Probably because it's the "in" thing, remakes seem to be making such a big impact onto the new generation of handhelds nowadays. The Final Fantasy series has already made their much awaited comeback for the Nintendo DS with Final Fantasy III. Now, another old-school RPG series steps onto the PSP handheld with upgraded cinematics, voice acting and much more.

Star Ocean is set to receive a facelift when it finally upgrades itself onto the PSP platform. Scans from Famitsu have confirmed that the first two games of the Star Ocean series will have all new cinematics and redrawn character art, as well as voice overs and whole dialogues written into the new games. Star Ocean First Departure will follow the story of Ratix from the original Star Ocean released on the Super Famicom, while Star Ocean Second Evolution will be based on Star Ocean: The Second Story (PS2) with Claude as the hero.

Old players will be able to relive the adventures of Ratix and Claude in their respective Star Ocean games, while new players can acquaint themselves with the humble beginnings of this engrossing RPG series. Tri-ace, the developers, want more than creating a remake for the games. They want to make players feel like they're going through completely new games.

People will have to wait a while for the these new incarnations to hit the shelves as they are still in development and so far have a TBA release schedule slapped on them. When they do come out, however, they'll definitely be games that hardcore RPG gamers will want to look into. So until then just stay tuned for any more updates we may have on them.