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Super Empire Strikes Back. Some people call it the hardest game to ever be released on the Super Nintendo. Many have tried to beat it, but few have succeeded. Even with save states, this game is hard as hell.
Well I HAVE beaten it . . . once. Now it’s time to return to it and see if I can beat it again. Can I do it, or will the dark side defeat me?
On the main menu screen, you hear R2 beeps when you select an option, which is adorable. After the opening crawl, we get a short cutscene of the Star Destroyers dispatching the probes and the probe droid landing on Hoth, then we’re ready to get started.
This time around, Luke has his lightsaber from the beginning – we don’t have to go looking for it in a cave like in the NES game! You can also switch to his blaster if you want to. Of course, you’re instantly besieged with creatures and . . . giant snowballs that periodically roll towards you for some reason, but it doesn’t take long to get to Luke’s taun-taun. Once you get on the taun-taun, another cutscene plays where Luke says he’s going to look for the meteorite.
Why is Luke wearing his pilot’s uniform instead of his snowsuit? No wonder he almost freezes to death. Anyway, as you trek through the snow on your taun-taun, there’s a nice effect of snow falling, but you don’t have time to admire it since everything’s out to murder you, including ice crystals that randomly sprout out of the ground and pitfalls that lead to rocky spikes. You basically have charge through and hope you can kill things fast enough. At the end of the level, you get a helpful message that says “Enter Cave,” which I found pretty funny. Better get off the taun-taun and do what the words in the cave entrance say.
Of course, everything in the cave is trying to kill Luke as well. Even better, now there are creatures who can FREEZE him.
I wonder if Jabba would like a frozen Luke decoration. Anyway, in addition to the freezing creatures, there are bats EVERYWHERE who swoop in and deplete your health, but they DON’T drop health hearts when you kill them, which is a pain. There are also hedgehog-things that shoot their quills at you, ice crystals that grow out of nowhere, and electric eels that leap out of the water. And of course, since you’re on ice, you slip and slide everywhere, so you’ve got to time your jumps real carefully. Oh, a nice little detail - if you stand idle, you can see Luke breathing little clouds.
When you reach the boss, HOLY FUCKING SHIT WHAT IS THAT??
Yes, one of the creatures that freezes you has turned GIANT. Or is that supposed to be the Wampa? It doesn't look like the Wampa, but that's not important - we've gotta fight it whatever it is. Fortunately, this fight is easier than it looks, since it can only freeze you if you’re under its mouth, so stay to the right or the left, jump over its attempts to grab you, lightsaber it like crazy, and BOOM, dead.
Whew, this game spends a lot of time on Hoth. Once we get out of the cave, we take a short taun-taun ride to ANOTHER cave. This game is almost as obsessed with caves as the NES Star Wars game. Almost.
I like the way this cave looks – the dark blue is pretty. However, those super-annoying freezing monsters are back, and in greater numbers. You’ve gotta fight and fight and FIGHT your way through the enemies and jump on precarious little platforms, but eventually you’ll reach a conveniently-placed UP arrow that lets you know where to jump.
Outside the cave, you get to fight even MORE enemies and take even MORE difficult jumps, but you also get to ride a piece of rock down a mountain.
The next level looks like the last one . . . except now you have to fight PROBE DROIDS.
And what do you know, before long you meet a boss – a BIG PROBE DROID.
Notice how I said a boss and not the boss. Yup, you might THINK you’ve beaten the boss when you defeat this bad boy, but nope, the level keeps going. After taking another ride on a rock piece, you soon meet . . . THE BIG ASS MOTHER OF ALL PROBE DROIDS!!
Oh God, this thing will drain your health every time it pops up. If you’re low on health when the battle starts, you might as well commit suicide and start over with a new life that has full health. Fortunately, you respawn close to the boss battle.
After you defeat the BIG ASS MOTHER OF ALL PROBE DROIDS, it’s time for the Battle of Hoth, woohoo!
Well, not yet, since Luke still has to get out of the bunker, where everything is, of course, trying to murder him.
Hostile droids, falling debris, the usual, but at the end of the level Luke jumps onto a speeder bike and gets to shoot down stormtroopers.
This section is pure AWESOME. Just shoot everything in sight and you feel like you could take on the whole Empire yourself. After the shooting goodness, Luke gets into his snowspeeder and now it’s REALLY time for the Battle of Hoth.
Unlike the previous ESB games, this time you get to fight the battle in Mode 7 3D and you’re right up close to the action. The landscape even has hills, which was really hard to render in Mode 7 back then (at least according to this YouTube vid).
