Yesterday, D4 Enterprise announced that it will be bringing the original NEC PC-88 version of Star Cruiser to the Nintendo Switch eShop on September 19th in Japan, as part of its ongoing EGGCONSOLE series of retro reissues. It is also expected to hit some international storefronts shortly after.
Star Cruiser, in case you're unaware, is a first-person sci-fi action RPG from the Japanese developer Arsys Software featuring polygonal 3D graphics. It was originally launched back in 1988 for the PC-88 and was later ported to the PC-98, Sharp X1, Sharp X68000, and Sega Mega Drive.
As far as we're aware, the game has never been officially released outside of Japan, but Namco did come close to publishing Masaya's Mega Drive port in North America in the early 90s, under the title Star Quest, before plans were eventually abandoned, and there have also been a couple of fan translations for the Mega Drive and X68000 versions.
The game sees players take control of a pilot named Brian Light, as he battles against a new military threat in space, called VOID, who plans to wipe out humanity. In the game, players explore a bunch of maze-like corridors, chatting with NPCs, purchasing items, and participating in fights with enemy forces on foot, occasionally diving into an aircraft to take part in various space battles.
Besides its various ports to other platforms, the game later received a sequel Star Cruiser II: The Odysseus Project, which came out in the early '90s for the PC-98 and FM Towns computers. The events of this game took place after VOID's supposed downfall and saw players training to fend off a new attack.
As always, with these EGGCONSOLE releases, the game will be presented mostly as is, with the most significant additions being an English main menu and a "how to play" section. In the original game, dialogue and story elements are communicated entirely in Japanese, which might make things hard to understand if you don't have a grasp of the language or an OCR handy, but certain actions and menu elements are displayed in English, making navigation a little bit easier.
You can watch a video of the game in action below: