I’m a little late to the party with this, but with The Force Awakens in theaters, I
figured it was about time to check out a game inspired by Star Wars. There have
been a ton of them over the years, but there was no second thought about it
when it came down to which one I was going to pick. So I figured I’d start right at
the beginning with the oldest of the Star Wars games.
The original Star Wars arcade game was a first-person on-rails shooter that used
color vector wireframe graphics which was produced by Atari. It was released in
1983 and appeared in two different styled cabinets: either your standard stand-up
arcade machine cab, or a huge sit-down immersion cabinet. This classic arcade
Star Wars game has you taking control Luke Skywalker piloting an X-Wing fighter,
dogfighting with TIE fighters and ultimately blowing up the Death Star, just like the
scenes in the original film. This time around I’d like to show you and share a few
thoughts on three different home versions of this game.
The game was ported to a number of platforms over the past 32 years, mainly
8-bit computer platforms at first, but there were releases on both the Atari 5200
and 2600, among other 2nd gen consoles It’s kind of funny how the arcade game
was originally produced by Atari, but the version for the Atari 2600 console was
published by Parker Brothers. Licensing can be really weird sometimes… The
visuals and sound seem like a solid effort, best you can do on this kind of system,
but the game really suffers with its controls. Very unresponsive, but as far as Atari
2600 games go, I’ve played a hell of a lot worse.
More recently there was a port which was a hidden bonus that can be unlocked
in Star Wars Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike for the GameCube. But if you
have the preview disc that people who preordered the game got, you can play
it without doing any unlocking. This is basically a spot on version of the game,
which is quite nice. It’s a little awkward how the reticule snaps back to the center
of the screen when you let of the analog stick, and I’ve never been a fan of
inverted controls, so I’m not very good at this one.
The version I grew up with was actually for Macintosh computers. My first
computer was one of those beige all-in-one Macintosh machines from the late
’80’s, and the version for the old Mac was one of the games I played on it most.
It was a good version, but it should be noted that playing this game with a mouse
makes it very easy. Unfortunately this game is not compatible with OS X. So
unless you have an old Mac, or means to emulate a vintage Mac you probably
won’t be able to play this one. Like the arcade, this version had speech samples
from the movie. The biggest difference with this version is that it’s not in color.
But a lot of the old Macintosh machines from when this game was out were
monochrome, so it really didn’t matter. This and the PC versions were published
by Broderbund software and released in 1988.
It’s worth noting that there’s also the game Star Wars Arcade on the Sega 32X,
but that’s actually a port of the 1993 arcade game from Sega. This game draws
some inspiration from the game which first appeared ten years prior, but it’s
definitely not the same. The 32X game was a launch title for the add-on and
was met with some pretty underwhelming reviews. I’ve played it a few times, and
I’m not a fan. But if you’re classic arcade games, give this one a look.
