the gang. He ends up becoming friends with the other members, Peppy Hare and Slippy Toad and gets involved in numerous missions.
Star Fox[]
Falco appeared along the rest of original Star Fox crew in the original Star Fox. He is the ace pilot of the team rivaling that of Fox's and behind him in leadership. He's also Fox's best friend. However, he has a tendency to not follow advice (he dislikes authority). Falco often joins and leaves the Star Fox team throughout the series of games, as he joined the team for the action.
Star Fox 64[]
After receiving a distress call from General Pepper that Andross declared war on the Lylat System, the team runs to their Arwings. During the Corneria mission, Falco is horrified by the damage done to Corneria City; Halfway through the level, two conditions must be met to take an alternate route and Falco's fate depends on what happens and if the player takes too long, Falco will be forced to withdraw but if Fox acts quickly enough, Falco will be grateful. If Fox does not go through the stone hollows, the team will take the Easy Route to Granga and head to Meteo, but if Fox goes through all of the stone hollows, Falco will become impressed enough to lead him a different way to the Attack Carrier that leads them to Sector Y. During the Solar mission, Falco reacts with shock when he saw the bioweapon named Vulcain and realizes that Andross is insane at this point. In Sector X, Falco will become nervous when he sees the base there destroyed and wonders who is responsible, and if Slippy is swatted to Titania during the battle with Spyborg, he will be annoyed that they have to save him. At Titania, he receives help from Fox and provides much needed backup. After they save Slippy, he remarks that they always have "to save his hide". Upon arrival on Zoness, Falco will get upset that Andross would dare pollute the planet's once beautiful oceans and is surprised to see Katt being there to help them out, and once the Sarumarine is destroyed, Falco noticed that Katt disappeared, but he will be annoyed by her presence on either Macbeth or Sector Z. Falco will help shoot one of the eight switches during a battle with the Forever Train Engineer and his robot Mechbeth. At both Fichina and Bolse, Falco will fight against Leon of the Star Wolf team and managed to beat him. In Venom's Hard Route, he once again beats the chameleon, but he will be ordered by Fox to stay behind with the rest of his teammates while he deals with Andross. Once Fox escapes, Falco will react differently depending on how they get to Venom. If they came to Venom from Bolse, Falco will reluctantly admit that he did good, but if they came to Venom from Area 6, Falco's praise is more genuine, acknowledging him as a leader.
Falco was then seen going to the reward ceremony, and looked as if he wasn't paying attention to General Pepper. He was then seen, along with the rest of the team, to be seen running back to the Great Fox.
Star Fox Adventures[]
Nobody knew what became of him up until he returned out of the blue to save Fox from the recently resurrected Andross who was about to kill him. While it isn't known how he learned about this, but it is possible that he may have heard of what team Star Fox was up to and he wanted to get in on the excitement as there had not been any in the last four years. He arrived and assisted Fox with the fight, sending him Smart Bombs to launch in Andross's mouth. After the battle, Falco seemed willing to rejoin the team as he docked in the Great Fox, and humbly asks to be let back in and his request granted the request easily after a few tense moments from Fox. Falco is introduced to Krystal, Fox's love interest, nudging him to get friendly and invite her into the team.
Star Fox Assault[]
Falco Lombardi's appearance from Star Fox: Assault.
One year has passed since the events of Star Fox Adventures, Falco and his teammates arrive at Fortuna at the behest of the Cornerian Defense Force to deal with the rebellion perpetuated by Andrew Oikonny, who left the Star Wolf team to take up his late uncle's role as the leader of the Androssians. He ends up being the first to realize that their job was to stop the rebellion by taking out Oikonny and he follows his teammates to the Arwings and pursued Oikonny to the surface of Fortuna. Once they were able to catch up to Andrew, Falco wastes no time poking fun at the rebellion leader's attempt to emulate Andross. Once Oikonny is suddenly defeated by an unseen force, Falco saw a moth-like Aparoid destroy Oikonny's ship and almost attacks Krystal. Falco helps Fox take down the Aparoid and gets back to the Great Fox after it was defeated.
