Star Fox: Assault/Characters/Aparoid

Aparoids are insect-like creatures that are part machine and part life form and are the main villains in the latest installment in Star Fox: Assault.

Plot of Star Fox: Assault
The aparoids are capable of infecting other life forms and machines and transform them into aparoids. The game calls this infection Aparoideation. 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 and most of the Cornerian Army. The General was saved by Peppy Hare after his ship was destroyed by Fox McCloud. Pigma, however, did not survive the infection.

Large aparoids contain a core memory that contains instructions as well as information on contacting the Aparoid homeworld. 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 the Aparoid Queen on their home planet. The aparoid queen believes that all things in the universe exist for the aparoids to infect and that becoming an aparoid is not infection, but is evolution.

Due to them being part machine, aparoids can have programs executed within them and were ultimately destroyed by Star Fox through the use of an apoptosis program coded by Beltino Toad. 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.

Influences
Many fans have claimed that the Aparoid are very similar to the Borg from Star Trek, continuing Star Fox 64's numerous references to other sci-fi works. Some fans also speculate that they are similar to the Invid from the Robotech series and the Zondar race from Gaogaigar. The Aparoids also bear a startling similarity to the Zerg from Starcraft. A commonality behind all these fictional races is the concept of a group mind, a common troupe in science fiction. Read more about this concept on Wikipedia.