A Look at Star Wars Gaming
With Star Wars: The Force Unleashed set to hit shelves this fall, and forcing me to go buy a console, a few different sites have posted retrospectives about Star Wars video games. io9.com has a brief write up with some screen shots but the good stuff can be found at Gametrailers.com. They’re doing a ten part series, looking back at every game to ever bear a Star Wars logo. They only have two parts up so far but they’re very well done and provide a nice bit of nostalgia.
As I was watching part 2 of in the Gametrailers series, I remembered the frustration I experienced at playing the Super Star Wars titles designed for the SNES. Those were great games but extremely difficult. For years, I have lived my life in shame at never having really beaten them due to their high degree of difficulty. I always assumed that I just sucked and that was that. In the video however, it is reiterated multiple times just how hard those games were. I’m not the only one who sucked at them! Other people sucked too! That just totally makes my day. Now that I have overcome my shame, I can refocus that shame into bitterness towards George Lucas for not making The Force Unleashed available for PC. Shame on him and his control over many a geeks wallet.
Anyways, all of these looks back got me to thinking about the different Star Wars games that I have played. One of my favorites is Star Wars: The Original Trilogy arcade game. I spent many an hour getting paid to play that when I worked in downtown Salt Lake. I would go buy vending machine parts that I didn’t even need just so that I could play it in my distributor’s show room. There was one day that I beat it something like three times in a row before I decided that I better go back to my office. Good times…
As of late, my favorite Star Wars game has been Battlefront II although I love Knights of the Old Republic. There’s just something about being a clone trooper and shooting unsuspecting Rebels in the head with a sniper rifle that puts a smile on my face. Plus the fact that you can play as Aayla Secura and Boba Fett is awesome.
This being a geek blog, I’m sure that you, our faithful reader, have played some Star Wars games over the years. What is the best? What’s the worst? Remember, there are no wrong answers. That is, unless I say it’s wrong.
I love the KOTOR series! That being said, there is something wonderful about sniping Ewoks in Battlefront. Just gives me a “glee moment” thinking about it.
Jedi Academy was also fun from the standpoint that lightsaber combat was no longer a click, click, click, click+hold affair.
I forgot about Jedi Academy. That was a great game too.
KOTOR was my Star Wars kryptonite… unless you count LEGO Star Wars, then they are tied. There aren’t very many Star Wars games that I have really enjoyed, mainly for the reason that I play Star Wars to be a Jedi. If I can’t be a Jedi, it’s not Star Wars. Tie Fighter was pretty cool though, but I like fighting games in general.
Want a hard, Star Wars fighting game? Look up Star Wars: Masters of Teräs Käsi!
Jedi Academy was my favorite on the computer. I was also a big fan of the starfighter combat simulators (XWing and Tie Fighter).
But I remember playing the Star Wars X-Wing game at the arcade.
Teras Kasi wow. Darth Vader was great when you mastered the force choke hold.
The family loved Lego Star Wars. Now they are coming out with Lego Indiana Jones.