Development
In 1994, video game developers Wolf Team signed a deal with publisher Namco to release the game that would be Tales of Phantasia, which was later released in 1995 in Japan for the Super Nintendo. However, the development cycle for this game was plagued with creative disputes between the developers and publisher, leading to much of the development team leaving to form a new company, which would become tri-Ace, which explains some of the common themes between the games, such as the similar battle systems. The two games also stretched the power of the Super Nintendo to its limits, with a total of 48 megabits of data. Additionally, Star Ocean was also one of two games that used a special S-DD1 chip to aid in compression of almost all graphics and map data, meaning that it effectively stored even more data than Tales of Phantasia. The game also featured special technology that allowed for the compression of sound, allowing for voice clips for characters when in battles, another trait that was both very rare for a Super Nintendo game, and shared with Tales of Phantasia. Different voice clips would be played depending on the scenario; if the characters were confronted by weak enemies, they may say something more confident, where as if confronted by strong enemies, they may say something more fearful or frantic.
The game was released on July 19, 1996. Despite appearing in North American video game magazine Nintendo Power in 1996, the Super Nintendo game was never officially released anywhere outside of Japan. Enix America ceased to publish games in North America by the end of 1995 due to poor sales, and Nintendo has already passed on publishing Tales of Phantasia a year prior, instead choosing to focus on the then-upcoming Nintendo 64 video game console. However, the game was unofficially translated into English by DeJap Translations, who created a patch that made the game fully playable in English via emulation. The game wouldn't be officially available in English until 12 years later, when the game was remade for the PlayStation Portable as Star Ocean: First Departure in 2008.
Read more about this topic: Star Ocean (video game)
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