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STAR OCEAN English Cartridge

I'll be honest with you, when I first heard about this Star Ocean cartridge that played the translated version of the game on the actual US Super Nintendo system, I was more than a little skeptical. I knew that there was no way to get the game onto a flash cart that would allow the game to play on the actual system without the use of the special S-DD1 graphics decompression chip the game uses to store and display its graphic files. I had an idea of how it could possibly work, but there was no way I was going to attempt that kind of intricate soldering, not to mention altering the inside of the cartridge casing to make everything fit. After spending some time taking this cartridge apart and checking it over from top to bottom, I've come to one conclusion. The person that put this cartridge together and did all of this soldering must be an extremely talented electronics enthusiast, not to mention a very patient person with nerves of steel. After opening this cartridge and looking it over, I didn't have much hope of it actually working once I popped it inisde of my Super NES console. You can imagine my surprise when I fired up this cartridge on my Super NES system and began playing it, all in full English. One thing I need to mention is that this game will NOT work on my mini Super NES console but it WILL play on my old-style Super Nintendo system. Strange, but that's the way it is. The translation is the DeJap version and every bit of text, aside from the YES and NO choices, is in full English. Even the intro and some voiced dialog is in English. I've put about 8 hours into the game so far, and despite the shaky look of the cartridge, it works perfectly. I know, I'm still amazed myself. My main concern was with heat dissipation, since there are two rather large chips inside the casing and they're taped down using electrical tape. I purposely left the cartridge playing for 6 hours straight to see how warm the cartridge would become. It seems I was worried for nothing, as it wasn't any warmer than any other SNES cartridge left on for that same amount of time. The actual construction of the cartridge is very homemade. As you can see, the inside plastic of the cartridge casing had to be modified and cut in order to allow this board with the newly installed chips, to fit inside the casing. It's not noticeable from the outside, but you can see it in the pics over at the right. While the two chips are taped down, they're actually connected to the board via tons of tiny wires that have been soldered to the chips and then to the board. The soldering is extremely well done and solid. I even tugged on quite a few of the wires to see how sturdy the soldering really was. The battery backup is also new and game saving worked perfectly as well. It's certainly not pretty, but this cartridge does exactly what it claims to do. It plays Star Ocean in full English on a US Super Nintendo system. Now how long this cartridge will last has yet to be determined, but it seems pretty solid so far. Now lets take a look at the box art and cartridge label. The cartridge label and box art look very close to the professional-quality boxes found on the official Super NES game releases. It's glossy and the pictures and text are very sharp. Now I normally don't like to make fun of those who don't speak English very well, but given that the guy in France that's selling these extremely expensive carts and boxes boasts about how high-quality these boxes are, I had to post about this. Here is an exact quote from the game description that's found on the back of the box. I'm writing it word for word exactly as it appears: A letter is arrived in the village of Cratos where live Laty and Don, two members of the self-denfense's group and their childhood's friend: Milly... It had the terrible announcement of a merciless plague that leave the victims fossalized, dead. Mily's father, Maltos, tried to clarify the causes of this mystery, but hefinished by be hit by the curse. Our three friends, mountain looking for medicinal herds left in to rescue the them ,discover a terrible machination ready to hit their world, and the existence of a huge power who will drag them farther than could not have imagined. It's hard to knock this cartridge as it does what it's supposed to do and does it quite well. Sure it's rediculously priced and the box art is more of a humorous bonus than anything you'd want to actually keep, but if you're a Star Ocean fan and absolutely must play the game on the actual hardware, this is pretty much the only way you can do it. Many of the other translated RPGs are now available using flash carts, but Star Ocean is one of those few games that makes use of a special S-DD1 chip and this makes it virtually impossible to just burn to a flash cart and play on the actual SNES system. So is this really worth the several hundred dollars it costs. Probably not. At least the flash cart versions are reliable and don't involve soldering and cartridge case modifications. But at the end of the day, you'll have to ask yourself one question: "How badly do you really want to play this classic RPG on your actual Super Nintendo system?" And that's a question only you can answer, not me. Besides, I already have one. : )

Star Ocean cartridge and box (English) Star Ocean playing on my Super NES system Star Ocean (English) Cartridge Star Ocean (English) board