PSP is a Planetarium

July 27th, 2006, 20:18 Posted By: wraggster

News from IGN

Non-games have taken us on adventures in brain training, English and even cooking. Now, the genre is shooting for the stars with Sega's latest offering, Homestar: 21st Century Navigator.



Homestar brings a planetarium to your PSP. The title features five million stars, viewable under a variety of options. You can select to view all the way up to magnitude 16, although if that's too cluttered, you're free to focus on only the bright order 1 and 2 stars. You can also chose to view natural phenomenon, with the title recreating eclipses and Aurora effects in accordance with statistical data.

As far as edutainment games are concerned, Homestar seems to stray towards the "edu" side of things. In addition to selecting different stellar bodies such as galaxies and planets for a closer visual look, you also have access to textual descriptions of everything. The software even provides background details on the history of the constellations.

The "tainment" side of things comes from the included Fantasy Theater mode. In this mode, you view a scripted tour of the planets and stars, with voiced narration filling in the details. The title includes over 15 chapters.

In developing Homestar, Sega has enlisted the help of world renowned planetarium creator Takayuki Ohira, who developed the famous Mega Star series. His role in Homestar is as supervisor, continuing the tradition of non-games having supervisors outside the game industry overseeing their production. Serving as producer at Sega is veteran Tetsuo Shinyu, who previously worked on Hundred Sword, Derbu Tsuku and Nouryoku Trainer (a PSP version of Brain Age).

Homestar is set for Japanese release on 10/19 at a budget price of 3,280 yen. The title has yet to be announced for US release.

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