Star Wars: The Arcade Game

Star Wars is an arcade game produced by Atari and released in 1983. The game is a first person space simulator, based around Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. More specifically the game's action covers the Battle of Yavin. The game is composed of 3D color vector graphics. Considered one of the most popular video games of all time, it was greatly successful in its day, particularly in the wake of the theatrical release of Return of the Jedi. It was later produced as Star Wars: The Arcade Game on the Atari 2600, the Atari 5200, the Atari XE, the ColecoVision, and the Commodore 64

Gameplay
The player assumes the role of Luke Skywalker ("Red Five"), as he pilots an X-Wing fighter from a first-person perspective. Unlike other arcade games of similar nature, the player does not have to destroy every enemy in order to advance through the game; he must simply survive as his fighter flies through the level, which most often means he must avoid or destroy the shots that enemies fire.

The player's ultimate goal is to destroy the Death Star through three attack phases.


 * In the first phase of the game, the player begins in the airspace above the Death Star. He must engage in a dog fight with Darth Vader and enemy TIE Fighters.


 * In the second phase, the player reaches the Death Star's surface as laser turrets on towers rise to confront the player. If the player manages to destroy all of the towers, he will receive a sizable point bonus.


 * In the third phase, the player flies through the final trench towards the thermal exhaust port, the Death Star's weakness. Along the way he must avoid laser shots and various catwalks that block the path. At the end of the trench, the player must fly low in order to fire a proton torpedo into the port. If successful, the Death Star explodes and the game immediately restarts at a higher difficulty level. If unsuccessful, the player must restart the third phase from the beginning.

Each successive Death Star run greatly increases the difficulty; TIE Fighters shoot more often, there are more Laser towers and batteries in the second round, and there are many more obstacles and laser fire during the trench run. Unlike the movie, where the units shoot laser cannons, the enemy units in this game shoot projectiles resembling fireballs, in order to give the player a chance to destroy the shots fired at him.

Arcade details
The game featured several digitized samples of voices from the movie, including Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi, James Earl Jones as Darth Vader, Harrison Ford as Han Solo, and the mechanized beeps of R2-D2. The game was the first to feature digitized voice capabilities, often considered a prime factor of the game's success.

The game is available as a standard upright or an elaborately decorated sit-down version. The controls consist of a yoke control (similar to a steering wheel) with several buttons, all which fired the fighter's laser.

Ports
The game was published for home computers in Europe by Domark in 1987. That same year Broderbund acquired the rights to develop Star Wars games from Lucasfilm. Broderbund published the Apple II and Commodore 64 versions of the arcade game in North America in 1988. The Commodore 64 version was programmed by Daniel James Gallagher and featured voice sampling by Andy Beverage. Two versions were released for the Atari 5200 by Parker Brothers; Star Wars Arcade and Death Star Battle. The latter is almost an exact conversion of the Atari 2600 version, in Star Wars: Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike all 3 classic trilogy arcade games are unlockable (although ROTJ requires a cheat to unlock)

Behind the scenes
The game was programmed for the Atari 2600 by Bob Smith, who was involved in programming many other games for Atari.

In the films Gremlins and No Small Affair (both released 1984), both cabinets were depicted. The trench sequence was seen in Gremlins when the Gremlins play the game and in the film No Small Affair, an upright cabinet is used.

Players with attention to detail may notice that after the TIE Fighter waves, when you are flying towards the Death Star, the yellow grid lines on the Death Star spell out either "MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU" on odd-numbered waves. Assorted peoples' names are spelled out on even numbered waves.

When flying in the trench towards the vulnerable exhaust port, "USE THE FORCE" is spelled in green until you fire a shot. If you dodge the fireballs, do not fire any shots and use one shot to fire your torpedoes in to the exhaust port, you get a sizable "USE THE FORCE" bonus. This is encouraged by Obi Wan himself at the beginning of the trench sequence.