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It’s time to finish up Super Empire Strikes Back. Woo, there’s a certain rush that comes with being near the end of a really hard game and I’m definitely feelin’ it now.
For the next level, we play Chewie again. I assume we’re now trying to escape Bespin. There’s a really nice nighttime effect.
But of course, those bounty hunters and hostile droids are everywhere. Again. Still. I have a feeling the escape here will be harder than the escape was in the movie. What’s especially annoying is that many of the enemies will position themselves right at the edge of the platforms and push you to your doom. There’s one particularly annoying enemy that goes into a spinning whirlwind and has no qualms about committing suicide if he takes you down with him.
So who do you think is the boss? Go ahead, take a guess.
You’re right – it’s Boba Fett.
Well Chewie can get a little revenge for shipping Han off. Boba zips in and out in a pretty erratic pattern, but he’s not hard to take down – except that he has a freeze ray that can freeze Chewie.
If only the effects didn’t wear off – then Boba could give Jabba a frozen Chewie decoration to go with his frozen Han decoration. But anyway, Boba’s not the only boss. After he flies off, then you get to fight Slave 1 itself.
Um, Chewie, your best friend’s on that thing – you might want to think twice about shooting it down. Well, like with most of the vehicle bosses, you have to take out the guns and then the ship, then it flies off to take Han to Jabba and Chewie meets up with Leia.
How did Chewie and Leia get separated, I wonder? Did Chewie go running after Boba on his own? Whatever, now we go back to Luke as he takes off to rescue his friends, and what do you know, Yoda DOESN’T tell him to go after them. The game developers actually SAW the movie this time!
Why does Yoda look superimposed on this particular cutscene pic? It’s like they had the picture finished and then quickly added Yoda in. Well, Luke flies off to Cloud City and we get another Mode-7 psudo-3D level.
This time you have to fly around and shoot fifteen cloud cars who are all, of course, shooting at you – though as I said in the NES ESB game, isn’t shooting at Luke counterproductive when Vader wants to turn Luke to the dark side? Well anyway, at least this time the level is actually fun. You can even fly under the clouds, which is pretty damn cool.
Funny how the following cutscene says that Luke’s “unaware of the danger” when he just had to ward off all those cloud cars that were shooting at him. You’d think that might clue him in to the danger, but anyway, it’s time to face Vader!
Well not really – we’ve got to go down a corridor and fight off other enemies first. The stormtroopers in this level have red armor to show how EVVVIIILL they are. Yeah, we’ve got red-armored stormtroopers long before those quote-unquote “Sith Troopers” in TROS made it a thing.
Stormtroopers also zip past you on speeder bikes when you’re trying to make precise jumps on small platforms because why not? Eventually you’ll hear Vader’s voice say “The Force is with you, young Skywalker” but ironically, the voice sample isn’t as clear as it was in the NES ESB game. Weird. But who cares – it’s time for our first face-off with Vader!
It’s pretty tame, but what would you expect? Vader’s just getting warmed up. After he runs off (with his voice saying “Impressive”) you’ll probably be low on health. You can use the Force Heal skill, but instead of wasting your Force meter, you can kill the respawning stormtroopers over and over and collect the hearts they drop to replenish your health, especially since later on you’ll have to levitate in order to get around the tiny platforms.
Eventually you’ll run into Vader again, fight him for a bit, and then, being the great dad he is, he’ll push you out the window. The next level seriously starts with you in free fall. It’s a bit of a bonus section, actually, since you can collect all these Rebellion symbols for points, but that’s all they’re good for: points. You actually land without a scratch – Yoda’s taught Luke well. Now to find Vader again.
God, those stormtroopers are EVERYWHERE. They’ll fly in and push you off platforms like nothing. It takes a whole lot of patience (or levitation) to get through them. Once you FINALLY get through the hordes, it’s time for the real deal. The big face-off between Luke and Vader.
Vader’s iconic breathing tells you that this shit is for real. In addition to his fighting moves, he’ll also make stuff fly around with the Force that will hurt you. Oh, and if he kills you, you’ll hear his voice saying “All too easy.”
Now, the Heal skill is your best friend here – basically, if you didn’t get that skill back on Dagobah, you’re screwed, screwed, screwed, SCREWED. Use it when you’re low on health and when Vader makes objects fly around, slice them open and hope they contain Force meter refills. When you’re doing well, you’ll hear Vader say “Impressive,” which feels pretty good. Hey, who wouldn’t want to be complimented by Darth Vader?
And looky, I DID IT! First we have the escape from Bespin . . .
. . . and then the end of the movie, complete with the text teasing you about how you’ll have to rescue Han and face Vader again in the next game. Fortunately, unlike with the NES, they DID make a Return of the Jedi SNES game.
I did it! I beat one of the hardest SNES games ever for the SECOND time! Woo boy, this game is much harder than the original, but that makes it really rewarding to beat. Unlike the NES ESB game, this one follows the movie fairly well (and the music is actually continuous instead of dropping out every few seconds). There’s a good variety of gameplay and it captures the atmosphere of the movie well. And of course, you can play as my Han.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5.
Next up is the conclusion of this amazing trilogy. While we’re waiting, let’s listen to another awesome Star Wars song. Seems appropriate since the live-action Mulan is coming to Disney+ soon.
For the next level, we play Chewie again. I assume we’re now trying to escape Bespin. There’s a really nice nighttime effect.
But of course, those bounty hunters and hostile droids are everywhere. Again. Still. I have a feeling the escape here will be harder than the escape was in the movie. What’s especially annoying is that many of the enemies will position themselves right at the edge of the platforms and push you to your doom. There’s one particularly annoying enemy that goes into a spinning whirlwind and has no qualms about committing suicide if he takes you down with him.
So who do you think is the boss? Go ahead, take a guess.
You’re right – it’s Boba Fett.
Well Chewie can get a little revenge for shipping Han off. Boba zips in and out in a pretty erratic pattern, but he’s not hard to take down – except that he has a freeze ray that can freeze Chewie.
If only the effects didn’t wear off – then Boba could give Jabba a frozen Chewie decoration to go with his frozen Han decoration. But anyway, Boba’s not the only boss. After he flies off, then you get to fight Slave 1 itself.
Um, Chewie, your best friend’s on that thing – you might want to think twice about shooting it down. Well, like with most of the vehicle bosses, you have to take out the guns and then the ship, then it flies off to take Han to Jabba and Chewie meets up with Leia.
How did Chewie and Leia get separated, I wonder? Did Chewie go running after Boba on his own? Whatever, now we go back to Luke as he takes off to rescue his friends, and what do you know, Yoda DOESN’T tell him to go after them. The game developers actually SAW the movie this time!
Why does Yoda look superimposed on this particular cutscene pic? It’s like they had the picture finished and then quickly added Yoda in. Well, Luke flies off to Cloud City and we get another Mode-7 psudo-3D level.
This time you have to fly around and shoot fifteen cloud cars who are all, of course, shooting at you – though as I said in the NES ESB game, isn’t shooting at Luke counterproductive when Vader wants to turn Luke to the dark side? Well anyway, at least this time the level is actually fun. You can even fly under the clouds, which is pretty damn cool.
Funny how the following cutscene says that Luke’s “unaware of the danger” when he just had to ward off all those cloud cars that were shooting at him. You’d think that might clue him in to the danger, but anyway, it’s time to face Vader!
Well not really – we’ve got to go down a corridor and fight off other enemies first. The stormtroopers in this level have red armor to show how EVVVIIILL they are. Yeah, we’ve got red-armored stormtroopers long before those quote-unquote “Sith Troopers” in TROS made it a thing.
Stormtroopers also zip past you on speeder bikes when you’re trying to make precise jumps on small platforms because why not? Eventually you’ll hear Vader’s voice say “The Force is with you, young Skywalker” but ironically, the voice sample isn’t as clear as it was in the NES ESB game. Weird. But who cares – it’s time for our first face-off with Vader!
It’s pretty tame, but what would you expect? Vader’s just getting warmed up. After he runs off (with his voice saying “Impressive”) you’ll probably be low on health. You can use the Force Heal skill, but instead of wasting your Force meter, you can kill the respawning stormtroopers over and over and collect the hearts they drop to replenish your health, especially since later on you’ll have to levitate in order to get around the tiny platforms.
Eventually you’ll run into Vader again, fight him for a bit, and then, being the great dad he is, he’ll push you out the window. The next level seriously starts with you in free fall. It’s a bit of a bonus section, actually, since you can collect all these Rebellion symbols for points, but that’s all they’re good for: points. You actually land without a scratch – Yoda’s taught Luke well. Now to find Vader again.
God, those stormtroopers are EVERYWHERE. They’ll fly in and push you off platforms like nothing. It takes a whole lot of patience (or levitation) to get through them. Once you FINALLY get through the hordes, it’s time for the real deal. The big face-off between Luke and Vader.
Vader’s iconic breathing tells you that this shit is for real. In addition to his fighting moves, he’ll also make stuff fly around with the Force that will hurt you. Oh, and if he kills you, you’ll hear his voice saying “All too easy.”
Now, the Heal skill is your best friend here – basically, if you didn’t get that skill back on Dagobah, you’re screwed, screwed, screwed, SCREWED. Use it when you’re low on health and when Vader makes objects fly around, slice them open and hope they contain Force meter refills. When you’re doing well, you’ll hear Vader say “Impressive,” which feels pretty good. Hey, who wouldn’t want to be complimented by Darth Vader?
And looky, I DID IT! First we have the escape from Bespin . . .
. . . and then the end of the movie, complete with the text teasing you about how you’ll have to rescue Han and face Vader again in the next game. Fortunately, unlike with the NES, they DID make a Return of the Jedi SNES game.
I did it! I beat one of the hardest SNES games ever for the SECOND time! Woo boy, this game is much harder than the original, but that makes it really rewarding to beat. Unlike the NES ESB game, this one follows the movie fairly well (and the music is actually continuous instead of dropping out every few seconds). There’s a good variety of gameplay and it captures the atmosphere of the movie well. And of course, you can play as my Han.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5.
Next up is the conclusion of this amazing trilogy. While we’re waiting, let’s listen to another awesome Star Wars song. Seems appropriate since the live-action Mulan is coming to Disney+ soon.
Welcome back to the insane difficulty of Super Empire Strikes Back. We just fought our way through the snow and the Imperials, but we’re not off Hoth yet. Now it’s my Han’s turn to take the spotlight as he makes his way through the collapsing Rebel Base.
Han’s sprite is wearing that trademark ESB blue jacket, which is awesome in itself, but of course everything is out to kill him. Literally the moment you start the level, a beam falls from the ceiling and it’s nearly impossible to avoid it. Then there are the laser cannons, the stormtroopers, the flames shooting up from the floor – how will Han ever survive to get stabbed by his son in thirty years?
