The three movies that remain in the hearts, minds, and souls of the vast majority of Star Wars fans are the original trilogy. Both the prequels and sequels have their defenders and attackers, but one thing is pretty much widely agreed upon by most Star Wars fans. The original trilogy delivers the best of the Star Wars experience. However, it wasn't just movies that ate up our time. Books, comics, and video games all got in on the action and one of those things is what I want to focus a bit on today.
Welcome back everyone to my thoughts on the Star Wars franchise. If you missed my last blog which focused on the prequel movies, feel free to click the link on the sidebar. This series of blogs is going to be highlighting some of my thoughts and experiences on Star Wars throughout the years. Spoilers of all kinds can be found here, so if you are familiar or just do not care about spoilers to movies, games, etc., then read on! As always the opinions in this blog are my personal opinions and are neither right nor wrong as they are just opinions on a sci-fi galaxy.
After it's massive fan reception and exploding popularity, it was inevitable that Star Wars was going to invade the video game market. Since days of the Atari 2600 Star Wars has been a main stay on nearly every home video game console as well as on PC. Even arcades and pinball machines got in on the Star Wars action. It continues to this day to be an incredibly well selling series of video games. Star Wars has become so big in video games that it has nearly stretched through every genre. There are games that are flight simulators, first person shooters, third person shooters, run and gun platformers, racing, vehicle combat, fighting, role playing games (RPGs), real time strategy (RTS), massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPG), action/adventure games, dance, and honestly the list can go on and on. The point is, the video game industry has exploded with Star Wars content. It would take me forever to blog about all of them and frankly, I haven't played a lot of them. So today I am going to focus on the games that take place during the Galactic Civil War. This means that the games I am looking at today take place during or in-between episodes IV, V, and VI. This is not going to be a video game review blog, so I will be talking about the games that I have enough experience with to talk about.
Super Star Wars, Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, and Super Star Wars: Return of the Jedi
Fun Fact. I own a lot of Super Nintendo games. Of all the games I own I have to say that the Super Star Wars trilogy are some of the hardest games I own. They are also some of the better games I own on the console. All three games follow the plots of their respective movies, though some scenes are altered to fit a run and gun platforming game. One perfect example of this is in Super Return of the Jedi, Luke has to fight his way to Emperor Palpatine as opposed to just going to the Emperor. The games stick out to me not just because of their difficulty, but for their creativity. Boss battles are extremely creative. An example of this is Luke fighting the deadliest Imperial Probe Droid the galaxy has ever seen in Super Empire Strikes Back as well as the Habogad (a monster living in the swamps of Dagobah). Other bosses are more expected like Darth Vader, Emperor Palpatine, Jabba the Hutt, and a rancor. All of the battles are tough, but a lot of fun.
The music in the games are great. Many classic Star Wars tunes can be heard in 16 bit and really a lot of them sound pretty good. I also found it great that you can play as multiple characters. Throughout the games you get the chance to play as Luke, Han, Leia, and Chewbacca. All of the characters have different moves and abilities that only expand as you get more into the games (Empire Strikes back and Return of the Jedi in particular). Overall I found these games to be a huge upgrade from the Nintendo Entertainment System's batch of Star Wars games. If you haven't gotten a chance to play them and still happen to have a Supern Nintendo hanging around, pick these games up. They are not all that expensive and if you love the original trilogy and want a good challenge, you do not have to look very far.
In the same year that Super Star Wars: Empire Strikes back came out, another Star Wars game, Star Wars: X-Wing came out on PC. I don't have much experience with it, but the little that I did play left an impression. The game plays similar to old world war II flying simulator games where you dog fight and do other missions. The game was pretty popular and spawned two expansion packs and a sequel, Star Wars: Tie Fighter, which then got two expansions of its own. I just wanted to mention these games are some of the first solid Star Wars PC games that attempted to bring the feel of dogfighting in space into the homes of Star Wars fans everywhere.
Star Wars Rogue Squadron
Speaking of bringing dogfighting to the homes of Star Wars fans everywhere. Star Wars Rogue Squadron took the idea of bringing the air and space conflict between the Rebellion and Galactic Empire and cranked it up with new state of the art 65 bit graphics. Releasing on the Nintendo 64 I cannot even tell you how many hours I poured into this game. The game itself begins shortly after the destruction of the first death star and largely takes up the gap between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes back. That being said, the death star trench run, and the battle of Hoth are both unlockable missions. The final mission in the game takes place six years after the events of Return of the Jedi, so while the games largely happens between IV and V, there are a few exceptions.
The game's story mode is great with the Rebellion going about completing various missions in the ongoing struggle against the Empire. While Luke Skywalker and Wedge Antilles are the main two pilots you play as, you'll come across a good amount of other characters, including Imperial turn coats. The number of unique ships you get to pilot is great and eventually you can even play different ships on missions you previously couldn't. For example, the first time playing a level you may be restricted to an X-Wing, later after you've progressed and unlocked enough, you can play as an X-Wing, A-Wing, Y-Wing, or a snow speeder. That's not even all the ships available or unlockable.
