Seeing as this episode is was due to be released onto YouTube on May the 4th, what better day to go back and look at the Super Nintendo’s 1st outing in the Star Wars franchise, Today, we are going to be looking at “Super star wars” on the Super Nintendo.
Back in 1977 “Star wars Episode 4 : A New Hope” was released to the cinema going public. George Lucas created a universe full of many famous characters each more memorable than the last……..with some exceptions. (Insert picture of Jar Jar Binks)
This franchise is widely regarded as the beginning of movie merchandising, with Figures, lunch boxes, and all manor of other Star Wars branded products.
Computer games soon followed and in 1978 Apple Computers created an unlicensed Star Wars game for its cassette based Apple 2 computer, interesting enough the 1st Star Wars licensed video game for home users was 1982 Empire strikes back n the Atari 2600, and in 1983 Atari finally released the arcade version of “Star Wars”, a vector based space shoot em up which was the 1st to feature digitised speech direct from a film.
Fast forward 10 years, and the 16 bit range of computers were emerging as the dominant format, and Lucas Arts produced and released “Super Star Wars” on the Super Nintendo. Carrying on the insistence on putting the word “super” in front of every game in the early days of the SNES…This game pre-dated the sequel trilogy, and even pre-dated the re-mastered VHS versions of the 1st 3 movies. So the idea to release these games did fill a gap for star wars fans.
So on 1st November 1992, Super star wars was released in North America, with the European version some 5 Months later in 1993 (No such thing as world wide launches in these days) , this was the only version of this in particular game. A Megadrive one was in production, but more on that later.
Upon loading the game it wont surprise you that the sounds and feel of the game takes you straight into the Star Wars universe. From the games title screen through to the opening section, ill let you take a look at it in its 16 bit glory.
Once the introductions are underway, the game is your typical run and gun game, did I say typical…I meant bloody hard….did I say bloody hard…I meant damn near impossible in places. Lets get this out the way early doors, this game is hard, really hard. If its not the baddies that get you (And in some of the later levels there are lots) it is the near pixel perfect jumps you need to perform to complete the level, by the time I got to level 3 and believe me, the controller almost got threw across s the room. One mistake takes you all the way back to the beginning, either that, or certain doom…….and don’t think that just because you have killed the enemies once, that’s it….oh no….the re-spawn….thanks Darth…
You have a number of different attacks, you can shoot your laser or a bit later on you collect your light sabre, this is the most powerful weapon in the game but you have to be close to the enemy’s to use it. This makes it kind redundant as 80% of the enemy’s just shoot you before you get close enough to use it. Your laser can be upgraded and gets more powerful as you go on, but if you die, its back to the basic model.
Your character can run and jump, perform a higher jump, and do a skid…also pressing the right and left shoulder buttons gives you the ability to look up and down, and you need to use this for some of the more tricky jumps.
To break up the game-play there are driving levels,which see you enter the cockpit of one of the land speeders, here you have to shoot a number of defined enemy’s and then speed off to the goal. These levels make fantastic use of the SNES mode 7 ability and showcase the console to the very best.
The graphics are great and you can clearly see the different enemy’s and the character you control, as a little later on, you collect Chewbacca and Han solo as controllable characters, these both ave their own unique style and abilities (Or you can input one of the many cheat codes, and have these 3 characters playable from the beginning…..your choice)
There are 15 levels in this game, and they follow the plot of the film….kinda……its not exact, but hey, if George Lucas wants to have some artistic licence…who am I to complain……..
Each level gets more and more difficult, and you will need all those continues and lives to get through it. Most levels have an end of level baddie, again not many of these are from the film but when your George Lucas, you can do what you want…..even going as far as “Borrowing” designs from other franchises….….when you get to the end, you enter your red-5 fighter and go and kill tie fighters on the Death Star, then you enter a sequence very much like the vector game from the early 80`s, shooting fireballs, and killing Darth Vader’s ship, and then firing your laser into the exhaust hole to blow up the Death Star. *Phew…I bet that’s the last we will see of the baddies for a while…….they deffo wont milk it for a further 8 films…….
You are then greeted to a rendition of the closing scene from Star wars, and given this is early in the SNES life-cycle, its very well done, the music is faithful to the original, and the graphics are fine. You are greeted with a question is the “Will the Empire strike back” ….I wonder…..
Super star wars only seen the light of day on the SNES, but there was a Mega-drive (Genesis for you American peeps) version in the process of being made, it was quite far down the production cycle when it was canned. The Rom appeared on various sites earlier this year, it is by no means a completed game, but well worth a look.
Super star wars spawned 2 sequels, (No surprise) and still remains a great game, so if you want a challenge, Have a few hours to kill, and access to a game genie……go and save the universe from the imperial forces…..and try not to get your home planet blown up.