There are also these platforms that go ZOOMING when you step on them. It’s quite a harrowing ride.
Oh, and if Han stands idle, he’ll twirl his blaster Western-style – HA!
This level’s a bit of a maze. The zooming platforms can go up or down depending on the direction you choose and sometimes you find yourself at a dead end. Who knew that Echo Base had such a convoluted layout? However, you’ll find blaster upgrades and other powerups at some of these dead ends, so it’s not too frustrating.
Eventually, Han runs into a . . . what IS that thing?
Is that a droid? A stormtrooper? A stormtrooper droid? Whatever it is, it wants Han dead FAST. It can eat up your health super-quickly, but fortunately it only takes a few shots to kill. But then just a few steps later, there’s ANOTHER one.
Oh, and did you think they were the level bosses? Nope, the level keeps going after you kill them. Han heads outside and strangely enough doesn’t freeze to death even though he’s not dressed for the weather at all.
And then comes the REAL level boss – an insanely deadly Imperial combat vehicle.
Like with most of the vehicle bosses, you have to shoot off the weaponry before you can do damage to the boss itself. If you have grenades, USE THEM! Once the weapons are all shot off, the thing starts zipping around erratically and it also dispatches bombs because why wouldn’t it? Shoot the damn thing like crazy.
And what do you know, Han still hasn’t found Leia. Maybe she’s already taken off without him. Anyway, this level is pretty much the same as the last one, except now you’ve got droids chasing you too. Oh, and the level boss is . . . A FREAKIN’ AT-ST WALKER!
Yes, Han has to take on an AT-ST walker all by himself without so much as the Force to help him. I knew he was badass, but this is SUPER badass.
This battle’s actually easier than it looks if you have full health and the highest blaster upgrade. Focus on shooting off the AT-ST’s gun, then shoot at it like crazy and it goes down fast, then head over to Leia, who looks like she’s saying “What TOOK you so long?” Well, Your Worship, I only had to take down an AT-ST walker in order to get to you, no biggie!
Well, Han and Leia take off in the Falcon and we get a bit of their banter.
And this probably means we’re going to be shooting some TIE Fighters, aren’t we? What's a Star Wars game without shooting TIE Fighters?
Yup, we’re shooting TIE Fighters, and asteroids – we’re in the asteroid field, after all. You’ve got to shoot fifteen TIEs before your shields conk out, which is easier said than done given how the rocks are EVERYWHERE. Just keep your finger on the trigger and your eye on the radar.
Funny thing, though. After you shoot all the TIEs, the screen shows a hyperspace jump. Ummm . . . don’t
the game designers remember how the Falcon’s hyperdrive was DAMAGED? That’s like, a major plot point of the movie. I mean, these games never promised to be 100% faithful to the movies, but it seems like animating the hyperspace jump was an extra bit of work they didn’t need.
Anyway, now we join Luke on Dagobah.
But before we find Yoda, we have to find R2, who’s gone missing. I guess he got spat out much further than he did in the movie.
Dagobah’s pretty atmospheric. The sound effects give off the feeling of being in a swampy area and the environment is nicely detailed.
You can also get your first Force power here – once again, it’s levitation. These early SW games seem to really like making Luke levitate. Anyway, after cutting through a bunch of swamp creatures, it doesn’t take long to find R2.
For some reason I really like the picture that goes with the cutscene of Luke finding R2. I don’t know why, but I find it adorable.
There’s not much to be said about the next level – it’s just some more fighting through the swamp to get to Yoda. Well, piranhas and alligators chase you relentlessly, but if you keep lightsabering them it’s not too difficult to find Yoda.
Yoda delivers a lengthy speech about the Force which ends with his most famous quote . . . well, half of it.
I mean, seriously, why did they cut off “There is no try”? Did they run out of words? Why not cut out some of his Force speech then? Seems pretty weird to slice off the ending of his most famous quote.
Anyway, the next level has a bunch of Force powers for you to collect that will become super-useful throughout the game, but you need the levitation Force power from the previous level in order to get them. So, if you didn’t get the levitation power, you’re screwed.
Doesn’t sound so hard . . . except that the screen autoscrolls. Dammit, I HATE autoscrolling levels in platformers. Oh, and to top it all off, you’re fighting on top of some big long snake . . . thing that takes up the entire length of the level. Maybe a space slug came to visit Dagobah.
Well, I’ve gotta get the Force powers, ESPECIALLY Heal. Heal does exactly what it says, though I’m not quite sure how you can Force-heal yourself given that Force-healing involves transferring energy from one person to another, so how does transferring energy to yourself work?
And what do you know, the boss is the head of that giant snake thing we’ve been walking on.
I don’t think it appreciated Luke walking on its back. Anyway, this battle is pretty much designed for you to have Force healing, so make sure you use it when you’re low on health. You have to take out its four eyes AND its nose before you can do any damage to it, plus it constantly spits out this little caterpillar things that do damage to you. After you take out its eyes and nose, it’ll speed up and go crazy, but now you can hurt it. Also, when it lights up to indicate that you hurt it, the ground you’re on lights up too since you’re on its body and all. Pretty cool.
Well, now we rejoin Han and Leia as they land on Bespin . . . though I’m not quite sure why they went to Bespin in this version if the Falcon’s hyperdrive was never damaged, but whatever.
Anyway, we’re back to controlling my Han . . . and you’d think he’d get clued in that Lando’s going to betray him when everything on Bespin’s trying to kill him. Right from the start, hostile droids and cloud cars are EVERYWHERE, all shooting at Han before he even gets off the landing platform. There are also a bunch of platforms that I guess have trouble supporting Han’s weight, since they start sinking down as soon as you land on them. So basically, you have to keep jumping, and jumping, and jumping – though if you’re not careful you’ll end up taking a flying leap.
It doesn’t fare any better once Han gets inside either. The hostile droids are still all over the place, along with a zillion clones of Zukkus the bounty hunter. Han really should get the hint that Lando’s gonna stab him in the back. Oh, and there are moving platforms, because everyone loves moving platforms, right? Moreover, you have to double-jump to get on most of the moving platforms.
Eventually, you’ll get on one of those platforms that takes you down, down, down, past many levels of stormtroopers, and then you get to fight off a bunch of Bossk clones. At least I think they’re Bossk, but they do a lot more acrobatics than Bossk does.
This level seems to take forever, but that might just be because of the ungodly number of enemies Han’s had to fight off. Oh look, you also run into Dengar. Han really should take the hint that it’s not safe here.
AND we run into IG-88 – looks like Boba invited the whole gang of bounty hunters over. Even better, IG-88 has a gun that can FREEZE Han. The effects wear off in a few seconds, though – otherwise he could just ship Jabba a frozen Han decoration right now.
Dear God, this level will eventually get you wondering “Where am I? Haven’t I been here before? Am I going in circles?” But then finally, FINALLY you reach the boss, a giant ship that looks like Slave 1.
You have to shoot off all the ship’s weapons in order to defeat it. If you’ve accumulated a good number of grenades from shooting who-knows-how-many enemies, this fight is a cinch. Then afterwards, Lando FINALLY greets Han.
Lando’s cape is also blowing in the wind – nice effect. Anyway, the greeting must have been interesting in this version of events.
“Hey Han old buddy, good to see you!”
“Thanks. Say, you wouldn’t happen to know anything about the droids and stormtroopers and bounty hunters that were all tryin’ to kill me, would you?”
“Nope, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
For the next level, Han and Chewie set off to find 3PO – and I gotta say that I love Han’s blaster pose in the cutscene.
And now we finally get to play Chewie as he goes searching through the garbage bowels for 3PO. He also gets to kill a bunch of Ugnaughts who are just doing their jobs on the way.
This level’s full of lava pits – and I mean a LOT of lava pits. Moreover, most of the time you have to leap on pieces of junk to get across and there will be laser cannons shooting at you directly above the pieces of junk. It’s practically impossible to jump across one without getting hit. However, at one point you get to ride a crane across the lava.
And what do you know – you get to fight the boss over lava too. The boss is some giant vehicle piloted by an Ugnaught.
It also drops bombs because of course. Like with most of the other vehicle bosses, you’ve gotta shoot off the weaponry before you can do actual damage to the machine – but this time you have to make sure you don’t fall into the lava as well. After you take it down, you find 3PO . . . who isn’t blown up.
So if 3PO didn’t get blown up, did he just go wandering into the garbage bowels or something? Well now we’re back to controlling Han . . . and he looks like he’s in the carbon freeze chamber
Has Lando betrayed them yet, or did Han just go wandering into the carbon freeze chamber for fun? Anyway, remember those cranes that picked you up against your will in the Mos Eisley levels from the ANH game? Probably not, but this level is FULL of them. If one picks you up, it will quickly drain your health, so you’ve gotta shoot them before they can do so, which takes ages. Fortunately, they drop a bunch of hearts to replenish your life.
Of course, shooting the cranes is made even more difficult by the ice cannons that can freeze Han before he goes to the big freeze.
Not only that, but sometimes you get to ride on moving platforms past the ice cannons, so Han gets frozen over and over.
Han’s getting a sneak peek of what’s going to happen to him very soon. Oh, I also got this screenshot of Han being frozen mid-jump. Pretty funny.
So who’s the boss of this level, you ask? Oh, nothing much, just a HUGE crane thing that spits fire and ice!
Or wait, is that the carbon freezer? Is Han fighting the actual carbon freezer? Well, whatever it is, it looks menacing, but there’s actually a certain spot to the right where you can stand and shoot it and it will hardly touch you at all. So yeah, if you stand there, this boss is super-easy.
But alas, despite Han putting up a good fight, he still got put in the BIG freeze.
And now that Han’s made his temporary exit, I think it’s break time. We’re almost at the end, people!
Han’s sprite is wearing that trademark ESB blue jacket, which is awesome in itself, but of course everything is out to kill him. Literally the moment you start the level, a beam falls from the ceiling and it’s nearly impossible to avoid it. Then there are the laser cannons, the stormtroopers, the flames shooting up from the floor – how will Han ever survive to get stabbed by his son in thirty years?
There are also these platforms that go ZOOMING when you step on them. It’s quite a harrowing ride.
Oh, and if Han stands idle, he’ll twirl his blaster Western-style – HA!
This level’s a bit of a maze. The zooming platforms can go up or down depending on the direction you choose and sometimes you find yourself at a dead end. Who knew that Echo Base had such a convoluted layout? However, you’ll find blaster upgrades and other powerups at some of these dead ends, so it’s not too frustrating.
