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The two Star Wars prequels may have dipped below our expectations, but theupcoming prospect of Episode III has us stupidly excited… so excited that we askedStar Wars uber-geek Dan Whitehead to chart the history of games based on the sci-fisaga. In the first of a three part series leading up to the release of the new movie, Danlooks at Atari’s original arcade trilogy and the early computer and console licenses

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long time ago, in agalaxy far faraway…

Well, OK,technically it was

28 years ago at Mann’s ChineseTheater, Los Angeles. That waswhere, on May 25th 1977, a littlesci-fi flick simply called Star Warsfirst revealed itself to mankind.Fledgling director George Lucaswas so convinced that his “spaceopera” – which had cost theprincely sum of ten million dollars– would be such a disaster thathe went on holiday with palSteven Spielberg to talk aboutmaking a movie about anadventurous archaeologist ratherthan face the inevitable bad newsfrom the box office.

When he heard that peoplewere queuing round the block tosee Luke Skywalker take on DarthVader over and over again, heflew back and watched inamazement from a burger baracross the street as movie historywas made.

The arse end of the 70s andthe early 80s were bookended bythe further chapters in George’ssaga, The Empire Strikes Back andReturn of the Jedi, with plain oldStar Wars now rechristened as themore franchise-friendly Star WarsEpisode IV: A New Hope, sparkingspeculation that one day wemight see a whole new trilogyexplaining just who Obi Wan was,what that fleeting reference to the“clone wars” was all about, andwhere all the Jedi vanished to.

On May 25th this year, thatstory will be completed, asEpisode III: Revenge of the Sithbrings the saga to a close, andwe’ll finally get to see perpetualwhiner Anakin Skywalker burnt to

a crisp, encased in black armourand given the vocal chords ofJames Earl Jones. But before allthat could happen, there was thegiddy and innocent golden age ofStar Wars to enjoy. Back in 1977,unprepared for the modest film’sextraordinary success, toy makerKenner was caught off guard andwas unable to get enough stockinto shops for Christmas. Fanshad to buy an empty box, withthe promise that a cut-outvoucher could be swapped for thefirst set of figures – whicheventually arrived the followingMarch. With their rigid legs,squashed faces and lightsabersthat slid up into their hollowarms, they were hardly the mostimpressive playthings ever. But toyoung boys and girls around theworld, imaginations fired up byrepeat cinema visits, they wereplastic passports to anotherworld. Anything with that iconiclogo was snapped up.

You were there. We don’t needto remind you. There were comicsand sticker albums. Pillow casesand lunchboxes.

And, of course, there werevideogames.

Red Five standing by

The late 70s rise of Star Warsoverlapped neatly with the rise of‘electronics’ as the new wonder-

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A

Atari’s Star Wars arcade game. Short but incredibly sweet The original arcade flyers for Atari’s first two Star Wars games

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science of the future. With thisbrave new world came the coin-op arcade machine, though thetechnology was still very much inits infancy when Star Wars maniafirst struck and it would beseveral years before the simplisticworld of Space Invaders wasready to do justice to Lucas’galaxy far, far away.

Indeed, the humble localarcade wouldn’t see anySkywalker action until 1983 – theyear that saw the end of the StarWars trilogy with the release ofReturn of the Jedi in cinemas.Despite the six year gap, the firstStar Wars arcade cabinet harkedback to the first movie for itsinspiration and delivered a gamethat still raises the neck hair ofmost thirty-something sci-fi fans.Already primed for the experienceby years of pelting aroundplaygrounds, making ‘pee-yow’laser noises, Atari’s adaptationcannily realised that it was the

climactic Death Star attack thatkids most wanted to relive,especially Luke’s hair-raising racedown the trench to deliver anexplosive payload right up PeterCushing’s exhaust port.

Drawing heavily on Atari’s1980 hit Battlezone for bothinspiration and design, the gameused the then-amazing techniqueof 3D vector graphics to recreatethe big screen spectacle in thearcade in a first-person view.Hurtling down the trench withJohn William’s bombasticsoundtrack crackling through thespeakers, and a library ofsampled lines from the movieplaying at opportune times, it’seasy to see why many young fanshappily shovelled their entirepocket money for the week intothis beast. Unlike the movie,when you finally blew up theDeath Star you simply loopedback round and did it all overagain – the scramble for highscores and a stream of 10ppieces outweighing the need tobe too faithful to the story.

Even now, it’s still a greatgame – though the invertedaiming and wandering crosshairare charmingly clunky by modernstandards. If you want anythingeven remotely approaching achallenge, you need to play it onHard mode as well. In Easy modeit’s perfectly possible to destroythe Death Star five times or morein the time it takes to watch amovie trailer. Still, it’s a classic forall the right reasons and remainsone of the few film-based gamesto capture the magic of the moviethat inspired it.

