Trivia / Star Ocean

• Creator-Driven Successor: There are major similarities between Star Ocean and the Tales Series in gameplay and design: real time battles with combat skills that burn MP, item creation, food-based healing items that heal in percentages, Private Actions / Skits, Relationship Values leading to Multiple Endings, and so on. This is because Star Ocean was created by tri-Ace, a company whose founding members are best described as "Basically everyone who designed Tales of Phantasia at Namco."
• No Export for You: The original Super Famicom version of Star Ocean and Blue Sphere were never released outside of Japan. A remake of the former, First Departure, was finally released overseas for the PlayStation Portable in 2008.
• The Other Darrin: Every once in a while, between both the English and Japanese versions. For example, between the original, remake, and anime adaptation of Second Story, there have been three completely different casts for the characters, in both English and Japanese!
• Sequel First: The Second Story was the series debut in countries other than Japan, though currently all games except Blue Sphere are available in other countries in some form.
• Word of God: It seems from an old interview, Gotanda admitted to being a fan of Hiroki Touchi (who first voiced Cyuss Warren in the first installment), to the point that in all four of the initial installments, Touchi was cast as at least one party member in each one save for the fifth game (he even reprised a party member in both the first and second games' remakes).

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