Aparoid

Aparoids are insect-like creatures that are part machine and part life form and are the main villains in the latest installment in Nintendo's Star Fox series of video games, Star Fox: Assault.

The aparoids are capable of infecting other life forms and machines and make them fight for the aparoid cause. The game calls this infection Aparoidedation. Pigma Dengar was the first character in the series to become infected after he stole an apariod core memory from Fox McCloud. The infection caused Pigma to meld with a machine in the Asteroid Belt and become that level's boss. The aparoids also infected General Pepper, the commander-in-chief of the Cornerian Military. The general was saved by Peppy Hare after his ship was defeated by Fox McCloud.

Large aparoids contain a core memory that contains instructions as well as information on contacting the aparoid home planet. General Pepper learned of the location of the Aparoid Homeworld from the core memory recovered by Fox from the remains of Pigma.

The aparoids are led by their queen on their home planet. The aparoid queen believes that all things in the universe exist for the aparoids to conquer and that becoming an aparoid is not infection, but is evolution. The aparoid queen is capible of mimicing voices of lifeforms and machines to convince others to join the aparoid cause. The queen imitated Pigma Dengar, General Pepper, Peppy Hare, ROB 64, and James McCloud in her attempts to pursuade the Star Fox team to join her cause.

Due to them being part machine, aparoids can have programs executed within them and were ultimately destroyed by Fox McCloud through the use of a self-destruct program coded by Slippy Toad's father, Beltino Toad, who found out that they are susceptible to apoptosis. All aparoids are networked together as once Fox executed the self-destruct program in the aparoid queen, all of the aparoids, and their home planet were destroyed.

Many fans have claimed that the Aparoid are very similar to the Borg from Star Trek, continiuing Star Fox 64's numerous references to other sci-fi works.