Star Wars fans expecting moreof the same were in for asurprise though.

Out of order

As the final film in the originaltrilogy was still fresh in peoples’minds, the next Star Wars arcademachine to see the light of daywas based not on The EmpireStrikes Back, but Return of theJedi. This came along in 1984,and abandoned the 3D vectorgraphics of its forebear for ascrolling isometric third-personchase game not unlike Sega’sZaxxon. A multi-level blaster, itonce again leapt to the end ofthe movie for all the action.

Starting out as Princess Leiaracing through the forest of Endoron a speeder bike, the first level

set the tone for the rest of thegame – dodging left to right,while occasionally blastingImperial troops who stray in frontof you. Leading them into Ewoktraps adds a fun twist, but somewonky collision detection didn’thelp matters, as the isometricview made it hard to tell if youwere heading for an obstacle.

The next level saw Atari tryingto mimic the climax of the film bycutting between Lando Calrissian’sassault on the second Death Starin the Millenium Falcon, and HanSolo’s attempt to shut down theshield on Endor. Switchingbetween the two differentchallenges at annoyingly regularintervals, the end result was oneof confusion and irritation forgamers as the flow of thegameplay was interrupted timeand again. Finally, you had toguide the Millenium Falcon insidethe Death Star and destroy thepower generator. Watching theDeath Star ripped apart by atypically rubbish 8-bit explosionwas fun, but by losing the first-person perspective the visceralthrill of the movie sequences waslost. Not helping matters was thefact that all the levels played inexactly the same way, with onlythe scenery and vehicles changing.

With its claustrophobicallynarrow play area and twitchycontrols, this wasn’t a game thatdid justice to the final chapter ofthe legendary trilogy. Just asolder fans found Return of theJedi, the movie, to be asomewhat over-simplified additionto the cinematic trilogy, so thisdumbed-down arcade machinefailed to live up to itspredecessor. Luckily, the gamesstill had one more chance to getit right.

Empire divided

Given the less-than-enthusiasticresponse to the Jedi arcademachine, you can hardly blameAtari for sticking with whatworked for its next effort – themiddle chapter of the trilogy, TheEmpire Strikes Back, in 1985.Another vector graphics blaster, itwas essentially a re-jiggedversion of the chipset from thefirst Star Wars game with differentscenes. Lazy? Well, yes, but awelcome return to form after thelimp Ewok outing.

Of course, the movie wasunique in the trilogy in that it

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Within weeks of the originalStar Wars taking residencein arcades, rumours werewhispered in schoolcorridors regarding tricksand secrets that only thehardcore knew.

Shooting Darth Vader’sTIE fighter more than 30times would give you anabundance of extra shields.The faint yellow vector lineson the Death Star sometimesspelled out “May the Forcebe with you” as youapproached. And for thosewho heeded the wisdom ofObi Wan, you could earn upto a whopping 100,000bonus points for “using theForce” and not shootinganything in the trench apartfrom the exhaust port.

>Star Wars secrets

Like the movies, Return of the Jedi is easily the weakest of the trilogy

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too early. Once the AT-ATs weredespatched, you switched to theMillenium Falcon for an outerspace battle with TIE fighters,followed by a diversion into theasteroid field. There’s nothingwrong with these levels – indeed,as the game is essentially areworked version of the firstgame, it’s every bit as fun andplayable. But there’s no realclimax to the game, no bigending to aim for that couldcompete with destroying theDeath Star. This is largely due tothe structure of the film, ofcourse, but there was always anagging voice in your ten-year-old mind that just wanted to goback and play the AT-AT levelover and over.

Ironically, you could actuallydo that…if you had an Atari 2600at home.

Home advantage?

As detailed in our feature on thepeculiar history of 20th CenturyFox’s entry into the Atari 2600market back in issue 11, the rightsto turn the blockbusting moviesinto home videogames went toMonopoly creators Parker Brothers.

Just as the coin-op releases

monkeyed around with the orderof the movies, so did the homeversions. The first game release– in fact, the first official movie-to-game adaptation everreleased – was The EmpireStrikes Back which arrived onthe console in 1982, two yearsafter the film, but a whole yearbefore Atari got its first StarWars game into the arcades.

Based entirely around the AT-AT scene, it was a side-scrollingshooter that managed aremarkably solid job of recreatingthe Star Wars vehicles using the2600’s limited resources.Controlling a snowspeeder, youhad to bring down the lumberingImperial behemoths – no smalltask, as each one could take upto 48 hits before beingdestroyed! All the time, you hadto dodge incoming laser blastsand the occasional homingmissile. Take too many hits, andyour craft turned red. You couldland for repairs twice, but after

that you were on your own. Onthe other hand, if you couldavoid enemy fire for two wholeminutes (which was nighimpossible) then you could “usethe Force” and become invinciblefor a short time. Surprisinglyinvolved for such a primitivegame, and a damn fine shoot-em-up in its own right, EmpireStrikes Back was a predictablyhuge hit for Parker Brothers andset a high benchmark for bothfuture Star Wars games andmovie-based games in general.

