Liesel Plays Star Wars Games

Um, hi. Yeah, I know it’s been a while, but my back pain has been VERY DIFFICULT to deal with, plus we’re, well, getting closer and closer to that scene. In addition, I suffered burnout for a while – it got to be a bit of a chore to write blog entries on these VERY long levels and then before I knew it a year went by. I might have to rethink my formula for the next game. Anyway, let’s get going.

( Level 8 )

Sorry it took so long, but my back pain has been REALLY getting to me lately and I might have gotten a new game or two for my birthday and I might have been playing them but anyway, let’s continue.

( Level 6 )

It’s HAN TIME!!!

( Level 4 )

Again, I have to apologize for taking so long to update. Honestly, my back injury’s really been getting to me, but we have only three more levels and it looks like The Skywalker Saga will FINALLY be released in spring, so let’s continue our adventure.

( Level 34 )

We’re at the last (for now) Star Wars movie!

( Level 31 )

We’ve had the Hoth battle, but we still need to escape.

( Level 26 )

We’ve got Leia, but we’re not out of trouble yet.

( Level 23 )

Mos Eisley time!

( Level 21 )

Yeah yeah, it’s been a while, but I’ve been busy with real life and playing other games. Anyway, it’s time to complete the SNES trilogy with Super Return of the Jedi.



While this one isn’t as insanely impossible as the previous installment, it’s still pretty damn tough (it wouldn’t be a Super Star Wars game if it wasn’t). But anyway, let’s dive in and see what kind of madness the final Super Star Wars game has in store for us.

In addition to the expected movie poster, Salacious Crumb – you know, Jabba’s annoying little pet – is on the main menu screen and he’ll giggle at you until you start the game. Not sure if that’s a neat feature or an annoyance.

Well, we have our expected 16-bit opening crawl and nicely-rendered cutscene, complete with Vader’s awesome breathing.



But then we get something unexpected as the game deviates from the movie a tiny bit. Our first level is a vehicle level of the gang going to rescue Han in a landspeeder. I mean, that’s probably something that happened in canon anyway, but it’s kind of weird to begin the game before the movie actually begins.

Oh, and I love the cutscene’s lighting. Look at that – isn’t that pretty?



Anyway, the level itself doesn’t have any enemies, but it has plenty of rocks to steer around. You’ve also got to jump over bottomless pits because yeah, it totally makes sense to choose the route filled with bottomless pits when going to rescue your friend.



Also, if you pay attention, you’ll notice that the scene gradually gets lighter as the level progresses and the suns rise. Pretty neat effect there – I love it when retro games throw in little touches like that.

Unlike in the previous two games, where you could only play as Luke at the beginning and other characters became available later, this time you can actually choose your character for the first platforming level. And looky looky, we can FINALLY play Leia! It’s about freakin’ time!



Of course her character selection pic is of her in the bikini because bikini. Anyway, since we haven’t gotten to play Leia before, let’s pick her now.



And wow, 16-bit Leia is a BADASS. She can jump around like a maniac and become a somersaulting force of destruction. Course, that doesn’t make the enemies any less numerous – we have Jawas, enemy droids, giant ant things, falling rocks and stalactites, and numerous other creatures, including these annoying pterodactyl things than can pick you up and drop you down.

You’ll also notice Rebellion symbols all over the place. They weren’t good for anything but points in the ESB game, but in this game, they function like coins in the Mario games – for every hundred you collect, you get an extra life.

You also hear Leia’s actual voice grunting when she gets hit, which is neat at first, but given how many times you get hit in these games, it starts to get grating after a while. I think it’s the grunt she gives when Jabba waggles his tongue at her (yeah, you know you’re a geek when you can identify grunts).

Reach the palace and you reach the boss. Remember that doorman droid from the movie that laughed at 3PO? Well, it’s gotten HUGE!



And to add insult to injury, the thing can electrocute you, showing off your skeleton to the world. I wasn’t able to get a screenshot of that, but it’s pretty funny. In any case, this battle takes a LOT of patience since it takes a billion hits to kill but it can of course drain your health in just a few hits. You pretty much have to look for opportunities to strike and hope it doesn’t strike you. To think this is the FIRST boss battle of the game. Han had better appreciate what Leia goes through for him.

Well, you definitely get a sense of accomplishment when the thing finally explodes. Now we’ve got to fight our way through Jabba’s palace. Similar to the Mos Eisley Cantina level in the ANH game, you’ve got to kill all the enemies in a screen before you can advance. And ho boy, are there enemies. Jawas, Gammorrian Guards, Salacious Crumb, even Twi’lek dancers. Yup, you’re killing Jabba’s sex slaves.