Eventually, Han runs into a . . . what IS that thing?
Is that a droid? A stormtrooper? A stormtrooper droid? Whatever it is, it wants Han dead FAST. It can eat up your health super-quickly, but fortunately it only takes a few shots to kill. But then just a few steps later, there’s ANOTHER one.
Oh, and did you think they were the level bosses? Nope, the level keeps going after you kill them. Han heads outside and strangely enough doesn’t freeze to death even though he’s not dressed for the weather at all.
And then comes the REAL level boss – an insanely deadly Imperial combat vehicle.
Like with most of the vehicle bosses, you have to shoot off the weaponry before you can do damage to the boss itself. If you have grenades, USE THEM! Once the weapons are all shot off, the thing starts zipping around erratically and it also dispatches bombs because why wouldn’t it? Shoot the damn thing like crazy.
And what do you know, Han still hasn’t found Leia. Maybe she’s already taken off without him. Anyway, this level is pretty much the same as the last one, except now you’ve got droids chasing you too. Oh, and the level boss is . . . A FREAKIN’ AT-ST WALKER!
Yes, Han has to take on an AT-ST walker all by himself without so much as the Force to help him. I knew he was badass, but this is SUPER badass.
This battle’s actually easier than it looks if you have full health and the highest blaster upgrade. Focus on shooting off the AT-ST’s gun, then shoot at it like crazy and it goes down fast, then head over to Leia, who looks like she’s saying “What TOOK you so long?” Well, Your Worship, I only had to take down an AT-ST walker in order to get to you, no biggie!
Well, Han and Leia take off in the Falcon and we get a bit of their banter.
And this probably means we’re going to be shooting some TIE Fighters, aren’t we? What's a Star Wars game without shooting TIE Fighters?
Yup, we’re shooting TIE Fighters, and asteroids – we’re in the asteroid field, after all. You’ve got to shoot fifteen TIEs before your shields conk out, which is easier said than done given how the rocks are EVERYWHERE. Just keep your finger on the trigger and your eye on the radar.
Funny thing, though. After you shoot all the TIEs, the screen shows a hyperspace jump. Ummm . . . don’t
the game designers remember how the Falcon’s hyperdrive was DAMAGED? That’s like, a major plot point of the movie. I mean, these games never promised to be 100% faithful to the movies, but it seems like animating the hyperspace jump was an extra bit of work they didn’t need.
Anyway, now we join Luke on Dagobah.
But before we find Yoda, we have to find R2, who’s gone missing. I guess he got spat out much further than he did in the movie.
Dagobah’s pretty atmospheric. The sound effects give off the feeling of being in a swampy area and the environment is nicely detailed.
You can also get your first Force power here – once again, it’s levitation. These early SW games seem to really like making Luke levitate. Anyway, after cutting through a bunch of swamp creatures, it doesn’t take long to find R2.
For some reason I really like the picture that goes with the cutscene of Luke finding R2. I don’t know why, but I find it adorable.
There’s not much to be said about the next level – it’s just some more fighting through the swamp to get to Yoda. Well, piranhas and alligators chase you relentlessly, but if you keep lightsabering them it’s not too difficult to find Yoda.
Yoda delivers a lengthy speech about the Force which ends with his most famous quote . . . well, half of it.
I mean, seriously, why did they cut off “There is no try”? Did they run out of words? Why not cut out some of his Force speech then? Seems pretty weird to slice off the ending of his most famous quote.
Anyway, the next level has a bunch of Force powers for you to collect that will become super-useful throughout the game, but you need the levitation Force power from the previous level in order to get them. So, if you didn’t get the levitation power, you’re screwed.
Doesn’t sound so hard . . . except that the screen autoscrolls. Dammit, I HATE autoscrolling levels in platformers. Oh, and to top it all off, you’re fighting on top of some big long snake . . . thing that takes up the entire length of the level. Maybe a space slug came to visit Dagobah.
Well, I’ve gotta get the Force powers, ESPECIALLY Heal. Heal does exactly what it says, though I’m not quite sure how you can Force-heal yourself given that Force-healing involves transferring energy from one person to another, so how does transferring energy to yourself work?
And what do you know, the boss is the head of that giant snake thing we’ve been walking on.
I don’t think it appreciated Luke walking on its back. Anyway, this battle is pretty much designed for you to have Force healing, so make sure you use it when you’re low on health. You have to take out its four eyes AND its nose before you can do any damage to it, plus it constantly spits out this little caterpillar things that do damage to you. After you take out its eyes and nose, it’ll speed up and go crazy, but now you can hurt it. Also, when it lights up to indicate that you hurt it, the ground you’re on lights up too since you’re on its body and all. Pretty cool.
Well, now we rejoin Han and Leia as they land on Bespin . . . though I’m not quite sure why they went to Bespin in this version if the Falcon’s hyperdrive was never damaged, but whatever.
Anyway, we’re back to controlling my Han . . . and you’d think he’d get clued in that Lando’s going to betray him when everything on Bespin’s trying to kill him. Right from the start, hostile droids and cloud cars are EVERYWHERE, all shooting at Han before he even gets off the landing platform. There are also a bunch of platforms that I guess have trouble supporting Han’s weight, since they start sinking down as soon as you land on them. So basically, you have to keep jumping, and jumping, and jumping – though if you’re not careful you’ll end up taking a flying leap.
It doesn’t fare any better once Han gets inside either. The hostile droids are still all over the place, along with a zillion clones of Zukkus the bounty hunter. Han really should get the hint that Lando’s gonna stab him in the back. Oh, and there are moving platforms, because everyone loves moving platforms, right? Moreover, you have to double-jump to get on most of the moving platforms.
Eventually, you’ll get on one of those platforms that takes you down, down, down, past many levels of stormtroopers, and then you get to fight off a bunch of Bossk clones. At least I think they’re Bossk, but they do a lot more acrobatics than Bossk does.
This level seems to take forever, but that might just be because of the ungodly number of enemies Han’s had to fight off. Oh look, you also run into Dengar. Han really should take the hint that it’s not safe here.
AND we run into IG-88 – looks like Boba invited the whole gang of bounty hunters over. Even better, IG-88 has a gun that can FREEZE Han. The effects wear off in a few seconds, though – otherwise he could just ship Jabba a frozen Han decoration right now.
Dear God, this level will eventually get you wondering “Where am I? Haven’t I been here before? Am I going in circles?” But then finally, FINALLY you reach the boss, a giant ship that looks like Slave 1.
You have to shoot off all the ship’s weapons in order to defeat it. If you’ve accumulated a good number of grenades from shooting who-knows-how-many enemies, this fight is a cinch. Then afterwards, Lando FINALLY greets Han.
Lando’s cape is also blowing in the wind – nice effect. Anyway, the greeting must have been interesting in this version of events.
“Hey Han old buddy, good to see you!”
“Thanks. Say, you wouldn’t happen to know anything about the droids and stormtroopers and bounty hunters that were all tryin’ to kill me, would you?”
“Nope, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
For the next level, Han and Chewie set off to find 3PO – and I gotta say that I love Han’s blaster pose in the cutscene.
And now we finally get to play Chewie as he goes searching through the garbage bowels for 3PO. He also gets to kill a bunch of Ugnaughts who are just doing their jobs on the way.
This level’s full of lava pits – and I mean a LOT of lava pits. Moreover, most of the time you have to leap on pieces of junk to get across and there will be laser cannons shooting at you directly above the pieces of junk. It’s practically impossible to jump across one without getting hit. However, at one point you get to ride a crane across the lava.
And what do you know – you get to fight the boss over lava too. The boss is some giant vehicle piloted by an Ugnaught.
It also drops bombs because of course. Like with most of the other vehicle bosses, you’ve gotta shoot off the weaponry before you can do actual damage to the machine – but this time you have to make sure you don’t fall into the lava as well. After you take it down, you find 3PO . . . who isn’t blown up.
So if 3PO didn’t get blown up, did he just go wandering into the garbage bowels or something? Well now we’re back to controlling Han . . . and he looks like he’s in the carbon freeze chamber
Has Lando betrayed them yet, or did Han just go wandering into the carbon freeze chamber for fun? Anyway, remember those cranes that picked you up against your will in the Mos Eisley levels from the ANH game? Probably not, but this level is FULL of them. If one picks you up, it will quickly drain your health, so you’ve gotta shoot them before they can do so, which takes ages. Fortunately, they drop a bunch of hearts to replenish your life.
Of course, shooting the cranes is made even more difficult by the ice cannons that can freeze Han before he goes to the big freeze.
Not only that, but sometimes you get to ride on moving platforms past the ice cannons, so Han gets frozen over and over.
Han’s getting a sneak peek of what’s going to happen to him very soon. Oh, I also got this screenshot of Han being frozen mid-jump. Pretty funny.
So who’s the boss of this level, you ask? Oh, nothing much, just a HUGE crane thing that spits fire and ice!
Or wait, is that the carbon freezer? Is Han fighting the actual carbon freezer? Well, whatever it is, it looks menacing, but there’s actually a certain spot to the right where you can stand and shoot it and it will hardly touch you at all. So yeah, if you stand there, this boss is super-easy.
But alas, despite Han putting up a good fight, he still got put in the BIG freeze.
And now that Han’s made his temporary exit, I think it’s break time. We’re almost at the end, people!
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!
Yoda told Luke to go after his friends. I’m sorry, I just can’t get over that. Yoda told Luke to go after his friends. What next, will Yoda be telling Luke that yes, there’s totally still good in Vader and they should try to save him from the dark side?
Well, I’ve still got to finish this game, so let’s go back to the insanity. Luke flies over to Bespin and he’s immediately greeted by enemy cloud cars, some of which are orange because why not?
Basically, you fly around and shoot the enemy ships and TIE Fighters. You can fly behind the clouds, which is kind of cool, but, ah, I have a question. Since Vader wants to turn Luke to the dark side, why is he sending the TIEs out to shoot him? Seems that shooting Luke down would be counterproductive to Vader’s plan.
Anyway, after you get all the ships, Luke lands on Bespin and I have no fucking idea what he’s wearing now, so make up your own joke here.
Seriously, they replicated Luke’s snowsuit from the movie pretty well in the Hoth levels, so what’s with these weird getups now? Anyway, the music’s still dropping in and out, but that’s to be expected by now. After killing a couple of probe droids, you run into Lando, who’s white.
Not just white, but like VAMPIRE white. My God, did they run out of brown pixels or something? This game just keeps getting weirder.
Lando doesn’t bother introducing himself and just says R2 can shut down the laser beams for a short time. Wow, R2 actually gets to do something! Just up ahead are some laser gates, which R2 lets you pass through – by getting himself electrocuted in the process. Yup, the little droid hurts himself so Luke can go through.
