Hoshi wo Miru Hito

Early Names#

The 11/13/1987 issue of Marukatsu Famicom shows off early names for the player characters. Shiba and Misa are the same, but Minami is referred to as Kiyota and Aine is referred to as Kaine.

Early Party Order#

One of Hoshi wo Miru Hito's many oddities is that the game's third party member, Misa, is found very late in the game and through a convoluted sidequest that is easily skippable. This means that the third party member slot will remain empty for long after you've recruited the fourth, if filled at all. This seems to have not always have been the case, as prerelease screenshots (including one on the back of the game's box) show a state of development where Aine is 3rd and Misa is 4th:

Curiously, an article covering the game in the 9/25/87 issue of Marukatsu Famicom (where the above screenshot is found) erroneously swaps Misa and Aine's names, showing there was already some confusion over this. It's possible that the screenshots showing Aine in the 3rd slot were either mocked up or from a different build than the one the reviewers actually played for the article, leading to inconsistencies in the screenshots and the written coverage.

Release Date#

There is a degree of contention as to what day the game actually released. The majority of sources use the 10/27/1987 date that was reported in magazine coverage and print advertisements, but various other sources—including internal reports from within Hot-B itself—state that it actually came out roughly a month later than that, on 11/18/1987.

There is strong evidence that a semiconductor shortage affecting several other games coming out in October of 1987 led to Hoshi wo Miru Hito being pushed back, but the new release date was never officially announced, leading to the game quietly hitting store shelves in November with no print record of the delay. However, there is no hard evidence that this is the case, and the Japanese Wikipedia page currently has both dates listed.