Hamster has unveiled this week's Arcade Archives release as Star Luster VS. — the adaptation of Namco's 1985 Famicom game for Nintendo's VS. System arcade unit. The game will be released on Thursday, June 13th, and will be available to buy for both the Nintendo Switch and PS4.
Star Luster, in case you've never had the opportunity to play it, is a first-person space simulation game that sees players engaging with enemy ships while trying to manage their fuel supply. While it wasn't initially successful upon its original release, it later went on to inspire some influential Japanese developers, including the Star Fox 2 director Katsuya Eguchi and Castlevania producer Koji Igarashi, and was also notably included as an unlockable extra in the Japanese version of Star Fox: Assault (developed by Namco), alongside a couple of the company's other classic arcade games like Xevious and Battle City.
Following its original release, the Famicom version later received an enhanced port for the X68000 computer in 1994 and a full remake in 1998 as part of the Japanese-exclusive Namco Anthology 1 for the PlayStation 1. This is in addition to ports for mobile phones, the Wii/Nintendo 3DS/and Wii U eShops, and most recently, the Nintendo Switch (as part of the Japanese exclusive Namcot Collection) and Evercade (Namco Museum: Collection 1).
A sequel to the game was also produced for the PlayStation in 1999, called Star Ixiom, which was only released across both Europe and Japan.
The Evercade release marked the first ever time the game was officially brought to the West, as all previous entries had been strictly Japanese-exclusive. The Arcade Archives release, meanwhile, will represent the first time the VS. System version has been made available commercially overseas.