Falco listens as Beltino Toad and General Pepper explains the history of an incident that took place seventeen years ago, where a sole Aparoid that attacked one of the bases and may have been a foreshadowing of the present events. Falco and the rest of them were ordered by the general to investigate a strange distress signal coming from Katina. Falco and the team stayed airborne while Fox handles the enemies from the ground, and later uses the Landmaster tank to take down the Aparoids from there. When Fox is attacked by a huge Aparoid walker, Falco was not able to help in battle, but Fox managed to destroy the creature by himself. Unexpectedly, Pigma Dengar, who was responsible for the distress signal turned it off and swipes the Core Memor from the Aparoid that Fox tried to retrieve, and the team regroups at the Great Fox.
The team pursues the fleeing Pigma to the Sargasso Space Hideout where they end up losing track of him and one of the ruffians managed to hack into their channel and Falco tells him to identify himself while Slippy reveals that the Core Memory that Pigma stole contains the location of the Aparoid Homeworld and they must get it back. Fox orders Falco and Krystal to take to the space front while he and Slippy handle the enemy teleporters within the base. Once all of the teleporters are destroyed, Star Wolf, who had been in hiding since the Lylat Wars appeared and is revealed to have a new crew member named Panther Caroso, and Falco fights against Leon again until Fox defeats them. After that, Falco gets into a small argument with Panther, who is infatuated with Krystal, and the Star Wolf recruit reveals that Pigma is at Fichina and the teams leave the base.
Once they arrived at Fichina, Falco remarks that the planet is freezing, which Fox replies that it now has a climate control center that allowed Fichina to become habitable for life. Peppy reveals that the device was down and Fox went down to get it fixed. Falco isn't too happy about Fox being the hero, but he changes his mind due to his dislike of cold temperatures. When Fox is trapped inside the center and attacked by Aparoid-infected sentry robots, Falco becomes worried and tells Fox to hang on while he finds a way in, and will tell Krystal not to rush him while he is trying to figure it out. He eventually flies down to save Fox from the robots and lands roughly in the building and tells Fox to get on his wing and fight the Aparoids while Peppy works on sending an Arwing to him. Pigma appears and Falco chases after him, but had to stop when the climate control device got infected by an Aparoid. Falco landed as Fox's Arwing arrives, and Fox gets off and continues to help Fox defeat the Aparoid without causing too much damage to the device.
The team followed Pigma once again to the Meteo Asteroid Belt and Falco scoffs about Pigma trying to hide in an asteroid belt, which Fox asks if this is like an amusement park to a former gang member like him, which Falco confirms. He follows the team to the base where Pigma had constructed in the Asteroid Belt and Falco was there when the team witnessed Pigma's horrific mutation into a giant Aparoid as a result of being severely infected, but their efforts destroyed the assimilated monstrosity and they reclaimed the Core Memory.
Once they returned to the Great Fox, the teams sneds the Core Memory to Beltino so he can find the location of the homeworld, however, their trip to Corneria was cut short when Krystal receives a telepathic distress call from Sauria that the dinosaur tribes are under attack. Fox ends up having to delay the invasion of the Aparoid Homeworld to help the dinosaurs fight them off. Falco stays in his Arwing and fights in the air while exchanging snark with Slippy while Fox and Krystal handle things from the ground. When Fox and Krystal began to flirt with each other, Falco reminds them that they need to handle the Aparoids first, and Falco asks Krystal if this planet was where they first met, which Krystal confirms. Falco and Slippy kept the skies cleared while Fox and Krystal got rid of the Aparoid hatchers and left after wrapping up their mission.
Once the team left Sauria, they received a distress call from General Pepper, who tells them that Corneria City and the defense force has been ambushed, and eventually lose contact with the general, prompting the team to fly to Corneria to destroy a series of radar jammers. Falco gets sulky about Fox going alone while Fox explains could not risk getting them all killed at once and wants him to take his place as the leader if something happens to him. During the fight, Falco noticed that the enemies they are fighting against were all infected Cornerians and is later surprised when Fox was saved by Star Wolf from the Aparoids. However, he was too shocked to do anything while Fox dealt with an infected General Pepper and his flagship, and after he is defeated, Peppy flies in his Arwing to slow his fall.
