Star Ocean: First Departure is an enhanced remake of the original Star Ocean for the PSP, developed by Tose. The first details of the game were revealed at the "Star Ocean Special Stage" during the Square Enix Party 2007, alongside those of Star Ocean: The Second Story. Yoshinori Yamagishi, producer of the series, stated that he wanted the remakes to feel as though they're completely new games. The game was first released in Japan on December 27, 2007, then in North America and Europe in October 2008, marking the first time that the original Star Ocean was officially released outside Japan. The English localization was handled by Nanica, Inc., with voice-over production services provided by Epcar Entertainment, Inc.First Departure uses a slightly altered version of the engine used for Star Ocean: The Second Story with similar features, including prerendered backgrounds, 3D battle fields and hand drawn facial animations. Production I.G provided new artwork and animated cutscenes for the game. New playable characters have been added as well. New voice actors and extensive amounts of new, fully voiced dialogue were included, with even some non-player characters being voiced over as well. A limited edition called the Star Ocean: First Departure Eternal Edition was released exclusively in Japan alongside the standard version. It features alternate box art and was bundled with a Star Ocean-themed PSP-2000 handheld and carrying pouch. An HD remaster of the PlayStation Portable version titled Star Ocean: First Departure R for the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 was released in December 2019. The new release features re-balanced game difficulty and increased world map movement speed as well as the option to toggle between character portraits from the PSP version or re-drawn designs based on the Super Famicom version. The English release allows the player to choose between English voices or Japanese audio from either the PSP version or re-recorded dialogue from the original Super Famicom voice actors.