Of course Cloud City is crawling with stormtroopers because why wouldn’t it be? Shortly after this, Leia contacts Luke via . . . the Force? Or did she leave a message in R2? I don’t know, the point is that there are bounty hunters everywhere.
After some more R2 electrocution, you get attacked by a bounty hunter that I assume is Zukkus. He does lethal somersaults that can kill you instantly, depending on your health level, so the boosted lightsaber is a must.
Get caught in his somersault and you’re pretty much dead, so the best strategy is to jump over him while he’s shooting at you, let him somersault in the other direction, then lightsaber him when he’s somersaulting back, repeat. With the lightsaber boost it doesn’t take long to kill him.
After killing him, R2 electrocutes himself for you some more and you run into another bounty hunter who does gymnastics at you. I’m not sure who this guy is, but after you kill him, he’s got a clone to fight after a conveyor belt. Oh, you know what’s funny? If Luke dies on the conveyor belt, the belt carries his corpse on its merry way.
After fighting THREE of these guys and going through a maze of conveyor belts, you can fight and steal another AT-ST walker. It can walk through laser gates and kill bounty hunters like nothing, so you feel like a badass as you go back through the maze to go through the laser gates R2 wouldn’t go through earlier, where you can get a new Force power. Of course, then you have to go all the way back the other way.
After some more exploring the maze, you get to fight Boba Fett, which is tedious. Even with the lightsaber boost, it takes forever for him to go flying away – and that’s if you survive to the end of the fight.
When Boba goes flying off, you run after him and see his ship take off. Leia tells you that Boba has Han and to go after him . . . wait, go after him? What do you mean go after him? For that matter, in the movie Boba took off and . . . OH SHIT, they’re about to REALLY screw with canon, aren’t they?
Oh fuck me. Just FUCK ME. Yes, Luke takes off in his X-Wing to go after Boba. You’ve got another flying level where you shoot at Slave 1 . . . which has frozen Han on it. Um, tell me, Luke, isn’t trying to shoot down Boba’s ship kind of counterproductive to saving Han when Han’s STILL ON THE SHIP?
Also, Boba’s ship sounds like birds tweeting when it shoots at you . . . for some reason. I’ve given up trying to apply reason to this game. This battle’s also FRUSTRATING AS HELL. It only takes a few hits from Slave 1 for the X-Wing to blow up and it’s nearly impossible to get a clear shot without taking damage yourself.
With an INSANE amount of patience, you eventually blow up Boba’s ship (with Han on it? I mean, we don’t see Luke actually rescuing Han, so did Luke just kill his best friend?) and return to Cloud City because, yeah, that’s how things went in canon, we all remember that from the movie, right?
Oh wait, take a step and Han thanks you and says Leia’s in trouble. So . . . Luke not only rescued Han, but he also woke Han up from carbonite . . . by blowing up Boba’s ship with Han on it?? Or was Han never frozen in this version of events – with how much they’ve fucked canon up, it wouldn’t surprise me if they skipped the whole carbon-freezing thing.
And why is Leia in trouble? Aren’t she and Lando and Chewie escaping in the Falcon? Oh fuck it, there’s no telling what’s going on now.
Maybe the game developers made the game so difficult on purpose so no one would see how they’re butchering canon. Well, they didn’t count on people eventually inventing save states.
Anyway, back to Cloud City. Only a little more of this game to go, people! More conveyor belts, more bounty hunters, more gears, more stormtroopers, more music dropping out after five seconds, it’s business as usual. There’s a super-irritating spot where you’ve got to fight a whole bunch of bounty hunters in a row – the best course of action is to do your best to jump over them and run away, then when you’ve got the space to do it, levitate over them.
Eventually you run into . . . another Zukkus, except this one’s turquoise, so maybe it’s Zukkus’s brother or something, who knows?
Kill him and you find Leia, who also looks like a vampire. Maybe there’s a vampiric curse going around Bespin, it wouldn’t surprise me at this point.
Leia warns you that Vader’s here and oh boy, I can’t wait to see how they butcher the “I am your father” scene.
Luke and Vader both draw red lightsabers (just go with it) and we hear Vader’s voice saying “The Force is with you, young Skywalker,” which I’ll admit is pretty damn cool. After that we get a cool 8-bit rendition of the Imperial March which lasts a full TEN seconds before it drops out instead of five! WOW!
I think this game is getting to me.
Anyway, plow through some Ugnaughts and stormtroopers to get to Vader and WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK??
No, your eyes are not deceiving you. Vader is using a blaster. DARTH VADER is using a blaster. Let me repeat that – DARTH FUCKING VADER IS USING A FUCKING BLASTER!!
I got nothing. Seriously. I think my brain just shut down from the madness that is the NES Empire Strikes Back game.
Oh, and that’s not all. Sometimes he swaps out the blaster for a lightsaber . . . which is BLUE.
Apparently Vader and Luke thought it would be fun to switch lightsabers. O-kay, there’s a spot on the left-hand side of the screen where Vader can’t hurt you, so the battle’s real simple. After the battle, Vader vanishes while saying “Impressive,” so was he Force-projecting himself or did he just leave? I can’t tell what’s what anymore.
Explore the facility some more and you’ll run into Vader again. Second verse, same as the first. Again you can move to the far left and lightsaber him from there, and again he disappears when you beat him. Then you get to fight him a THIRD time and AGAIN you can just jump over him to the left where he can’t touch you.
This is the last level, right? What, after making us fight through all the grind of the previous levels, the game developers decided to reward us by making the last level super-easy? I’m not complaining, but that seems a bit backwards to me.
Vader disappears yet again, so you go through a few more Ugnaughts and stormtroopers, then you encounter Vader again on a mess of pillars.
Well, this time around Vader jumps from pillar to pillar in an extremely simple pattern. This battle’s a bit harder than the previous three, but there’s a certain pillar that he never lands on. Time your jumps right from this pillar and you can kick his ass, then he disappears again, blah blah blah.
After going through some more of the facility, you run into another one of those annoying bounty hunters – who puts up more of a fight than Vader does. Seriously. At one point Yoda interrupts you and tells you to use the Force, which is a cue to start levitating.
Then you fight Vader AGAIN and he’ll use that trusty BLASTER. After the fight, he tells you to join the dark side. Okay, so this is where Luke learns his parentage, right?
Wait, that’s all he says before disappearing AGAIN? The FUCK?
Okay, you run to the right and you run into Vader YET AGAIN (how is he teleporting all over the place?) and hear his actual voice say “The Force is with you, young Skywalker.” Okay, this HAS to be the final boss fight, so we’re going to get something EPIC, right?
Right?
This time around, he makes stuff fly around with the Force while he’s attacking you, but that’s the only thing that’s different. Oh, and there’s no safe spot where he can’t attack you either. Use the lightsaber booster and jump around a lot and then . . . wait, WHAT???
Luke . . . defeated . . .Vader . . .
Luke . . . defeated . . . Vader . . .
LUKE FUCKING DEFEATED VADER???
So . . . no parentage reveal? No hand amputation? The FUCK??
By the way, that’s the ending screen. The only thing after that is a wall of text talking about how the Emperor will strike again and the Rebels will continue their fight and blah blah blah it will soon be time for the Return of the Jedi.
Which is a lie – they never made a Return of the Jedi NES game. I mean, why would they? Luke already rescued Han, so there’s no need to go to Jabba’s palace, and he already (gag) bested Vader, so there’s no need to face him again in order to become a Jedi. Hell, since Vader never revealed that he was Luke’s father, now Luke will feel no need to redeem him. The whole thing’s been fucked up beyond saving.
I have a theory about this, though. This game came out in 1992, when the Super Nintendo had already been out for several months. The first Super Star Wars game would be released later in the year, so I have a feeling that JVC Digital Studios wanted to concentrate on the hot new console instead of the NES, so that’s why the ESB NES game ends . . . the way it does, so there wouldn’t be as much pressure to release another Star Wars game for the NES. That’s just a theory, though.
So, what do I think of this game? Well . . . it’s weird. Weird and hard, and I don’t feel the satisfaction that I felt after I beat the original NES Star Wars game, which was much more fun than this one. It really does feel like the ESB game developers either didn’t see the movie or completely missed the point of it. I get it, you change things when you adapt something to a different medium, but the original NES Star Wars game managed to keep the flavor and most of the plot points of the movie, while the ESB game just . . . ignores canon for no apparent reason. Plus, in the original game you could play as all three of the heroes, while here you can just play as Luke, which means you miss a good chunk of the plot. Even if you ignore how this game is based on a beloved movie, if you strip the game of its Star Wars-ness, you’re left with a rather average difficult platformer, and the music, blech. Why the HELL does the music keep dropping out?
The voice samples are cool, though.
Rating: 2.5 out of 5.
So what’s next? Well, I could go to the next console generation and replay the Super Star Wars games, but there’s actually another NES Star Wars game to try out, though it was never released in America. You thought this game was weird? You ain’t seen nothing yet.
Yes, I’m trying the JAPANESE Star Wars game.
Well, I’ve still got to finish this game, so let’s go back to the insanity. Luke flies over to Bespin and he’s immediately greeted by enemy cloud cars, some of which are orange because why not?
Basically, you fly around and shoot the enemy ships and TIE Fighters. You can fly behind the clouds, which is kind of cool, but, ah, I have a question. Since Vader wants to turn Luke to the dark side, why is he sending the TIEs out to shoot him? Seems that shooting Luke down would be counterproductive to Vader’s plan.
Anyway, after you get all the ships, Luke lands on Bespin and I have no fucking idea what he’s wearing now, so make up your own joke here.
Seriously, they replicated Luke’s snowsuit from the movie pretty well in the Hoth levels, so what’s with these weird getups now? Anyway, the music’s still dropping in and out, but that’s to be expected by now. After killing a couple of probe droids, you run into Lando, who’s white.
Not just white, but like VAMPIRE white. My God, did they run out of brown pixels or something? This game just keeps getting weirder.
Lando doesn’t bother introducing himself and just says R2 can shut down the laser beams for a short time. Wow, R2 actually gets to do something! Just up ahead are some laser gates, which R2 lets you pass through – by getting himself electrocuted in the process. Yup, the little droid hurts himself so Luke can go through.
Of course Cloud City is crawling with stormtroopers because why wouldn’t it be? Shortly after this, Leia contacts Luke via . . . the Force? Or did she leave a message in R2? I don’t know, the point is that there are bounty hunters everywhere.
After some more R2 electrocution, you get attacked by a bounty hunter that I assume is Zukkus. He does lethal somersaults that can kill you instantly, depending on your health level, so the boosted lightsaber is a must.