The team flew to the space around Corneria where the Beltino Orbital Gate was found and Beltino himself, informed them that they found the Aparoid Homeworld and the Aparoids' weakness to apoptosis and is currently working on the self-destruct program to use against the Aparoid Queen, the mother of all Aparoids. The gate would then be attacked by a series of missiles, but both the Star Fox and Star Wolf teams managed to take down the missiles and headed to the Aparoid Homeworld. Falco remained in his Arwing, attacking from the air with Slippy while Fox and Krystal destroy the Aparoid hatchers from the ground.
Once all the hatchers are destroyed, the team attempts to enter the Aparoid Queen's lair, but a new energy shield prevented the team from entering. Peppy takes the lead by flying the critically damaged Great Fox with the intent to ram into the shield when its lasers do not have any affect on it. A visibly distressed Falco tries to tell him not to do this, but Peppy insists and hits the shield while telling the team to get in before it goes back up again. Despite all the strong emotions going around, the team flew into the depths of the planet, and noticed that Star Wolf had followed them inside and Falco gets into an argument with Leon as they go deeper through the caverns. Star Wolf then lures the Aparoids away from Star Fox before they arrived at the depths where they met with the queen. During the battle, the Aparoid Queen begins traumatizing the team by imitating the voices of her victims and even uses James McCloud's voice; prompting Falco to remind Fox about his father's actual beliefs and death, which Fox snaps that James would never tell him to give up, but Wolf's advice from Corneria echoes in Fox's mind, telling him to act without hesitation to shrug off the psychological torture inflicted on them despite the struggle. The team fights the queen and Fox fires the self-destruct program into her, but the queen began to suppress the program and attempts to escape, forcing the team to follow her and they managed to destroy her, activating the program. With all of the Aparoids dead, the team escape from the doomed planet and managed to make it out just as it exploded.
Just as the team was finally given the time to mourn the sacrifices so many people made to protect the galaxy, Slippy noticed something that turned the mourning to rejoicing in their victory when they find that Peppy and ROB had barely managed to survive the Great Fox's destruction through an escape pod. It didn't take long for Falco to figure out that Fox know about this from the start. Falco then asks Fox what they plan to do next, but Fox thanks his team for their support.
Star Fox Command[]
Around two to three years after the Aparoid war ended and Star Fox had disbanded; Falco wandered the Lylat System in his customized Arwing called the Sky Claw, drifting from job to job while searching for the same thrills he had in the past. In the Japanese version, Falco's motivations to leave the team has him instead going back to spend time with his old friends from his days in the galactic gang.
During the first ending, Falco helps Krystal make amends with Fox and the team is brought back together and they would end up recruiting Amanda as their fifth member.
In one ending, Falco was tracked down and joined Fox's son Marcus as the senior member of a new Star Fox Team, apparently serving an advisory role similar to Peppy Hare in the original team. He had at that point apparently become a "legendary pilot".
Falco is only seen in the first panel of the third ending where Krystal ends up leaving Fox months after reconciliation. It isn't clear if Falco and Slippy stayed in the team.
In the eighth ending, after learning that the Star Fox team defeated the Anglar forces without him nor was he ever told about their whereabouts to begin with, Falco was so overwhelmed by anger and grief that he refuses to attend Slippy's wedding with Amanda due to seeing it as an insult with their abandonment. Things were looking extremely dark for him until Katt Monroe contacted him after learning what happened and offers him a position to start his own team. Listening to Katt Monroe, they form a new team with Dash Bowman named Star Falco.
