Star Cruiser, a Japanese exclusive Mega Drive shooter, translated into English

We always get excited when we hear of a new, unreleased SEGA game that has just been made accessible to us via a translation patch. Earlier this year, there was the English translation for 7th Dragon 2020, and now some determined fans have translated a previously unreleased Mega Drive game called Star Cruiser.

Star Cruiser is a first-person shooter/RPG hybrid that’s one of the few 16-bit games to feature 3D polygon graphics. It was developed by Arsys Software and released in Japan in late 1990 but also made its way onto the NEC PC-88, NEC PC-98, Sharp X1 and Sharp X68000.

Namco had apparently licensed the game for a North American release under the name Star Quest for a July 1994 release, but was unfortunately canceled. The game was so far into production that review copies were sent out, and Electronic Gaming Monthly reviewed it in their June 1994 issue and stated the English localization was 100 percent complete.

It doesn’t appear that unreleased version ever made it to the public, so fans at RomHacking.net have done the dirty work and just released a translation patch, which you can find here. According to Celcion, it’s about 98 percent complete, with him and a few other users still checking for accuracy.

Just the fact that this game released more than 15 years ago is now playable in English is amazing. Are there any unreleased, Japanese exclusive games you’d like to see translated?