Get caught in his somersault and you’re pretty much dead, so the best strategy is to jump over him while he’s shooting at you, let him somersault in the other direction, then lightsaber him when he’s somersaulting back, repeat. With the lightsaber boost it doesn’t take long to kill him.
After killing him, R2 electrocutes himself for you some more and you run into another bounty hunter who does gymnastics at you. I’m not sure who this guy is, but after you kill him, he’s got a clone to fight after a conveyor belt. Oh, you know what’s funny? If Luke dies on the conveyor belt, the belt carries his corpse on its merry way.
After fighting THREE of these guys and going through a maze of conveyor belts, you can fight and steal another AT-ST walker. It can walk through laser gates and kill bounty hunters like nothing, so you feel like a badass as you go back through the maze to go through the laser gates R2 wouldn’t go through earlier, where you can get a new Force power. Of course, then you have to go all the way back the other way.
After some more exploring the maze, you get to fight Boba Fett, which is tedious. Even with the lightsaber boost, it takes forever for him to go flying away – and that’s if you survive to the end of the fight.
When Boba goes flying off, you run after him and see his ship take off. Leia tells you that Boba has Han and to go after him . . . wait, go after him? What do you mean go after him? For that matter, in the movie Boba took off and . . . OH SHIT, they’re about to REALLY screw with canon, aren’t they?
Oh fuck me. Just FUCK ME. Yes, Luke takes off in his X-Wing to go after Boba. You’ve got another flying level where you shoot at Slave 1 . . . which has frozen Han on it. Um, tell me, Luke, isn’t trying to shoot down Boba’s ship kind of counterproductive to saving Han when Han’s STILL ON THE SHIP?
Also, Boba’s ship sounds like birds tweeting when it shoots at you . . . for some reason. I’ve given up trying to apply reason to this game. This battle’s also FRUSTRATING AS HELL. It only takes a few hits from Slave 1 for the X-Wing to blow up and it’s nearly impossible to get a clear shot without taking damage yourself.
With an INSANE amount of patience, you eventually blow up Boba’s ship (with Han on it? I mean, we don’t see Luke actually rescuing Han, so did Luke just kill his best friend?) and return to Cloud City because, yeah, that’s how things went in canon, we all remember that from the movie, right?
Oh wait, take a step and Han thanks you and says Leia’s in trouble. So . . . Luke not only rescued Han, but he also woke Han up from carbonite . . . by blowing up Boba’s ship with Han on it?? Or was Han never frozen in this version of events – with how much they’ve fucked canon up, it wouldn’t surprise me if they skipped the whole carbon-freezing thing.
And why is Leia in trouble? Aren’t she and Lando and Chewie escaping in the Falcon? Oh fuck it, there’s no telling what’s going on now.
Maybe the game developers made the game so difficult on purpose so no one would see how they’re butchering canon. Well, they didn’t count on people eventually inventing save states.
Anyway, back to Cloud City. Only a little more of this game to go, people! More conveyor belts, more bounty hunters, more gears, more stormtroopers, more music dropping out after five seconds, it’s business as usual. There’s a super-irritating spot where you’ve got to fight a whole bunch of bounty hunters in a row – the best course of action is to do your best to jump over them and run away, then when you’ve got the space to do it, levitate over them.
Eventually you run into . . . another Zukkus, except this one’s turquoise, so maybe it’s Zukkus’s brother or something, who knows?
Kill him and you find Leia, who also looks like a vampire. Maybe there’s a vampiric curse going around Bespin, it wouldn’t surprise me at this point.
Leia warns you that Vader’s here and oh boy, I can’t wait to see how they butcher the “I am your father” scene.
Luke and Vader both draw red lightsabers (just go with it) and we hear Vader’s voice saying “The Force is with you, young Skywalker,” which I’ll admit is pretty damn cool. After that we get a cool 8-bit rendition of the Imperial March which lasts a full TEN seconds before it drops out instead of five! WOW!
I think this game is getting to me.
Anyway, plow through some Ugnaughts and stormtroopers to get to Vader and WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK??
No, your eyes are not deceiving you. Vader is using a blaster. DARTH VADER is using a blaster. Let me repeat that – DARTH FUCKING VADER IS USING A FUCKING BLASTER!!
I got nothing. Seriously. I think my brain just shut down from the madness that is the NES Empire Strikes Back game.
Oh, and that’s not all. Sometimes he swaps out the blaster for a lightsaber . . . which is BLUE.
Apparently Vader and Luke thought it would be fun to switch lightsabers. O-kay, there’s a spot on the left-hand side of the screen where Vader can’t hurt you, so the battle’s real simple. After the battle, Vader vanishes while saying “Impressive,” so was he Force-projecting himself or did he just leave? I can’t tell what’s what anymore.
Explore the facility some more and you’ll run into Vader again. Second verse, same as the first. Again you can move to the far left and lightsaber him from there, and again he disappears when you beat him. Then you get to fight him a THIRD time and AGAIN you can just jump over him to the left where he can’t touch you.
This is the last level, right? What, after making us fight through all the grind of the previous levels, the game developers decided to reward us by making the last level super-easy? I’m not complaining, but that seems a bit backwards to me.
Vader disappears yet again, so you go through a few more Ugnaughts and stormtroopers, then you encounter Vader again on a mess of pillars.
Well, this time around Vader jumps from pillar to pillar in an extremely simple pattern. This battle’s a bit harder than the previous three, but there’s a certain pillar that he never lands on. Time your jumps right from this pillar and you can kick his ass, then he disappears again, blah blah blah.
After going through some more of the facility, you run into another one of those annoying bounty hunters – who puts up more of a fight than Vader does. Seriously. At one point Yoda interrupts you and tells you to use the Force, which is a cue to start levitating.
Then you fight Vader AGAIN and he’ll use that trusty BLASTER. After the fight, he tells you to join the dark side. Okay, so this is where Luke learns his parentage, right?
Wait, that’s all he says before disappearing AGAIN? The FUCK?
Okay, you run to the right and you run into Vader YET AGAIN (how is he teleporting all over the place?) and hear his actual voice say “The Force is with you, young Skywalker.” Okay, this HAS to be the final boss fight, so we’re going to get something EPIC, right?
Right?
This time around, he makes stuff fly around with the Force while he’s attacking you, but that’s the only thing that’s different. Oh, and there’s no safe spot where he can’t attack you either. Use the lightsaber booster and jump around a lot and then . . . wait, WHAT???
Luke . . . defeated . . .Vader . . .
Luke . . . defeated . . . Vader . . .
LUKE FUCKING DEFEATED VADER???
So . . . no parentage reveal? No hand amputation? The FUCK??
By the way, that’s the ending screen. The only thing after that is a wall of text talking about how the Emperor will strike again and the Rebels will continue their fight and blah blah blah it will soon be time for the Return of the Jedi.
Which is a lie – they never made a Return of the Jedi NES game. I mean, why would they? Luke already rescued Han, so there’s no need to go to Jabba’s palace, and he already (gag) bested Vader, so there’s no need to face him again in order to become a Jedi. Hell, since Vader never revealed that he was Luke’s father, now Luke will feel no need to redeem him. The whole thing’s been fucked up beyond saving.
I have a theory about this, though. This game came out in 1992, when the Super Nintendo had already been out for several months. The first Super Star Wars game would be released later in the year, so I have a feeling that JVC Digital Studios wanted to concentrate on the hot new console instead of the NES, so that’s why the ESB NES game ends . . . the way it does, so there wouldn’t be as much pressure to release another Star Wars game for the NES. That’s just a theory, though.
So, what do I think of this game? Well . . . it’s weird. Weird and hard, and I don’t feel the satisfaction that I felt after I beat the original NES Star Wars game, which was much more fun than this one. It really does feel like the ESB game developers either didn’t see the movie or completely missed the point of it. I get it, you change things when you adapt something to a different medium, but the original NES Star Wars game managed to keep the flavor and most of the plot points of the movie, while the ESB game just . . . ignores canon for no apparent reason. Plus, in the original game you could play as all three of the heroes, while here you can just play as Luke, which means you miss a good chunk of the plot. Even if you ignore how this game is based on a beloved movie, if you strip the game of its Star Wars-ness, you’re left with a rather average difficult platformer, and the music, blech. Why the HELL does the music keep dropping out?
The voice samples are cool, though.
Rating: 2.5 out of 5.
So what’s next? Well, I could go to the next console generation and replay the Super Star Wars games, but there’s actually another NES Star Wars game to try out, though it was never released in America. You thought this game was weird? You ain’t seen nothing yet.
Yes, I’m trying the JAPANESE Star Wars game.
I’m still fighting my way through this game. Well, we finally left Hoth, so let’s see what in store for Luke as he looks for Yoda.
Well Luke lands on Dagobah and . . . WHAT THE FUCK???
Why does Luke have green hair? WHY DOES LUKE HAVE GREEN HAIR?? Or is that supposed to be a helmet? He didn’t wear a helmet on Dagobah in the movie! What the everloving FUCK???
I’m starting to wonder if these game designers actually saw the movie. Anyway, the music’s still dropping in and out in five-second bursts, but at least it’s different themes now. You kill a couple of swamp creatures and then Obi-Wan’s ghost interrupts you yet again.
Well gee, Obi-Wan, I had no idea I was here to look for Yoda, thanks for telling me the same thing you told me on Hoth!
Already, the game’s difficulty is back. See the thing in the screenshot that looks like a miniature version of Snuffy from Sesame Street?
Well when Luke starts climbing that vine, the creature starts jumping from side to side SUPER fast and it’s almost impossible to avoid it. There’s also a snake climbing up and down the vine because of course. Fortunately, the snake can be killed, but only with the blaster. After climbing up and down a bunch of vines and killing a bunch of nature’s creatures, you fight two giant spiders in a row – one of which hardly even moves and practically lets you kill it.
Then Luke goes looking for Yoda up in the trees. Hey Obi-Wan, you might want to tell him that there’s no way Yoda would be in a tree.
Well, Obi-Wan does show up when you’re in the trees, but only to tell you to trust the power of the Force. Do you have anything useful to say, Obi-Wan, or do you just like the sound of your own voice?
Anyway, now Luke gets to swing on vines because the game developers apparently think he’s Tarzan.
Sorry for the overload of screenshots, but this level is damn weird. I get it, there wasn’t a lot of action going on when Luke went looking for Yoda in the movie, but I think the added action could be better here. Especially if, oh, THE MUSIC DIDN’T KEEP DROPPING OUT AFTER FIVE SECONDS.
And what fun, a giant grasshopper attacks you. Yes, let me repeat that, a GIANT FUCKING GRASSHOPPER attacks Luke. Holy shit, where was this thing in the movie? Why didn’t Luke fight a GIANT FUCKING GRASSHOPPER in the movie – it would have made the movie SO much better! Moreover, the thing can push you off the branches and all the way back to the beginning of the level – isn’t that great? What AWESOME game design to have a boss that can push you all the way back the beginning of the level – that won’t drive people insane at all!
In fact, the walkthrough at GameFAQ doesn’t even tell you how to fight it – it instead tells you to super-jump over it and run away. Yeah, you don’t even have to fight the thing – it’s just there to ruin your day. You can jump over it and climb up to a higher branch where it can’t get you. Seriously, talk about a stupid boss. It can knock you back to the beginning of the level and you don’t even get the satisfaction of killing it unless you decide that you want to waste a bunch of time trying to fight it without getting knocked back.
Well, after scaling through some more trees, you FINALLY find Yoda, who looks like a Gremlin.
Yoda tells you that he’ll start training you and your first task is to cross the swamp, cause that’s an important skill for a Jedi, I guess. Water instantly kills Luke because I guess living on Tatooine for so long caused him to develop a water allergy, so you have to wait for the little rafts to float towards you.
Float down the swamp, jump over some hills, kill some swamp creatures, float down some more rafts, then you’ll get attacked by another GIANT FUCKING GRASSHOPPER, but just like the first one, you can super-jump over it.
A little climbing and a couple of giant spider fights later, you run into an exploding mushroom. Yes, an EXPLODING MUSHROOM. Dagobah has mushrooms that FUCKING EXPLODE. I’m not making this up. Eventually another GIANT FUCKING GRASSHOPPER pushes you into a deep pit, where you fight another giant spider and get a new Force power, complete with Yoda’s voice saying “Use the Force.”
Well, okay, but how do we get out of the hole? Turns out the new Force power is levitation. So yeah, Force levitation WAS a thing before the sequel trilogy.
After some more hopping around and killing spiders, you run into Yoda again and he offers his words of wisdom.
It’s time for the fight with Force Vision Vader! Oh boy, this should be EPIC!
Well, actually, Force Vision Vader just walks back and forth and swings his lightsaber at you. And of course, there’s no epic boss music to make the fight more awesome. All you need to do is time your jumps over him and lightsaber him a few times and he goes down.
After the fight, you run for a bit and then Luke has his vision of Han and Leia in danger.
And . . . wait, WHAT?? Yoda TELLS LUKE TO GO AFTER THEM???
Okay, now I’m convinced that the game developers DIDN’T see the movie. That was a MAJOR PLOT POINT that Yoda and Obi-Wan told Luke to stay on Dagobah and that if he left he could destroy what Leia and Han were suffering for! YOU. FUCKING. IDIOTS!!!
(takes deep breath) Okay, okay, I’m calm, but since Luke’s on his way to Bespin now, I have a little question.
WHY WASN’T THERE A LEVEL OF THE FALCON GOING THROUGH THE ASTEROID FIELD?????
Don’t tell me they don’t have the technology to do it – we had all those X-Wing levels in the ANH game AND the Falcon going through Alderaan’s remains! How the FUCK do you have an ESB game without at least one Falcon level???
(takes another deep breath) Okay, okay, I’m calm (again). Break time, so here’s another awesome Star Wars song that happens to parody one of my all-time favorite songs.
Well Luke lands on Dagobah and . . . WHAT THE FUCK???
Why does Luke have green hair? WHY DOES LUKE HAVE GREEN HAIR?? Or is that supposed to be a helmet? He didn’t wear a helmet on Dagobah in the movie! What the everloving FUCK???
I’m starting to wonder if these game designers actually saw the movie. Anyway, the music’s still dropping in and out in five-second bursts, but at least it’s different themes now. You kill a couple of swamp creatures and then Obi-Wan’s ghost interrupts you yet again.
Well gee, Obi-Wan, I had no idea I was here to look for Yoda, thanks for telling me the same thing you told me on Hoth!
Already, the game’s difficulty is back. See the thing in the screenshot that looks like a miniature version of Snuffy from Sesame Street?
Well when Luke starts climbing that vine, the creature starts jumping from side to side SUPER fast and it’s almost impossible to avoid it. There’s also a snake climbing up and down the vine because of course. Fortunately, the snake can be killed, but only with the blaster. After climbing up and down a bunch of vines and killing a bunch of nature’s creatures, you fight two giant spiders in a row – one of which hardly even moves and practically lets you kill it.
Then Luke goes looking for Yoda up in the trees. Hey Obi-Wan, you might want to tell him that there’s no way Yoda would be in a tree.
Well, Obi-Wan does show up when you’re in the trees, but only to tell you to trust the power of the Force. Do you have anything useful to say, Obi-Wan, or do you just like the sound of your own voice?
Anyway, now Luke gets to swing on vines because the game developers apparently think he’s Tarzan.
Sorry for the overload of screenshots, but this level is damn weird. I get it, there wasn’t a lot of action going on when Luke went looking for Yoda in the movie, but I think the added action could be better here. Especially if, oh, THE MUSIC DIDN’T KEEP DROPPING OUT AFTER FIVE SECONDS.
And what fun, a giant grasshopper attacks you. Yes, let me repeat that, a GIANT FUCKING GRASSHOPPER attacks Luke. Holy shit, where was this thing in the movie? Why didn’t Luke fight a GIANT FUCKING GRASSHOPPER in the movie – it would have made the movie SO much better! Moreover, the thing can push you off the branches and all the way back to the beginning of the level – isn’t that great? What AWESOME game design to have a boss that can push you all the way back the beginning of the level – that won’t drive people insane at all!
In fact, the walkthrough at GameFAQ doesn’t even tell you how to fight it – it instead tells you to super-jump over it and run away. Yeah, you don’t even have to fight the thing – it’s just there to ruin your day. You can jump over it and climb up to a higher branch where it can’t get you. Seriously, talk about a stupid boss. It can knock you back to the beginning of the level and you don’t even get the satisfaction of killing it unless you decide that you want to waste a bunch of time trying to fight it without getting knocked back.
Well, after scaling through some more trees, you FINALLY find Yoda, who looks like a Gremlin.
Yoda tells you that he’ll start training you and your first task is to cross the swamp, cause that’s an important skill for a Jedi, I guess. Water instantly kills Luke because I guess living on Tatooine for so long caused him to develop a water allergy, so you have to wait for the little rafts to float towards you.
Float down the swamp, jump over some hills, kill some swamp creatures, float down some more rafts, then you’ll get attacked by another GIANT FUCKING GRASSHOPPER, but just like the first one, you can super-jump over it.
A little climbing and a couple of giant spider fights later, you run into an exploding mushroom. Yes, an EXPLODING MUSHROOM. Dagobah has mushrooms that FUCKING EXPLODE. I’m not making this up. Eventually another GIANT FUCKING GRASSHOPPER pushes you into a deep pit, where you fight another giant spider and get a new Force power, complete with Yoda’s voice saying “Use the Force.”
Well, okay, but how do we get out of the hole? Turns out the new Force power is levitation. So yeah, Force levitation WAS a thing before the sequel trilogy.
After some more hopping around and killing spiders, you run into Yoda again and he offers his words of wisdom.
It’s time for the fight with Force Vision Vader! Oh boy, this should be EPIC!
Well, actually, Force Vision Vader just walks back and forth and swings his lightsaber at you. And of course, there’s no epic boss music to make the fight more awesome. All you need to do is time your jumps over him and lightsaber him a few times and he goes down.
After the fight, you run for a bit and then Luke has his vision of Han and Leia in danger.
And . . . wait, WHAT?? Yoda TELLS LUKE TO GO AFTER THEM???
Okay, now I’m convinced that the game developers DIDN’T see the movie. That was a MAJOR PLOT POINT that Yoda and Obi-Wan told Luke to stay on Dagobah and that if he left he could destroy what Leia and Han were suffering for! YOU. FUCKING. IDIOTS!!!
(takes deep breath) Okay, okay, I’m calm, but since Luke’s on his way to Bespin now, I have a little question.
WHY WASN’T THERE A LEVEL OF THE FALCON GOING THROUGH THE ASTEROID FIELD?????
Don’t tell me they don’t have the technology to do it – we had all those X-Wing levels in the ANH game AND the Falcon going through Alderaan’s remains! How the FUCK do you have an ESB game without at least one Falcon level???
(takes another deep breath) Okay, okay, I’m calm (again). Break time, so here’s another awesome Star Wars song that happens to parody one of my all-time favorite songs.
Welcome back to the madness! When we last left Luke, he had finally escaped the Hoth caves (what is with these games and caves?) and the Empire was about to attack. Let’s see what’s in store for us this time.
This level actually feels like an updated version of the Atari 2600 ESB game (but the AT-ATs don’t change colors now, shame). Just like in that game, you’re flying around in the snowspeeder and shooting at AT-ATs, and what do you know, there’s actually MUSIC now that doesn’t drop out after five seconds, imagine that. Of course, it still does drop out every so-often, but at least it lasts longer than five seconds, so I’ll take what I can get. Anyway, you fly around and hammer the buttons to shoot the AT-ATs.
However, there’s a twist this time around. Your snowspeeder is constantly depleting in fuel, and when it inevitably runs out, the snowspeeder crashes and Luke’s left on the ground (I guess Dak’s already dead). You have to run up and down the slippery ground, killing stormtroopers and collecting the little S letters that they drop. I guess S stands for snowspeeder, but anyway, they restore your health and I guess fill up your snowspeeder’s fuel tank . . . or something? Why are these stormtroopers walking around with snowspeeder fuel on their persons?
Anyway, after killing several stormtroopers, you’ll find your snowspeeder good as new, then you hop back in it and return to shooting at AT-ATs. This goes on for several rounds until you bring down all the AT-ATs and then . . . Luke returns to Echo Base? What? So were the Rebels actually victorious in driving off the Empire? That’s not how the movie goes.
So . . . yeah, Luke’s now back at Echo Base for some reason, but now he has to escape – so I guess the Empire still took over the base. Why did Luke bother returning to the base if he just has to leave it again?
Oh . . . you take one step and Leia calls saying she’s blocked off, so I guess Luke needs to get her out. Nevermind that it was HAN who helped Leia escape in the movie – I guess he’s still lazing around and not lifting a finger to do anything.
So, Luke’s wandering around Echo Base and we’re back to the music dropping out after five seconds. Did they not have a big music budget for this game or something? If you go past a door, it will open and stormtroopers will come out, but you can easily kill them. You can do some wandering around to find a boost to your lightsaber (you’ll probably need a walkthrough to avoid getting lost), then you use that boost to kill an AT-ST. It would be more exciting if the music didn’t keep dropping out.
