Star Wars

1001 Video Games

The Arcade version of Star Wars appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Arcade version

The original coin-op Star Wars game was built using Ed Rotberg's incomplete spaceflight fortress assault game entitled Warp Speed. Add the joystick from his Military Battlezone and some licensed properties, and voila -- Star Wars!

Commodore 64 versions

There were two licensed conversions of Star Wars: The Arcade Game for the Commodore 64. The first was a cartridge by Parker Brothers. This version used simple sprites for the TIE fighters and clusters of dots to represent the fireballs. Several years later, Domark put out a much more faithful conversion which used vector graphics for all the game elements. Unfortunately while it was quite accurate, it suffered from poor frame rates which often made it difficult to play.

Packaging

My hazy memory recalls: The front of the box contained an embedded LED that blinked slowly, like once every 3 seconds. I believe the LED was part of R2D2's head poking out of the top of the X-Wing.

References to the game

In the 1984 Christmas horror film Gremlins some of the Gremlin's can be seen briefly playing the original Arcade cabinet version of Star Wars.

Rogue Squadron III

In the Gamecube title Star Wars: Rogue Squadron III - Rebel Strike, the full version of Star Wars: The Arcade Game was an unlockable bonus feature.

Boss-keys

Resourceful programmer tricks #2: The function keys serve as multiple different functional boss-keys, information about the programmer, and other neat little functions -- way above and beyond a typical boss-key. Poke around the keyboard while the game is running and see what you find!

Awards

• Retro Gamer
  • September 2004 (Issue #8) – #87 Best Game Of All Time (Readers' Vote)

Information also contributed by Guy Chapman, Pseudo_Intellectual, Rekrul, vedder and FatherJack