In the nineth ending, he attempts to console Fox McCloud who is distraught over having lost everything, including Krystal multiple times before he gets an idea to converting his and Fox's ships into racing machines and retire as pilots for the Ultra-High Speed Galaxy race: G-Zero Grand Prix (a play on the Nintendo's F-Zero franchise). They become successful racers and forget their life as part of Star Fox.
Star Fox Zero[]
Falco returns in Zero acting in his familiar roles he held previously. During the battle against the Monarch Dodora, Slippy suggests that Falco should try talking to it for reasoning, Falco however reacts by rejecting the idea since being avians doesn't automatically make them friends.
Other Appearances[]
Star Fox 2[]
Falco, along with the rest of the cast, was originally going to appear in Star Fox 2, but the game was canceled. The game was released for the first time as part of the SNES Classic Edition.
Star Fox Comic[]
Falco is a prominent character in the Nintendo Power comics continuity, based on the original Star Fox game. In this incarnation, Falco is revealed to have been Academy rivals with Fox. Fox apparently "was at the top of his class " when he met a rowdy Falco who wanted to fly. Fox apparently showed Falco the way to fly by cleaning up his act, entering the academy and "earned his wings".
Starlink: Battle for Atlas[]
Falco appears in Starlink: Battle for Atlas, performing the same role as he does in the main games. His character design is largely based on his "realistic" art-style seen in Star Fox Zero.
Super Smash Bros.[]
Falco Lombardi’s appearance from Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
Attacks[]
- Neutral Special: Blaster
- Side Special: Falco Phantasm
- Up Special: Fire Bird
- Down Special: Reflector
- Final Smash: Landmaster
Falco has made appearances in other games, including Super Smash Bros. Melee. His appearance is based off his Star Fox 64 design. He is an unlockable character that has similar moves to Fox. His blaster, though lacking in rapid fire capability, can stun opponents; something Fox is incapable of doing. However, Falco’s recovery move, Firebird, has shorter reach than fox’s Fox Fire and doesn’t burn the opponent at startup, making Falco more vulnerable to attack. Falco possesses the highest first jump in the game, while Fox possesses one of the lowest. His Reflector will send an enemy directly upward. Falco also possesses one of the best spikes in the game; as it always sends the enemy downward. Falco is an unlockable character in Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U. Like Fox, his appearance was upgraded to match his design from Star Fox: Command. His Final Smash is driving a Landmaster tank which, although weaker than Fox’s, it has better hovering ability. Falco returned as an unlockable character in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Like the other Star Fox characters, his design is now based on Star Fox Zero. His Final Smash was changed to Team Star Fox.
Trivia[]
- His first name came from the genus “Falco” for raptors that include falcons, kestrels, and caracras. Falco himself looks like a red-throated caracara. His last name is named after Carlo Rambaldi, special effects artist in Hollywood.
- Character designer Takaya Imamura originally gave Falco the name “Falco Rambaldi” as a tribute to film special effects artist Carlo Rambaldi. Japan romanized this name as “Lambardi”, Nintendo of America later settled on Lombardi.
- Falco's personality is similar to Han Solo's from Star Wars whose ship is coincidentally called the Millennium Falcon. Nintendo Power even compared Fox McCloud to Luke Skywalker and Falco to Han Solo.
- With the exception of Brawl, Falco has the highest jump in every Smash game he appears in.
- Falco is the only Melee veteran to receive entirely new voice clips in each installment in the Super Smash Bros. series.
- Falco has the same unlocking method in two different installments. In both Melee and Brawl, he is unlocked by beating 100-Man Smash.
| Characters in Star Fox | |
|---|---|
| Star Fox | Fox McCloud • Falco Lombardi • Slippy Toad • Peppy Hare • Krystal • Fay • Miyu • ROB 64 |
| Star Wolf | Wolf O'Donnell • Leon Powalski • Pigma Dengar • Andrew Oikonny • Panther Caroso • Algy |
| Other | Andross • General Pepper • Bill • Katt • James McCloud • Tricky • General Scales • Beltino Toad • Aparoid Queen • Dash Bowman • Amanda Toad • Lucy Hare • Anglar Emperor • Grippy Toad |