Eventually, Han will call and tell you there’s an Imperial walker nearby with no one on it.
Uh . . . why? Why did the Imperials leave an empty walker sitting around? And why isn’t Han actually DOING SOMETHING? Hey Han, your girlfriend’s trapped – you might want to go help her!
Anyway, you find the walker and you can steal it – okay, NOW things are getting awesome! The thing can even jump!
By the way, it’s kind of gruesome and hilarious how the stormtroopers at gun cannons will slump over when you shoot them. Other stormtroopers just disappear when you kill them, but these guys – they show you the pixely reality of death.
Unfortunately, the AT-ST is only good for destroying some laser canons and then you have to dismount by blowing it up. Yes, dismounting blows it up – I guess the Empire installed a self-destruct mechanism or something. Anyway, you’re back to hopping around and killing stormtroopers until Leia tells you that you can’t cross the damaged area on foot.
Well gee, it might be nice to have that WALKER now. I think maybe the game required us to blow it up just so it could take more of our time.
Anyway, you have to battle another AS-ST walker and jump into its remains to steal it. Incidentally, if you leave the screen without jumping into the walker’s remains, the remains disappear and the walker doesn’t come back. Yes, you’re stuck, so you have to get a game over and start the level over, with Vader’s 8-bit breathing mocking you.
After you use the walker to cross the exposed circuitry, you’ve got to blow this one up too, collect a blaster booster, and head for the boss, which is . . . ANOTHER probe droid. Yes, what fun. Fortunately, with the blaster booster, this one’s easier than that slog of a battle with the earlier probe droid boss. After you kill this boss, then you run into a SUPER-ENHANCED-SOUPED-UP-AT-ST WALKER!
Seriously, this thing is RUTHLESS. You need the lightsaber booster and you’ll probably die a few times before you can kill it (thank God for save states), but when you defeat it, it starts running around with just its legs intact, which is pretty funny.
So now you save Leia . . . at least I GUESS you save Leia. The game doesn’t actually show you saving Leia – it just shows Luke taking off in his X-Wing and heading for Dagobah, so . . . maybe Han actually did something and got them off in the Falcon like in the movie? Maybe? Anyway, since we’re finally off Hoth, I think this is a good time for a break. Here’s a song about Yoda’s maybe-son in the meantime.
This level actually feels like an updated version of the Atari 2600 ESB game (but the AT-ATs don’t change colors now, shame). Just like in that game, you’re flying around in the snowspeeder and shooting at AT-ATs, and what do you know, there’s actually MUSIC now that doesn’t drop out after five seconds, imagine that. Of course, it still does drop out every so-often, but at least it lasts longer than five seconds, so I’ll take what I can get. Anyway, you fly around and hammer the buttons to shoot the AT-ATs.
However, there’s a twist this time around. Your snowspeeder is constantly depleting in fuel, and when it inevitably runs out, the snowspeeder crashes and Luke’s left on the ground (I guess Dak’s already dead). You have to run up and down the slippery ground, killing stormtroopers and collecting the little S letters that they drop. I guess S stands for snowspeeder, but anyway, they restore your health and I guess fill up your snowspeeder’s fuel tank . . . or something? Why are these stormtroopers walking around with snowspeeder fuel on their persons?
Anyway, after killing several stormtroopers, you’ll find your snowspeeder good as new, then you hop back in it and return to shooting at AT-ATs. This goes on for several rounds until you bring down all the AT-ATs and then . . . Luke returns to Echo Base? What? So were the Rebels actually victorious in driving off the Empire? That’s not how the movie goes.
So . . . yeah, Luke’s now back at Echo Base for some reason, but now he has to escape – so I guess the Empire still took over the base. Why did Luke bother returning to the base if he just has to leave it again?
Oh . . . you take one step and Leia calls saying she’s blocked off, so I guess Luke needs to get her out. Nevermind that it was HAN who helped Leia escape in the movie – I guess he’s still lazing around and not lifting a finger to do anything.
So, Luke’s wandering around Echo Base and we’re back to the music dropping out after five seconds. Did they not have a big music budget for this game or something? If you go past a door, it will open and stormtroopers will come out, but you can easily kill them. You can do some wandering around to find a boost to your lightsaber (you’ll probably need a walkthrough to avoid getting lost), then you use that boost to kill an AT-ST. It would be more exciting if the music didn’t keep dropping out.
Eventually, Han will call and tell you there’s an Imperial walker nearby with no one on it.
Uh . . . why? Why did the Imperials leave an empty walker sitting around? And why isn’t Han actually DOING SOMETHING? Hey Han, your girlfriend’s trapped – you might want to go help her!
Anyway, you find the walker and you can steal it – okay, NOW things are getting awesome! The thing can even jump!
By the way, it’s kind of gruesome and hilarious how the stormtroopers at gun cannons will slump over when you shoot them. Other stormtroopers just disappear when you kill them, but these guys – they show you the pixely reality of death.
Unfortunately, the AT-ST is only good for destroying some laser canons and then you have to dismount by blowing it up. Yes, dismounting blows it up – I guess the Empire installed a self-destruct mechanism or something. Anyway, you’re back to hopping around and killing stormtroopers until Leia tells you that you can’t cross the damaged area on foot.
Well gee, it might be nice to have that WALKER now. I think maybe the game required us to blow it up just so it could take more of our time.
Anyway, you have to battle another AS-ST walker and jump into its remains to steal it. Incidentally, if you leave the screen without jumping into the walker’s remains, the remains disappear and the walker doesn’t come back. Yes, you’re stuck, so you have to get a game over and start the level over, with Vader’s 8-bit breathing mocking you.
After you use the walker to cross the exposed circuitry, you’ve got to blow this one up too, collect a blaster booster, and head for the boss, which is . . . ANOTHER probe droid. Yes, what fun. Fortunately, with the blaster booster, this one’s easier than that slog of a battle with the earlier probe droid boss. After you kill this boss, then you run into a SUPER-ENHANCED-SOUPED-UP-AT-ST WALKER!
Seriously, this thing is RUTHLESS. You need the lightsaber booster and you’ll probably die a few times before you can kill it (thank God for save states), but when you defeat it, it starts running around with just its legs intact, which is pretty funny.
So now you save Leia . . . at least I GUESS you save Leia. The game doesn’t actually show you saving Leia – it just shows Luke taking off in his X-Wing and heading for Dagobah, so . . . maybe Han actually did something and got them off in the Falcon like in the movie? Maybe? Anyway, since we’re finally off Hoth, I think this is a good time for a break. Here’s a song about Yoda’s maybe-son in the meantime.
I beat the NES Star Wars game, so can I beat this one here? I’ve played it before and I couldn’t last a minute without dying. It wasn’t a matter of getting lost in endless caves – it was just a matter of dying a lot. It didn’t take me long to rage-quit.
But now I’ve got this blog and a new set of confidence, so COME AT ME, NES ESB! I’M NOT SCARED OF YOU!
Oh, before we start, just so we’re clear, I’m not going to be playing multiple versions of the same game for this blog unless there are really significant differences between the versions. I know the NES Star Wars was also ported to the Game Boy, Sega Master System, and Game Gear, but from what I’ve heard, all four versions are pretty much the same except for a few minor tweaks here and there. However, since the Game Boy Advance versions of the Lego Star Wars games are completely different from the main versions, I will be (eventually) covering them in this blog along with the main version. Got it? Good.
Well, you start off the game as Luke riding a taun-taun, but almost immediately Han shouts at you to go check out the meteor. So . . . now it’s Han’s fault that Luke gets lost? Seriously? In the movie Luke chose to go after the meteor (probe droid) himself. Also, Han looks like he’s wearing his ROTJ trench coat, or at least it looks like that pic was taken from a ROTJ still.
Ah well, that’s my inner geek talking. Anyway, you have zero time to get used to the taun-taun controls before the probe droid attacks you. Fortunately, it just takes a few hits to destroy it, then a few steps later, you run into Obi-Wan’s ghost, accompanied by his actual voice saying “Luke!”
Well, voices are a pretty rare thing in NES games, so that’s actually pretty neat, even if it’s just one word. However, the rest of the audio doesn’t fare very well. For some reason, it only comes in five-second bursts of short themes from the movie, followed by silence, followed by another five-second burst of music. I’m not kidding. Seriously, there’s more music on the pause menu than in the actual game. When you pause the game, you get a neat 8-bit rendition of the cantina music that DOESN’T drop out after five seconds.
Anyway, you go down into a cave and fight your way through monsters. One improvement this game DOES have over the original Star Wars game is that the enemies drop health hearts after you kill them. If you don’t get hopelessly lost, you’ll find your first “Force Power” which lets Luke jump higher if he crouches down for a few seconds. You need this power to navigate through the cave.
And of course, you have to kill TWO probe droids at a time, more than once. And of course, there are tiny ice floes you have to ride on and of COURSE landing in water damages your health. Maybe Luke’s getting hypothermia. I’m also finding the controls pretty slippery, but that might just be because I’m on ice.
Wait, isn’t Luke supposed to have a lightsaber?
Oh CRAP, I missed the lightsaber. Now it’s either fight back through the cave or start the game over. I guess since I’m near the beginning, I might as well start over. Off to GameFAQ to make sure I don’t miss the lightsaber.
Why did he leave his lightsaber hidden away in a Hoth cave anyway? Well, started over, got the lightsaber, and apparently I was wrong about the super jump being a Force power – even the taun-taun can do it. Imagine the taun-tauns in the movie jumping around. The Force power you collect DOES enhance your jumps, though. Anyway, Luke’s lightsaber is now a reddish orange color – why don’t these game developers know what color Luke’s lightsaber is? It also makes a lame screech sound, which is weird since the previous Star Wars game replicated a lightsaber sound pretty well.
Eventually Obi-Wan reappears and tells you to use your Force power to defeat the Wampas . . . wait, Wampas? Plural? Shit, this should be fun.
At first the Wampa killed me over and over, but the walkthrough had a nifty little hint. Jump over the Wampa when it attacks, then quickly duck into this little nook where it can’t harm you. Swing your lightsaber at it over and over until it dies. Looks like Luke won’t get hung upside-down for dinner after all (sorry that the screencap looks like the taun-taun's broken into pieces).
Out of the cave and Han calls Luke to tell him that the “meteor” is a probe droid. Well, thanks for that, Han. Are you gonna shoot it like you did in the movie? No? You’re keeping your lazy ass all nice and warm at the base and letting Luke do the hard work? You nerfherder!
So anyway, more cave exploring and collecting more Force powers. By the way, if you land in the water while on your taun-taun, it dies instantly and its bones briefly break apart into the water. It goes by too quickly for me to get a screencap of it, but it’s a pretty hilariously gruesome sight.
Eventually a second Wampa attacks, this one with more health than the last one, but there’s a strategy for this one too. Just cut a space in the ice blocks big enough for you but not for him, and stand under the blocks while slicing him to bits.
After defeating the second Wampa, shoot the ice blocks into a staircase, head right, and you’re at the GREAT BIG BADASS BOSS PROBE DROID!
This battle’s actually pretty tedious. You can super-jump over its laser fire and whack it with your lightsaber, but it takes FOREVER to destroy the thing. It looks like this one didn’t have a self-destruct like the one Han shot. It would also be nice if there were, you know, some epic boss battle music instead of those five-second bursts of music and then silence.
After you FINALLY destroy it, Han calls you again, being his usual useful self, and tells you that you were too late and the probe droid notified the Empire that you’re here.
Han, I love you, but are you planning on actually DOING anything in this game?
Well, time for the Battle of Hoth, which seems like a good time to take a break. See you next time.
Atari 2600 Star Wars games
Jan. 29th, 2020 08:24 pm
The Atari 2600 was before my time. I never played one, saw one, or even heard of one as a kid, so as a result, I have no nostalgic fondness for the console whatsoever. I can definitely appreciate its importance in the history of video games, but I can’t experience the wow factor that its games originally provided. Most of my knowledge about the system comes from YouTube. I’ve played some 2600 games on emulators, and while some of them are fun for, well, a few minutes, give me a good NES game any day.
So what did the 2600 have to offer in terms of Star Wars games? Let’s find out. Oh, and just so we’re clear, I’m playing these games on emulators because I’m freakin’ poor and I’m not going to the trouble of finding a working Atari 2600 system, then finding a TV it will work on, then buying the carts just for this blog. Call it cheating all you want, I don’t care. I think I can still get the basic gameplay experience through emulators.
First off is Star Wars: The Arcade Game. This is a port of the arcade game that was pretty revolutionary for its day, due to the use of early 3D graphics. I don’t think I’ve ever played the actual arcade version, but as for this port, there’s a nice little chiptune rendition of the Star Wars theme on the opening screen, so that’s a point in its favor. Graphically, it’s pretty impressive by Atari 2600 standards. It gives you a first-person view inside an X-Wing – I assume you’re Luke since your goal is to destroy the first Death Star, but you could be any random X-Wing pilot. Hey, pretend you’re Biggs – then he can not only live, but save the day!
The controls are pretty damn wonky, though. What really got on my nerves was that you can’t move your crosshairs and shoot at the same time. Yeah, if you’re shooting, your crosshairs is stuck in one place, and if you’re moving the crosshairs, you can’t shoot, which makes shooting stuff more of a hassle than it needs to be.
Anyway, the game is in three parts, none of which are very long. At the beginning, you’re in space, shooting TIE Fighters. You can get hit nine times before you die, as the game so helpfully informs you at the top of the screen. The TIEs set off little balls that I guess are supposed to be explosives, since if you don’t shoot them on time they blow up and you take damage. But maybe I’m wrong – maybe they’re mini Death Stars. After The Last Jedi included miniaturized Death Star technology, it wouldn’t surprise me. Or maybe they’re oranges. Yeah, exploding oranges.
After about a minute of shooting TIEs, you fly over to the Death Star and shoot gun towers and more explosives on the surface. This goes on for about another minute, then you’re into the trench, where you keep shooting and duck around forcefields until BOOM, Death Star bye bye. Of course, this being an arcade game, then the whole thing starts all over again on a higher difficulty. Yeah, remember the days when beating the first level of a game was an accomplishment? I’ve only been able to reach the third difficulty level on this one.
So, what’s my verdict? Well, the graphics are good – everything is recognizable except for the explosives/mini Death Stars/exploding oranges. However, the gameplay hasn’t aged well. I mean, you can’t move and shoot at the same time? That’s just a joke. It’s definitely playable (which is more than can be said for some Atari 2600 games), but it shows its age rather badly.
Rating: 2.5 out of 5.
Next up, The Empire Strikes Back. ESB was a superior movie sequel, so will this be a superior game sequel? Let’s find out.
This time you’re on Hoth, flying around in a snowspeeder. Again, you’re probably supposed to be Luke (and dearly departed Dak), but you could imagine that you’re, say, Wedge if you want. Or hey, you could even imagine that Han and Leia are fighting in the battle. The graphics aren’t as good as in the first Star Wars game, in fact they’re rather pathetic – they have that blocky MS Paint look that a lot of Atari 2600 games have. Also, the sky is pink for some reason. I guess the Empire decided to attack at sunrise.
Anyway, you’re flying in your snowspeeder and shooting at the AT-ATs. This time, you can actually move and shoot at the same time – how about that! The AT-ATs also, I’m not making this up, change color as you shoot them. Seriously, they turn all the colors of the rainbow – I don’t know why the Empire would install that feature, but it’s pretty funny. Of course, they’re also shooting at you – and they can shoot out of their asses, make up your own joke about that. Every so-often, the AT-AT’s weak spot will flash for a few seconds – shoot the weak spot a few times and it explodes.
This game is actually pretty fun. It’s basic as all hell (like many Atari 2600 games), but it’s fun to fly around and blast those AT-ATs (and watch them change color). It also offers a decent challenge, seeing as how the AT-ATs can blast you from anywhere and you can only take a few hits before your snowspeeder explodes. Also, when you get a game over, the sky explodes in a multitude of colors. I guess that’s supposed to be the Echo Base power generator blowing up – let’s hope everyone evacuated in time. The sound that accompanies the explosion is actually a bit unsettling, believe it or not.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
Now we have Return of the Jedi: Death Star Battle. As you can imagine from the title, now you’re battling to destroy the second Death Star. No fancy first-person graphics this time around, though. You’re piloting the Millennium Falcon – I wonder if this was the first time players could control the Millennium Falcon in a video game. Damn, just my luck, I get to fly the Millennium Falcon, but my Han’s not in it.
What was I talking about? Oh right, the game. It’s in two parts, both of which are, of course, really short. At the beginning, you’re shooting TIEs and Imperial Shuttles and whatnot outside the second Death Star’s shield, which keeps changing color for some reason. I guess the Empire really likes color-changing weapons. After a few seconds, an opening in the shield reveals itself – fly in there and you get this neat 3D-ish transition of flying through it. Pretty impressive for the time.
Part 2 involves chipping away at the actual Death Star to get to its reactor core in the center. Yes, you’re blasting pieces off the Death Star – it’s pretty funny to watch. At first my firing range was too short to hit the inner parts of the Death Star, but then I realized that you get a longer range if you hold down the button. Some Imperials fly in with blocks to fix the Death Star, but I’m not sure what happens if they finish building it, since I always either get blown up or destroy the thing before its finished.
It sounds easy enough to take out the Death Star bit by bit while avoiding TIEs and other Imperial ships, but there’s one BIG complication. Guarding the reactor core is a little green block that shoots at you relentlessly – I don’t know what it’s called, so I’ll name it the Green Block of Doom. The Green Block of Doom is bound and determined to protect the reactor core and it only takes one blast from it to blow up the Falcon. Seriously, I lost count of how many times this thing killed me. You have to carefully lure it out of the way to get a shot at the reactor core, which is easier said than done given how relentlessly it shoots at you. When you finally get the core, the Death Star blows up with some nice animation, then rinse and repeat.
This game’s all right. Though the Green Block of Doom is frustrating as hell, it’s still pretty creative how it executes destroying the second Death Star (chipping away at it piece by piece is priceless). Nothing overly special, but fun to kill a few minutes with.
Rating: 3 out of 5.
Now we have Return of the Jedi: Ewok Adventure. This is a prototype for a game that was cancelled before its release, but it’s still playable – well, playable in a loose sense of the word, at least. This one tries to be more complicated than the other Atari 2600 Star Wars games. Instead of one or two screens, this one has an actual map. Yeah, you fly in – I guess it’s an Ewok glider – all over Endor and the environment changes colors as you change screens. There’s an arrow at the bottom of the screen to tell you which way to go.
The glider’s kind of hard to control – I don’t know if it’s because I’m using an emulator or if the control is just bad. Another gripe I have with this game is that you have a limited amount of ammo, so you don’t get to have fun shooting everything in sight. Nope, you’ve got to just avoid most of the stormtroopers, speeder bikes, and AT-STs, which isn’t as much fun.
But you wanna know my BIGGEST gripe with the game? Every time you get hit, the Ewok gets out of the glider, slowly walks back a short distance, and gets back in. You have to watch this EVERY. SINGLE. TIME and it gets super annoying when you just want to get back to the game. Also, at one point I stole an AT-ST by sheer accident, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it again.
Anyway, eventually you reach the second Death Star’s shield generator. Hopefully you have ammo left, so shoot it and it explodes in a psychedelic blast of colors (the fuck? We give Han’s big moment to a random Ewok?). Yeah, it’s probably not a good idea to play this game if you have epilepsy.
Is it fair for me to give this game a rating when it wasn’t actually released? Well, seeing as how you can play the prototype, yeah, it’s fair. This game REALLY shows its age, more than the others. The controls are clunky and watching that damn Ewok walk back EVERY time you get hit REALLY gets on your nerves. I had the least amount of fun with this one.
Rating: 2 out of 5.
Finally, we have Star Wars: Jedi Arena. I never would have guessed that this was a Star Wars game just by looking at it. Seriously, look at that – it looks like some weird pinball game. Well, turns out that the paddle-things are supposed to be lightsabers and the ball thing in the middle is a training remote.
The goal of the game is to destroy the forcefield-thing in front of your opponent’s goal by using blasts from the remote and then shooting a blast into the goal. The remote moves on its own, but you can press the button to make it shoot blasts and with timing, it might break a section of your opponent’s forcefield, but most likely your opponent will block it with its lightsaber. I don’t know if this game sucks or if I just suck at it, but I almost never broke a bit of the computer’s forcefield.
This game is super basic and super weird and super not-fun. There’s a good idea in here somewhere and with a bit more polish it might have been fun, but as it is . . . eh. Again, maybe I just suck at it, but it takes forever even for the computer to break my forcefield. I really don’t have much more to say about it, but . . . at least there’s a cool lightsaber hum sound effect.
Rating: 1.5 out of 5
Okay, this is probably the only time that I’ll review five games in one post, given that most of the games I’ll be playing aren’t as simple as these. In fact, most of the time it will probably take me more than one post to review a single game. Next time, I’ll be looking at the NES Star Wars game, so I’ll see you then.
