Games - Star Wars computer and video games

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	Games - Star Wars computer and video games

Star Wars has spawned over one hundred computer and video games, which comes of no surprise since the theatrical release of the original trilogy nearly coincided with the advent of home consoles. While only a few are based on movie material, the remaining games are heavily influenced by the expanded universe and occasionally linked to the movies.

Early history

The first games based on the franchise were released on the Atari 2600, the very first, The Empire Strikes Back (1982), the player drove a snowspeeder during the Battle of Hoth, destroying AT-AT walkers. While simplistic, the game captured the essence of the movie as well as technology allowed. Several other games appeared, like Return of the Jedi: Death Star Battle (1982), where the player controlled the Millennium Falcon in a mission to destroy the second Death Star, and Jedi Arena (1983), the first game to attempt to simulate a lightsaber battle (in this case, clearly inspired by the A New Hope scene, where Luke Skywalker trains with a seeker). More significantly in 1983, Star Wars the arcade game was released by Atari based on A New Hope. In this game, featuring magnificent color vector graphics and the first ever digitized speech from a film, the player enters the seat of Luke's Red Five X-Wing fighter and battles waves of TIE fighters led by Darth Vader, weaves through towers across the surface of the Death Star and plummets through the Battle Station's trench in an attempt to destroy it.

Due to the video game crash of 1983, which temporarily killed the home console market, no further games based on the franchise were released until 1991, when the platformer Star Wars was released for both the NES and Game Boy, and one year later, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back reused the engine with the plotline of the fifth episode of the saga. It would be still in 1992 that Super Star Wars was released for the SNES (the Super prefix was often used to denote remakes of 8-bit games for the 16-bit "Super" Nintendo system.), followed by the remaining games in the trilogy: Super Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back (1993) and Super Star Wars: Return of Jedi (1994).

Expansion of the franchise

At the start of the 1990s, the Star Wars franchise began to move away from the official films and began to focus more on the expanded universe. The first, X-Wing, released in 1992, started the X-wing computer game series, which would prove itself to be one of the most popular space flight/combat simulators series ever. X-Wing was followed by several sequels and expansions. Other titles such as Software Toolworks' Star Wars Chess were published or licensed by LucasArts, who also used the first "multimedia explosion" to release Rebel Assault (1993), which used FMV and photos extensively.

However, the first step towards modern games was done with Dark Forces, a 1995 first-person shooter that put the player in the role of Kyle Katarn. The 1996 Nintendo 64 title Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire was part of a LucasArts attempt to create a story between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of Jedi, putting the player in control of mercenary Dash Rendar. Shadows of the Empire featured fan-favorite parts from the Super Star Wars line, such as another reanactment of the Battle of Hoth, driving a snowspeeder and tying a cable around AT-ATs legs. After the Special Edition original trilogy re-release in 1997, LucasArts published two other novelty titles, Yoda Stories and Star Wars Monopoly, sequels Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II and X-Wing vs TIE Fighter, and a beat'em up Star Wars themed game, Star Wars: Masters of Teräs Käsi.

As The Phantom Menace release approached, dozens of licensed titles appeared, from the praised expansion to Jedi Knight, Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith and the first game in the Rogue Squadron series and even educational titles, the market was flooded with several games, most of them of questionable quality.

The saga continues

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