Star Ocean is a Japanese action role-playing game and the first game in the Star Ocean series. It was the first game developed by the newly formed tri-ace company for the Super Famicom, consisting of staff that had previously left Wolf Team due to being unhappy with the development process for Tales of Phantasia with Namco in 1995. The game required a special compression chip in its cartridge to compress and store all of the game's data due to possessing graphics that pushed the limits of the aging Super Famicom. Additionally, the game had voice acting for the game's intro and voice clips that played during the game's battle gameplay, a rarity for games on the system.