1983 rolled around, bringingwith it a fresh wave of Star Warsmania as Return of the Jediopened in cinemas and Atari’sStar Wars game hit arcades. Eagerto capitalise on this, but with notime to try and tackle the task ofrecreating the coin-op, ParkerBrothers instead rushed out acouple of Star Wars games basedon scenes from the trilogy.

Star Wars Jedi Arena took itsinspiration from the scene in the

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FEATURE:SOFTWARE | THE HISTORY OF STAR WARS VIDEOGAMES

had all the exciting vehiclecombat near the start of the film,with the ending relying on awhole ton of shocking revelationsand plot twists that would berather tricky to capture in gameform (Luke, am I your father?Press the right button now!).

This meant that the first level,still rendered in those timelesswireframe graphics, saw youtrying to blast those peskyProbots in the snowy wastes ofHoth. Nothing too taxing orexciting, but it was just a tasterfor the debut appearance of whatwould become a Star Warsgaming tradition: the AT-AT battle.

Still the coolest moment inany of the Star Wars movies, it’san iconic action sequence withgood reason – which probablyexplains why it’s appeared inpretty much every RogueSquadron game ever since.Zipping along mere feet abovethe ground, and flying betweenthe legs of the gigantic walkingmachines for bonus points, thiswas an experience that matched– and even topped – the trenchbattle from the first Star Warsgame. Trouble was, this was onlylevel two, and the Empire StrikesBack game suffered from peaking

Many arcade operators chose to upgrade their Star Wars machines toEmpire, hence the current rarity of the original

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first movie where Luke begins tolearn to use his lightsaber againstautomated drones. The game hasyou, as Luke, standing in themiddle of the play area, deflectingblasts by moving your lightsaberaround. Realistically, it’s entirelypossible that this simplisticvariation on the bouncing-ballgame was simply an existingprototype that was tagged withthe Star Wars brand to quicklycash-in. Apart from some tokenreferences on the front-end there’slittle in the game to connect itwith Star Wars and, with orwithout the movie branding, it’shardly a great game.

Star Wars Death Star Battlewas certainly tied to the movies,though the quality wasn’t muchbetter. Loosely based on theclimax of Return of the Jedi, youcontrolled the Millenium Falconand had to blast incomingfighters while the Death Starhovered above, protected by abig thick shield. Slipping throughthe randomised hole in theshield granted you access to thenext stage, in which you had tobatter down the outside of theDeath Star to expose thevulnerable core inside. Destroythat, dodge the debris and loopback to the start. A version ofthe game also appeared on the5200, but besides a few newgraphical effects, it was exactlythe same game.

Parker Brothers returned toform in 1984 with – finally – ahome conversion of Atari’soriginal Star Wars arcademachine. Shifting all those vectorgraphics around on an arcadechipset was tricky enough, butattempting to replicate the effecton the minimalist 2600 was amighty undertaking.

Amazingly, Parker Bros pulledit off. Sure, the vector lines are abit chunkier and the gamedoesn’t move quite as fast, butfor a generation of kids who hadplayed the game to death, thiswas truly like having an arcade inyour home. The game evenattempted a lo-fi version of thefamous theme tune, and tossedin some early voice samples forgood measure – even if they didsound like Alec Guiness waswhispering through a sock on abadly-tuned radio. The game wasalso converted to the Atari 5200and Colecovision consoles, withboth versions offering bettergraphics and clearer sound.

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Atari’s 2600 console was home to four variable Star Wars gamesreleased between 1982 and 1984

Death Star Battle was theonly Atari console gamebased on Return of the Jedi,though another was plannedand announced in the ParkerBrothers 1983 catalogue asEwok Adventure. In 1997 aworking 2600 prototype ofthe never-released Ewokgame was discovered.Ironically, those who haveplayed it consider it one ofthe best Star Wars games onthe system – and certainly animprovement over the genericclichés of Jedi Arena andDeath Star Battle.

Controlling an Ewok in aglider, you swooped over themulti-screen forest, throwingrocks at well-rendered AT-STScout Walkers, speederbikesand Stormtroopers. By flyinginto an Imperial vehicle at theright height, you could gaincontrol of it and then use itto attack the shield generator.Destroy the shield generatorand you started over, on ahigher difficulty. EwokAdventure was true to themovie, had better-than-average graphics andgameplay that was bothvaried and challenging.Nobody really knows why itdidn’t deserve a commercialrelease, but it can now befound online in ROM formatso all is not lost.