Also, there are these huge creatures that grab you by the throat and won’t let go.



And as if that wasn’t enough, there are trap doors that can kill you instantly if you step on them – and they bribe you by putting powerups like giant hearts or health swords on top of them. It’s sooooo hard to turn down those desperately-needed items.

Ah, but look, there’s frozen Han! Your love’s here to save you, Han! Oh right, but first you have to defeat the boss, Bib Fortuna . . . at least I THINK that’s Bib Fortuna, but he’s somehow developed the ability to shoot lasers out of his lekku . . . and the ability to teleport. Yeah, some things you just don’t question in video games.



At first it seems like this battle would be impossible with Leia since her staff can only do close-range attacks (don’t ask why she didn’t bring her blaster), BUT, you can press Y to put her in a defensive stance and her staff will deflect Bib’s laser blasts back at him.

By the way, I love how Jabba just sits in the background and watches the battle.

After you show Bib who’s boss, then Leia wakes Han up. YAY!



For some reason, you can only play as Luke or Chewie in the next level. Maybe it’s because Han’s currently blind and Leia’s currently chained to Jabba. Anyway, I’ll pick Chewie. It looks like his fighting his way through the rancor pit, or maybe the dungeon. Wherever it is, it’s sure dark.



Yeah, it’s the dungeon – you go past all these cell doors and sometimes prisoners will reach through the bars. Creepy.



And woo man, this place is a MAZE. In addition to the enemies lurking around everywhere, you’ve got to navigate your way through a convoluted mess of tunnels, conveyor belts, moving platforms, and spikes (what’s an old-school platformer without spikes?). Oh, and take a look at THIS.



You’ve got to land VERY precise jumps on those tiny platforms or the giant spikes will kill you. Isn’t this game so kind?

And were you expecting the boss to be the rancor? Well, you’re wrong – instead it’s this giant purple frog-thing that can spawn smaller frog-things out of its mouth. Yes, it belches out its babies.



The battle looks intimidating, but it’s actually super-easy because the baby frogs drop hearts when you kill them. So yeah, shoot down as many of those newborns as you can while also shooting the boss and you’ll be victorious in no time.

Well now Luke arrives at the palace . . . even though you could play him in all the previous levels. I mean, I didn’t, but I could have.



Anyway, NOW you can play Han, even though he’s still supposed to be blind and in the dungeon. Ah well, who cares – let’s play my HAN!!

The rancor pit is gross – and convoluted, and absolutely infested with enemies. Gammorian guards, bats, plants spewing spores, craters spewing lava, those baby frog-like creatures, and bones. Lots and lots of bones.



Weirdly enough, Han also grunts when he gets hit, but his grunt sounds nothing like Han’s actual voice. Why did they use a movie grunt for Leia but just a generic one for Han? Couldn’t they have gotten one of Han’s grunts from the movies? And why am I talking so much about grunts?

Oh, Han also does his trademark shrug (that his son would later inherit) when he stands idle. HA!



Or sometimes he might work on his blaster.



What, you think I’m obsessed with Han? Whatever gave you that idea?

Anyway, this level is frustrating as shit. Why? THOSE DAMN BATS! They keep following you around, swooping in with erratic patterns that make them difficult to shoot, and they don’t drop hearts when killed – and if the bats don’t get you, the mini volcanos that spew out bits of lava will. So yeah, you can lose health really quickly and Han can find himself dead long before his son can stab him.

Oh, and you’ll also run into mini rancors. I’m not kidding.



In fact, compared to the rest of the level, the actual Rancor boss is a wimp. He’s huge, sure, but he goes down super-fast if you use grenades. (Sorry about there being no screenshot – I actually beat him on my first try, can you believe that?) Anyway, time for the sail barge.



Huh, the skiff is a lot smaller than I remember it in the movie.



Yeah, in this level you have to jump from skiff to skiff while avoiding the enemies and taking care not to fall off the skiff to instant death . . . cause the sand is poisonous or something. It’s best to just run and jump as fast as you can, since the enemies take several shots to kill and they can electrocute you in the meantime. And look, I actually got a screenshot of Han’s skeleton blinking into sight when he gets electrocuted. Happy Halloween.



Then when you get to the sail barge, you have to deal with Gammorian Guards, tiny platforms, moving platforms, and spikes that pop up under your feet. You know, typical stuff for these games.

