Star Wars: Rebel Assault

Star Wars: Rebel Assault was the first CD-ROM-only game published by LucasArts, set in the Star Wars universe during the early Galactic Civil War.

Gameplay
Although the scenario, the plot and the variety of missions were neither original or rich, the game's value consisted mainly on the technical part, since it featured digitized footage and music from the original movies, full speech and high quality 3D-rendered graphics. The "chapters" of the game were to meant to be reminiscent of events and battles of the movies.

In fact, the game hinted mainly on impression giving us an alternative storyline of the Original trilogy by recreating famous scenes, rather than being accurate to Star Wars canon: it follows the events of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, but it erroneously contains elements from the Battle of Hoth. The Battle of Yavin is significantly different while the Death Star is destroyed by a character other than Luke Skywalker. For these reasons the game is perhaps less than C-canon.

The gameplay consists of various spaceflight missions, mainly confined in a certain video looping. The course of the ship is predetermined and the player has to hit the targets (usually TIE Fighters) that show up and partially control and steer the ship so that it won't collide to some obstacles and lose hit points.

In some cases, original footage was filmed for the game with actors, and in a case, a Star Destroyer model was digitized (a mini camera "flew" around it) for the needs of a certain mission. Most of the graphics were rendered in 3D. The cockpits were borrowed from the earlier Star Wars: X-wing.

Story
The game follows the adventures of an unnamed young person known under the handle of Rookie One. Like Luke Skywalker, it is a farmboy or farmgirl from Tatooine (the player can choose the gender) and decides to join the Rebel Alliance. The whole game happens during the events of A New Hope and begins with his/her flight training in the Beggar's Canyon, some hours before the Devastator captures Tantive IV above Tatooine.

Rookie then joins a squadron to intercept the Devastator and after the mission is over they descend back to the planet in order to stop an Imperial assault on Tatooine. The Rebel base is destroyed and Mos Eisley receives an attack with AT-ST's which the player has to wipe out.

The story then leads the player on an ice planet (which resembles Hoth), where Rookie will have to stop the AT-AT walkers with a Snowspeeder and then escape the Gamma Base (which resembles Echo Base) firing his/her way through the Stormtroopers in a sequence that reminds of the Battle of Hoth (which is a blooper since this didn't happen before the Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back), escaping from the planet just before it is destroyed by the Death Star (this action completely ignoring the timeframe about the Death Star and the continuity of Hoth in the galaxy).

The player eventually guides Rookie through the training on Yavin 4 preparing the attack on the Trench Run prior to the Battle of Yavin. The final missions follow the actions of the Blue Squadron (Ironically Blue Squadron was the original script Red Squadron of ANH fame), simultaneously to the Red Squadron shown in the movie. They take place near and on the Death Star where the player has to destroy turrets, stop a gigantic laser gun (which doesn't appear in the movie) and finally destroy it in place of Luke Skywalker.

It was followed by Star Wars: Rebel Assault II: The Hidden Empire.

Characters

 * Rookie One
 * Ru Murleen
 * Jake Farrell
 * Turland Hack
 * Thurlow Harris
 * Merrick Simms
 * Carlist Rieekan
 * Romas Navander (probably)
 * Darth Vader
 * Unnamed Imperial officer

Canonicity
The game is generally considered to be S-canon or N-canon. Ambiguous elements of the game have been the following:


 * Nowhere else a Tatooine Rebel base was mentioned, and also, no attack on Mos Eisley was by the time of the game mentioned. But see First Battle of Tatooine (Galactic Civil War) where Rebel forces showed up to intercept the Imperial presence.
 * The Devastator was not destroyed after the Tantive IV incident as implied in the game. It is supposed that the ship attacked was either another Star Destroyer, or that the Devastator was repaired.
 * The Battle of Hoth happened after the Battle of Yavin, and in fact was not even colonized by the Rebellion until after the Death Star's destruction. It is supposed that the ice planet that appears in the game was a similar-looking planet, such as Rhen Var, or that it shows us what happened 'later'.
 * The Death Star was not orbited by a Star Destroyer that launched TIE Fighters to the X-wings. It is supposed that the TIE Fighter mission occurs before the portion seen in the movie, where supposedly the SD had left.
 * The most prominent role in the Battle was that of Red Squadron which is absent from the game and is somehow replaced by the Blue Squadron. Actually, the portion of the game shows a simultaneous, different point of view.

Despite this, later EU sources have tried to import non-contradicting elements from the game: Blue Squadron's appearance in the Battle of Yavin is considered fixed as well as the pilots. Jake Farrell was imported from the Battle of Endor. Several other events from later sources, seem though to justify events and locations from the game such as the Anchorhead Base, and establish them into continuity. Much of the game therefore has been shifted towards C-canonicity, although still some parts are questionable.

The sequel game, however, as well as all elements, locations and characters, is considered a proper C-canonical source.