>Battle for Endor

Micro power

Despite the variable quality of theconsole versions, it was inevitablethat the success of the gameswould attract the attention of thenascent home computer industry.Sinclair Research snapped up therights to Death Star Battle for theSpectrum in 1984, while theCommodore 64 received a versionof the original arcade game whichfamously used sprites instead ofvector graphics.

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However, it wouldn’t be until1987/8 that Domark clinched therights to bring Atari’s coin-optrilogy to the home computerscene. All three games landed onthe (deep, Vader-style breath)Spectrum, Commodore 64,Amstrad CPC, BBC Micro, Amiga,Atari ST and PC. Return of theJedi was still a rather limp side-scroller, but the two vectorgraphics games (adapted, ofcourse, by Vektor Grafix) stillretained their charm even thoughtitles like Elite and Starglider hadalready shown that homecomputers could do more withwireframe spaceships than simpleblasting. The new version of StarWars for the C64 did attempt touse vector graphics, but at theexpense of the frame rate whichwas slow and choppy. Star Warson the Speccy, meanwhile, wascompletely silent with no in-gamemusic or sound effects. Domark’sdecision not to include a 128Kbversion with sound was bizarre.Lessons were obviously learntthough, and The Empire Strikes

Back did feature an enhanced128Kb version with some stirringAY renditions of the originalarcade music.

And so the Star Wars moviesleft cinemas, and the first wave ofStar Wars gaming came to anend. While fans would have towait many years for the films toreturn to the big screen, keengamers didn’t have long to waitfor the next wave of Jedi gaming.As the 90s dawned, Nintendoslowly began to take control andits range of home consoles wouldoffer developers exciting newways to bring Star Wars to life. e

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Domark bundled together its conversions and released them as TheStar Wars Trilogy

>Attack of theClonesThe lack of Star Wars games for home computer systems led,inevitably, to the void being filled by a slew of unofficial titles thatripped off Star Wars with an audacity that, today, would lead tothe Lucasfilm lawyers hauling you into court faster than MarkHamill’s career went down the toilet. However, some of theseclones were better than the official Star Wars games. Others,meanwhile, were like a punch in the Jawas. Here are some of themost notable rip-offs in all their galactic glory…

Return of the JedyM.K. Circuits, 1983

A frankly bizarre game in whichyou control a rotating laser gunin the middle of the “Jedygames arena”. There are eighttargets and either “D.Vader” or“R2” will appear at random.Pressing 0 rotates you(clockwise only) and pressing 1fires the laser. Destroy 30Vaders and… you get to do itagain, only faster. GeorgeLucas would not be amused.

Battle on HothDuncan Kinnaird, 1983OK, it’s not really fair to callthis a rip-off, as it was a type-in program from Your Computermagazine, sent in by 16-year-old Duncan. A side-scrollingshooter not a million miles fromParker Brother’s Empire StrikesBack game, it contains possiblythe worst rendition of the StarWars theme, but also the bestAT-AT graphics of the 8-bit era.

3D StarwarsElfin Software, 1983After an interminable amount ofguff about Luke Skywalker andDarth Vader, plus suchgrammatical gems as “the Jedimission unsuccessfull” and“metiorites harmless”, this gamefinally lets you get into action,and plonks you in a bafflingspace shooter where the enemyare star-shaped blobs or freakishbird things. In other words, it’sgot sod all to do with Star Wars.

3D Death ChaseMicromega, 1983Obviously ‘inspired’ by thespeederbike chase from Returnof the Jedi, this is a bona-fideSpectrum classic regardless ofits roots. With a simple 3Dgame engine, and basiccontrols (left, right, fire) itmanages to capture theexhilaration of the moviesequence far better than thesubpar official arcade machine.

Death StarRabbit Software, 1983In a twist that would havemost Star Wars fans scratchingtheir heads, you control aminiature Imperial StarDestroyer as it chugs down theDeath Star trench, blastingthings that look a bit like TIEFighters and other sundryrotating shapes. Sluggish, tosay the least, it’s also worthnoting that all the soundeffects are lifted wholesalefrom the undergroundmotorbike classic, Wheelie.

Empire Fights BackMastertronic, 1985Is fighting back better orworse than striking back?You’ll never know, especially ifyou play this incomprehensiblegame – which does containstars, but otherwise has noconnection to Star Wars at all.Written by Clive Brooker, whowould also bring us One Manand his Droid, this isstrangeness incarnate.

NEXT MONTHThe History of Star WarsVideogames Episode II:LucasArts Strikes Back.Skywalker, Solo and Coassault GameBoy, NESand SNES

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