Your first mission is to destroy ten probe droids and ten stormtroopers on speeder bikes. The probe droids are simple, but the speeder bikes can get tricky since they zoom all around you. Fortunately, everything you kill drops hearts, so it’s easy to replenish your health. Unfortunately, touching the ground does damage and those hills can take a bit of getting used to.
After that, it’s five AT-STs, which are a bit harder, but doable. Then it’s the main attraction (of course): the AT-ATs. It’s not an ESB game if you can’t fight some AT-ATs. There are two ways to destroy them: you can shoot them, but that takes forever since that armor’s too strong for blasters, or you can use the tow cables like in the movie. The tow cables will take them down much faster, but it takes REALLY precise flying around the AT-ATs once you’ve hooked up or else the cable will come loose. Fortunately, there are a ton of stormtroopers flying around on speeder bikes that you can shoot for hearts should you get low on health.
After taking down the AT-ATs, we’re still not off Hoth. Nope, time for some more shoot-em-up fun in Luke’s snowspeeder, taking down all manner of stormtroopers on speeder bikes and wearing jet packs. I LOVE how huge Luke’s snowspeeder is in this level.
After you dismount the snowspeeder, you’ve got to climb up the last AT-AT while still more jet-pack-equipped stormtroopers come after you. Looks like Finn and Poe were wrong – they’ve been flying for a long time.
And now we go INSIDE the AT-AT! Awesome!
In addition to the usual batch of stormtroopers, you also have hostile wheels attacking you. I’m not kidding, WHEELS are rolling around out to get you. Better somersault around spinning your lightsaber as much as you can – God, that move is fun. Level by level, you ascend the AT-AT and then you emerge on top of it. Time to take this big girl out for good, though I’m not sure why Luke didn’t just take it down in his snowspeeder like all the others.
This boss fight can actually be ridiculously easy because there are flying stormtroopers everywhere and sooner or later one of them will likely drop a thermal detonator. Drop it on the AT-AT’s head and BOOM, end of fight.
Aaaaaannnnndddd look who shows up now!
Ah, my beautiful Han in all his 16-bit wonder. Just let me stare into those eyes. Well, I seem to have a tradition of taking a break when Han’s about to become playable, so I’ll see you next time!
Well I HAVE beaten it . . . once. Now it’s time to return to it and see if I can beat it again. Can I do it, or will the dark side defeat me?
On the main menu screen, you hear R2 beeps when you select an option, which is adorable. After the opening crawl, we get a short cutscene of the Star Destroyers dispatching the probes and the probe droid landing on Hoth, then we’re ready to get started.
This time around, Luke has his lightsaber from the beginning – we don’t have to go looking for it in a cave like in the NES game! You can also switch to his blaster if you want to. Of course, you’re instantly besieged with creatures and . . . giant snowballs that periodically roll towards you for some reason, but it doesn’t take long to get to Luke’s taun-taun. Once you get on the taun-taun, another cutscene plays where Luke says he’s going to look for the meteorite.
Why is Luke wearing his pilot’s uniform instead of his snowsuit? No wonder he almost freezes to death. Anyway, as you trek through the snow on your taun-taun, there’s a nice effect of snow falling, but you don’t have time to admire it since everything’s out to murder you, including ice crystals that randomly sprout out of the ground and pitfalls that lead to rocky spikes. You basically have charge through and hope you can kill things fast enough. At the end of the level, you get a helpful message that says “Enter Cave,” which I found pretty funny. Better get off the taun-taun and do what the words in the cave entrance say.
Of course, everything in the cave is trying to kill Luke as well. Even better, now there are creatures who can FREEZE him.
I wonder if Jabba would like a frozen Luke decoration. Anyway, in addition to the freezing creatures, there are bats EVERYWHERE who swoop in and deplete your health, but they DON’T drop health hearts when you kill them, which is a pain. There are also hedgehog-things that shoot their quills at you, ice crystals that grow out of nowhere, and electric eels that leap out of the water. And of course, since you’re on ice, you slip and slide everywhere, so you’ve got to time your jumps real carefully. Oh, a nice little detail - if you stand idle, you can see Luke breathing little clouds.
When you reach the boss, HOLY FUCKING SHIT WHAT IS THAT??
