The OTHER Star Wars
Atari Games
A few months back I
tackled Star Wars: The Arcade Game, the
original classic Star Wars game
released on the Atari. Everyone knows that game’s iconic recreation of the
iconic trench run, but what you might not know is that The Arcade Game was not alone on the system. There were four other Star Wars-themed Atari games, and we’re
going to be looking at them all today and see how they hold up.
We’ll start off with the
very first Star Wars game ever
released: 1982’s The Empire Strikes Back.
This one has now been
made infamous by a popular gaming YouTuber who explained it by saying “You
could call this game ‘Bird vs. Camel’ and no one would argue with you”, and
honestly he’s not wrong.
The game presents you
with a conga line of AT-ATs, and you as a lone Snowspeeder must take them out.
The only problem is that your engine seems to be malfunctioning because you fly
around at superspeed all the time. It’s incredibly hard to focus in on a single
target because of how fast your character flies. Even worse is that the AT-AT
fire homes in on you, so even when you’ve finally gotten into a position where
you could conceivably take one down, you’re hit and you need to move again to
get your aiming right.
The AT-ATs also take
forever to take down each, so unless you want to be stuck doing the same thing
over and over again for ages, I’d suggest you only play this one if you really
want to try the original Star Wars game.
So that was a bust. Let’s
try the next one: Star Wars: Jedi Arena.
Released in January 1983,
Jedi Arena’s claim to fame is that
it’s the first ever Star Wars game to
feature lightsaber action. Unfortunately no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t
get this one to work properly. I think what’s supposed to happen is that the
cantaloupe-looking thing in the centre of the screen shoots lasers at you and
you have to deflect it at the red lightsaber at the top of the screen, but my
blue lightsaber just wouldn’t budge.
To make up for this
though, I’ll be reading a review of the game straight from the most reliable
review source: iMDB.
Back in 2004 Star-Wars-Lover
wrote this of the game (note: I left this completely undedited): “Jedi Arena
was the fourth Star Wars game ever made. It was launched to Atari 2600. The
rules were simple. Someone shoots a Seeker into his/her opponent, then the
opponent reflects the missile with a lightsaber. Then the game transforms into
a tennis game. The game's graphics were simple, but goo for the Atari 2600. The
game had a bad sound. The controls were extremely easy (Only uses the joystick
and the action button). The game wasn't so cool for 1-p mode, but it was better
in a Multiplayer combat Mode. Jedi Arena is a cool game, only good if you have
another controller.”
Technically
it was the second Star Wars game, not
the fourth, but there you go. It was simple but goo for the Atari 2600. I just
couldn’t get it to work for me.
Next
up is Return of the Jedi: Death Star
Battle. With a title like that how could you not get excited?
This
one is actually pretty cool. The only problem is that it’s incredibly
difficult. You pilot the Millennium Falcon
on a mission to destroy the Death Star II. The first segment sees you being
attacked by TIE Fighters and being held off from the Death Star by some
mysterious wall. When a hole appears in the wall you can fly through it, and
you’re transported through time and space itself to arrive at the station.
Once
you face off with the Death Star itself, things start to get tough. Sort of
like Breakout meets Space Invaders, you have to shoot your
way to the middle of the station to blow it up. At first it doesn’t seem too
hard, but once you reach about the halfway point the station starts to fight
back. It starts shooting insta-kill lasers at you, making it impossible to stay
in one place and keep carving out the one path you started on to the centre. I
wasn’t able to get past this point, but if someone more skilled than me wanted
to try this one I’d recommend giving it a shot.
We
have one more game on our journey, but this one requires a bit of background. Return of the Jedi: Ewok Adventure was
originally meant to be Part 1 of a two part series, the second part being Death Star Battle. The game was never
finished due to production difficulties, but a physical cartridge found its way
online in 1997. And thanks to the power of the internet, now everyone can give
the game a try.
Unfortunately,
once again I couldn’t get the game to work. I couldn’t even get this one to start, let alone play. At least I was
able to get Jedi Arena up and
running, but Ewok Adventure just gave
me an error screen and a lot of corrupted visuals. I couldn’t find any reviews
for this one either, probably because it’s a bit more obscure, so that was the
end of that.
None
of these other games ever quite managed to be up to the same level of quality
that The Arcade Game enjoyed, but
some of them are worth a look just to enjoy how silly they can be. Death Star Attack is cool albeit
difficult, Empire Strikes Back is
hilariously archaic, and, as we previously established, Jedi Arena is simple but goo. I wish I could’ve gotten more info on
Ewok Adventure but what can you do. While
the future of Star Wars games is
looking pretty bleak these days, it’s nice to look back and appreciate how far
we’ve come sometimes.
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