 SEGA DRUNK I love when games really swing for the fences and try all sorts of crazy stuff despite being locked down with technological limitations. Even when a game misses the mark, I still admire the ideas and the effort. But when a game really nails it, like Star Cruiser, it's even better. This is a game originally made for home computers back in 1998. I'm talking stuff like the PC-88 and 98-01, the Sharp X68000, and it eventually got a port to the Mega Drive in December of 1990, but sadly, it was never officially localized and it stayed in Japan. But man, oh man, this is one of the best import games I've ever played, and it might be a top 30 or even a top 25 Genesis game, period. I should mention quickly, however, that you'll need an English patch to play through this one, and it's available on romhacking.net thanks to nebulous translations. What you're seeing here in this footage is a first-person space sim dungeon crawler action RPG shooter. Say that 10 times fast. And there's a lot of story here, a lot of characters, a lot of dialogue, and different game modes that include flying out into space like Star Fox and blasting everything that moves, and traversing around planet surfaces making stuff go boom. I am a major Star Fox stan, so any game that reminds me of that, while working in story-driven RPG stuff with all sorts of different characters and personalities, and that makes one of those games seriously feel like to me, like it was custom made for me personally. It's a blast to play through. Now, whether or not you feel as strongly about this game as I do, that's for you to decide. So I'll walk you through the first part of this game so you can get a sense of what it is and how everything works. You start with a brief story synopsis that tells you that everything takes place in the 27th century, and it's humans and aliens getting along just fine, except for a nation of humans named Void that hates aliens for some reason, and wants them deported from all civilized society. You play as a dude named Brian, and you start the game in a combat simulation getting blown to bits. Your friends promptly tell you how much you suck, but you're still given a mission anyway, to capture a Void Star Cruiser. You go to meet your friend Gibson to get started, and this is kind of the make or break point of this game. The entire playthrough is done through a first-person perspective, and most of it looks something like this. Now, I personally don't mind the visuals. In fact, I think they look kind of cool. But yeah, this is extremely 80s PC-looking. But at least there's plenty of character portraits that pop up and helpfully tell you what's what. So you wander around until you run into Gibson. No, not that Gibson. And he gives you a breakdown of what's expected on this mission, complete with maps, diagrams, and... Ah crap, we're under attack. Our main base just got blown up. We gotta get out of here, so we hop into our ships, fly into space, and kamikaze your vehicle straight into the enemy base. At this point, you're on the surface, and that's when you get your first taste of combat. What you see here is what you get. You're equipped with some homing missiles to shoot enemies, so you can grab keys and find the Star Cruiser ship to bring back over to the good guys, and the game goes on from there. You fly through space, visit planets, talk to people, destroy enemies, and level up your ship. Star Cruiser is massive for a 16-bit game. There's four different solar systems to explore, 30 different planets, and tons of characters you come across, including some NPCs with their own backstory. I can't say enough about the translation. It's really good, and it must have taken forever to complete because there is a lot of dialogue in this game. But yeah, what I previewed there for you is just the very beginning of the game. There is a lot here to explore and a lot of story to go through. This is probably a 15- or 20-hour playthrough altogether. There's even side quests you can go on if you feel like it. Like if you want to upgrade your ship, you have to mine for raw materials in a certain spot to bring to an engineer on the other side of the galaxy. And yeah, like I said, this is an RPG, so there's leveling systems, weapons and armor to upgrade, all that good stuff. Now, as hugely ambitious as this game is, it's got its fair share of flaws. I've already mentioned the visuals, and yeah, this game can be a bit of an eyesore. But it's astounding from a technical standpoint to see a home console game like this made in 1990, but at the same time, it can be very rough to play. The framerate is understandably lousy, and the controls are a bit clunky, especially out in outer space, which can be extremely disorienting. More often than not, I just speed away from enemies rather than try and fight them. I guess this is just one of those games where when you see a short clip of what the gameplay is and what it's about, you're either in or you're out. I'm all in, obviously, but I totally get if this game is just too rough around the edges for some folks. One thing I will not compromise on, however, is the music. Anytime you've got a game where there's lots of exploring and tons of different worlds to visit, the music has to hold up its end of the bargain, and it absolutely does here. So yeah, Star Cruiser is unlike any other 16-bit game. It's a pre-Wolfenstein, first-person shooter slash RPG slash space sim slash dungeon crawler slash whatever. There's so much crammed into this game, it's astounding that it works as it does on a Sega Mega Drive. I should mention that the Mega Drive port did actually scale the game down a bit, making this game more linear and removing a couple game mechanics, so if you end up digging this one, you should check out the original PC games since there's even more to do there. As it is for a 16-bit game, I'm astounded that this game exists. It's way ahead of the curve from a technological standpoint, thanks to the amazing work of developer Kotori Yoshimura. I think it's worth checking out as a curiosity, and if you're patient enough to play this one, you're in for an interesting story and a fantastic experience. Definitely check this game out any way you can. Alright, I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day!