Yes, one of the creatures that freezes you has turned GIANT. Or is that supposed to be the Wampa? It doesn't look like the Wampa, but that's not important - we've gotta fight it whatever it is. Fortunately, this fight is easier than it looks, since it can only freeze you if you’re under its mouth, so stay to the right or the left, jump over its attempts to grab you, lightsaber it like crazy, and BOOM, dead.
Whew, this game spends a lot of time on Hoth. Once we get out of the cave, we take a short taun-taun ride to ANOTHER cave. This game is almost as obsessed with caves as the NES Star Wars game. Almost.
I like the way this cave looks – the dark blue is pretty. However, those super-annoying freezing monsters are back, and in greater numbers. You’ve gotta fight and fight and FIGHT your way through the enemies and jump on precarious little platforms, but eventually you’ll reach a conveniently-placed UP arrow that lets you know where to jump.
Outside the cave, you get to fight even MORE enemies and take even MORE difficult jumps, but you also get to ride a piece of rock down a mountain.
The next level looks like the last one . . . except now you have to fight PROBE DROIDS.
And what do you know, before long you meet a boss – a BIG PROBE DROID.
Notice how I said a boss and not the boss. Yup, you might THINK you’ve beaten the boss when you defeat this bad boy, but nope, the level keeps going. After taking another ride on a rock piece, you soon meet . . . THE BIG ASS MOTHER OF ALL PROBE DROIDS!!
Oh God, this thing will drain your health every time it pops up. If you’re low on health when the battle starts, you might as well commit suicide and start over with a new life that has full health. Fortunately, you respawn close to the boss battle.
After you defeat the BIG ASS MOTHER OF ALL PROBE DROIDS, it’s time for the Battle of Hoth, woohoo!
Well, not yet, since Luke still has to get out of the bunker, where everything is, of course, trying to murder him.
Hostile droids, falling debris, the usual, but at the end of the level Luke jumps onto a speeder bike and gets to shoot down stormtroopers.
This section is pure AWESOME. Just shoot everything in sight and you feel like you could take on the whole Empire yourself. After the shooting goodness, Luke gets into his snowspeeder and now it’s REALLY time for the Battle of Hoth.
Unlike the previous ESB games, this time you get to fight the battle in Mode 7 3D and you’re right up close to the action. The landscape even has hills, which was really hard to render in Mode 7 back then (at least according to this YouTube vid).
Your first mission is to destroy ten probe droids and ten stormtroopers on speeder bikes. The probe droids are simple, but the speeder bikes can get tricky since they zoom all around you. Fortunately, everything you kill drops hearts, so it’s easy to replenish your health. Unfortunately, touching the ground does damage and those hills can take a bit of getting used to.
After that, it’s five AT-STs, which are a bit harder, but doable. Then it’s the main attraction (of course): the AT-ATs. It’s not an ESB game if you can’t fight some AT-ATs. There are two ways to destroy them: you can shoot them, but that takes forever since that armor’s too strong for blasters, or you can use the tow cables like in the movie. The tow cables will take them down much faster, but it takes REALLY precise flying around the AT-ATs once you’ve hooked up or else the cable will come loose. Fortunately, there are a ton of stormtroopers flying around on speeder bikes that you can shoot for hearts should you get low on health.
After taking down the AT-ATs, we’re still not off Hoth. Nope, time for some more shoot-em-up fun in Luke’s snowspeeder, taking down all manner of stormtroopers on speeder bikes and wearing jet packs. I LOVE how huge Luke’s snowspeeder is in this level.
After you dismount the snowspeeder, you’ve got to climb up the last AT-AT while still more jet-pack-equipped stormtroopers come after you. Looks like Finn and Poe were wrong – they’ve been flying for a long time.
And now we go INSIDE the AT-AT! Awesome!
In addition to the usual batch of stormtroopers, you also have hostile wheels attacking you. I’m not kidding, WHEELS are rolling around out to get you. Better somersault around spinning your lightsaber as much as you can – God, that move is fun. Level by level, you ascend the AT-AT and then you emerge on top of it. Time to take this big girl out for good, though I’m not sure why Luke didn’t just take it down in his snowspeeder like all the others.
This boss fight can actually be ridiculously easy because there are flying stormtroopers everywhere and sooner or later one of them will likely drop a thermal detonator. Drop it on the AT-AT’s head and BOOM, end of fight.
Aaaaaannnnndddd look who shows up now!
Ah, my beautiful Han in all his 16-bit wonder. Just let me stare into those eyes. Well, I seem to have a tradition of taking a break when Han’s about to become playable, so I’ll see you next time!