You know what, I think I was wrong. I think this game actually IS as hard as the ESB game. For one thing, in the previous two Super Star Wars game, you could keep your blaster upgrades until you died, but in this one, you lose them as soon as you start a new level.

In fact, I committed blasphemy after I reached the level’s first checkpoint and died for the millionth time.

I switched from Han to Luke.



And well, Luke does make the level easier since he can jump around while lightsabering everything in his path, which comes in handing when the bounty hunters start swarming in. Also, he’s got a cool sprite, and when he grunts, he sounds like himself.

Anyway, up, up, up you go through the platforming maze of death. Who’s the boss, you might wonder. Is it Boba Fett? Naw, Han took him out without even meaning to. Nope, it’s . . . this thing.



I’m sure it has a name, but I don’t know what it is and I don’t feel like looking up “tentatcled gorilla reptile thing” on Wookieepedia. Anyway, like all these bosses, he’s got a shit-ton of health, but if you stay at the far left-hand side of the screen, he can only hit you with his ball-and-chain thing. So stay there, lightsaber him like crazy, and he’ll go down.

Anyway, I think this is as good a time as any for a break. See you next time! Here’s Duel of the Fates, Halloween style!

Welcome back! Well, unfortunately Leia does NOT become a playable character. I don’t know if it’s because the game engine wouldn’t allow more than three playable characters or because the game developers thought people wouldn’t want to play Leia. I don’t WANT to call the game developers sexist, but . . . this was 1992, when a lot of people still thought video games were a boy thing and that boys wouldn’t want to play as women (it was only eight years after the first Metroid game hid Samus’s gender from the players until the end of the game). As much as I and my double-X gamer chromosomes would like to spit in the face of those people, I can’t prove one way or the other why Leia’s not playable here, so let’s just move on.

Now that we have Leia, we have to disable the tractor beam. Yup, just like in the NES game, the old fossil is too lazy to do it himself, so he leaves it up to you to do it. And guess what, this is another one of those levels with a shit-ton of movie platforms to time your jumps on. One wrong move and you can fall all the way back to the bottom.



And just like in the NES game, when you reach the tractor beam controls, it’s a boss battle. The thing spews out fireballs that can drain your health in seconds and it has a HUGE health bar.



There IS a way to replenish your health, though. At the bottom level are two droids who drop big hearts when you kill them. If you jump to the top level and then return to the bottom level, the droids will respawn. So keep jumping to the top level and returning to the bottom level to kill the droids again and again to replenish your health, shooting wildly at the tractor beam controls the whole time.

Well, after you destroy the tractor beam controls, THEN the old fossil gets off his butt to fight Vader.



Strangely enough, we don’t see Vader actually kill Obi-Wan – instead we just cut to the Falcon flying to Yavin 4 and go straight to the Death Star attack briefing.



I have to wonder if Nintendo wouldn’t allow any of the actual movie deaths to be shown onscreen – they had some strict rules back in the day, though during the SNES era they started to get more lenient about those rules (particularly when a little game called Mortal Kombat entered the scene, but that’s another story). Anyway, it’s time for the last level in the game. Once again, it’s time to destroy that Death Star!



Once again, you’re controlling Luke’s X-Wing (I like how it says “Red 5” in the character name section at the top of the screen). For the first part of the level, you’re flying around the Death Star’s surface and you have to take down twenty TIE Fighters and twenty gun towers. The TIEs are easy, the towers . . . not so much, since they tend to sneak up on you and running into one means instant death. But, with a little practice, you can ace this level and reach the final part of the game: the trench.



Now you’re in the X-Wing’s cockpit with some impressive 3-D, but there’s no time to enjoy the visuals since the place is SWARMING with TIE Fighters. Basically, you need to stay alive until you reach the exhaust port, which means shooting like a maniac. Prepare for sore fingers. This is undoubtedly the hardest part of the game (which is fitting, seeing as how it’s the last level).

Should you survive the trench, Vader’s TIE Fighter will suddenly appear in front of you. Shoot at it like crazy and it will go spinning out of control, then it’s the moment of truth: the exhaust port. Shoot your proton torpedoes at the right time and BOOM!



With Han’s words of approvement, the game is beaten! Enjoy the medal ceremony!



This game is awesome. It’s leaps and bounds ahead of all the NES Star Wars games and it does a great job making you feel like you’re playing in the movie. It’s definitely tough as nails, but there’s a HUGE sense of satisfaction when you beat it. Oh, and you can play Han, which automatically gives it positive points.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Next up, however, we’re taking on the Super Empire Strikes Back game, and just like with the NES games, the ESB game makes the ANH game look like child’s play.