While the classic X-Wing, A-Wing, Y-Wing,, and snow speeder make up the bread and butter of the ships you'll play, you can play as several more. The Naboo Starfighter from Episode I is an unlockable ship as is the Millennium Falcon, the new V-Wing, and even a Tie Interceptor. If that isn't enough there are two bonus missions as well that offer unique vehicles. One is racing through Beggar's Canyon in a T-16 Skyhopper and the other is destroying settlements in an AT-ST.
All of these vehicle options kept me so engaged in this game for so long. I even still go back and play this game fairly regularly. It is not overly difficult, but still offers plenty of challenge (especially when flying the super light armored A-Wing and Tie Interceptor). Each mission offers it's own unique challenge and many of them involve defending a target for a while before flipping the switch and attacking. Some instances are intimidating like the first time you see an AT-AT walking around the battlefield and all you have is your little snow speeder... Wait... Well if you've seen the movies you can probably figure out what to do with that...
I really liked that the missions all largely take place between episodes IV and V. For gamers like myself it gave us some insight as to what was going on after the destruction of the death star. We also do get to see rogue squadron in action during the actual Battle of Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back. This game would end up spawning two sequels on the Nintendo Gamecube. Both of these games would follow a similar format and take place throughout the original trilogy. While both good games, I didn't find myself as hooked on them as a trio of other Star Wars games would be right around the corner. It also didn't help matters that I didn't have a Gamecube until after the sequels were released as I had a Playstation 2 and computer at the time.
Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds
Running on the famous Age of Empire II engine, Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds took Star Wars gaming to an all new, but perfect genre for the material, the RTS. Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds takes players through battles and events originally in Episode I, IV, V, and VI. Later when the Clone Campaigns released events and battles from Episode II were added in. Like other RTS games, there are a variety of races you can play as. Royal Naboo, the Wookies, the Gungans, the Trade Federation, The Rebellion, and the Galactic Empire are all playable. The Clone Campaigns added in both the Republic and the Confederacy. Each race has their own units, buildings, and upgrades. It's a game in which you build your army and then control the battle with the various units and abilities at their disposal.
I've always been a fan of these kinds of games and I remember when I first learned of this game that I was super hyped. I always felt that both Star Wars and the Lord of the Rings series would make perfect RTS games and while Lord of the Rings had some success with the Battle for Middle Earth series of games, Star Wars I feel hit the genre perfectly. There is just so much variety in the units, factions, and strategies that the game pretty much never becomes stale. I mean really though, how does having a group of Tie Fighters gunning down a group of Gungans not sound appealing? If you like strategy games, check this one out on Steam.
Star Wars: Empire at War
Speaking of RTS games. Star Wars: Empire at War and it's expansion pack, Forces of Corruption, are in my mind the definitive Star Wars strategy experience. Playing very differently than Galactic Battlegrounds you control either the Galactic Empire or the Rebellion (or the Zann Consortium in Forces of Corruption) in a quest for galactic conquest. Unlike Galactic Battlegrounds, combat takes place in space and on the ground. The main map is a map of the galaxy with a seemingly endless amount of planets to conquer. I mean that too, there are fan made mods of a campaign containing over 140 planets! On top of that there is a mod that changes the entirety of the game into a clone wars game featuring the Republic fighting the Confederacy, but that's a story for a different blog.
The ground battles in the game aren't really anything special and basically equate to a lesser version of what Galactic Battlegrounds has to offer with limited units being on the surface and no way to construct buildings mid battle (outside of some turrets). It's fun, but the real addicting part of the game comes before the ground invasion. In addition to a ground force you need a space force because you cannot land on a planet without first taking out a space station. Each planet can construct a certain level of space station and by the time they are fully upgraded, they are more like space fortresses. The space battles are very well done with both small fighters and large capital ships being under your control. Heck, even the Death Star is at your disposal if you want it to be while playing as the Galactic Empire. Just be careful because Rogue Squadron can take it down...
I've spent a ton of hours on this game and while the struggle between the Rebellion and Empire is certainly center stage, playing as the Zann Consortium can give a different take on the game and put you in control of a bunch of different units, strategies, and abilities acquired by spreading corruption throughout the galaxy. It's also really cool to be able to control both IG-88 and Bossk. That's a pretty neat bonus. This game is on Steam and frequently goes on sale during the big Steam sales, so certainly check it out if you have the means of doing so.
I could go on and on about Star Wars video games and honestly, there are a few more Star Wars video game blogs that I have planned. To wrap up this blog I want to just touch on one game that I still feel like deserves a movie treatment. That game is called Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire. It's not a game that I played for a ton of time, but it is one that offers an incredible story and basically plays like a movie. There was also a novel of Shadows of the Empire that released and the game was eventually upgraded a bit and moved to PC. I'm not going to spoil the story at all, but I will say that the game bridges the gap between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Thank you all for reading as always. Stay tuned for plenty more Star Wars and other Disney related content coming real soon!
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