Star Cruiser (スター クルーザー, Sutā Kurūzā) is a role-playing first-person shooter video game developed by Arsys Software and released in Japan for the PC-88 and Sharp X1 home computers in 1988. The game was ported by Arsys Software to the NEC PC-98 and Sharp X68000 computer platforms in 1989, and then ported by Masaya (NCS) to the Sega Mega Drive (Genesis) home console in 1990.
The game is considered innovative and ahead of its time, for being an early example of an action role-playing game with fully 3D polygon graphics, combined with early first-person shooter gameplay, which would occasionally switch to space flight simulator gameplay when exploring the open-ended outer space with six degrees of freedom. All the backgrounds, objects and opponents in the game were rendered in 3D polygons, many years before they were widely adopted by the video game industry. The game also emphasized storytelling, with plot twists and extensive character dialogues, taking place in a futuristic science fiction setting.
Namco licensed the Mega Drive version of Star Cruiser for a North American release entitled Star Quest, which Namco planned to publish for the Sega Genesis in July 1994. However, the North American release of Star Quest was eventually canceled. In September 2016, an English translation beta patch was released through ROM hacking, followed by a complete translation patch in November 2016.
