THE EXPLOSIVE REVIEW

Story
“Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back”, also known as “Super Empire Strikes Back”, follows “Super Star Wars” and is based on the second film of the original ‘Star Wars’ saga, “Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back”. Here is an excerpt from the game’s opening crawl:

”It is a dark time for the rebels. Although the death star has been destroyed, imperial forces have driven the rebellian forces from their hidden base, pursued them across the galaxy. Evading the dreadful imperial starfleet, a group of brave freedom fighters, led by Luke Skywalker has established a new secret base on the remote ice world of hoth, a dark and snowy base. The evil lord Darth Vader, obsessed with finding young skywalker, has dispatched thousand of remote probes into the far reaching galaxy…”

Graphics
This is a 2D platform shoot ‘em up like the original, you run left to right on screen. Details, colors, backgrounds, and atmosphere are all excellent for what it’s worth. More or less excellent is the special effects. To a lesser extent are the characters and baddies themselves. A lot of the backgrounds have huge amounts of detail with decent coloring. The characters don’t look all that appealing though. The graphics are better than most games on Super Nintendo. Other than that, it’s what you can expect from a game that is restricted to the Super Nintendo engine and on 12MB.

Controls
The controls follow almost the same exact pattern from the first game but with the addition of an enhanced double-jump feature. Luke is smooth, elegant, but not too powerful. Chewbacca is tall, huge, clumsy. And Han is… well… average. Chewie is the hardest of all to control though, Luke has to be the easiest. Everyone has a blaster, but Luke has a lightsaber in addition. The controls are pretty much easy. You’ll also get to maneuver control ships and X-Wings.

Gameplay
“Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back” follows the standards set by the previous game, allowing you to play as multiple characters from Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, to Chewbacca. The character selection option has been removed. New this time around is that you can use a primary and secondary weapon and Luke can now collect force powers for later missions. Finally, in the end, you get to duel Darth Vader face-to-face as the final boss. This game has an alarmingly high level of difficulty. Luckily enough, a password system was created for it, allowing players to continue from the point where they left off instead of starting from the beginning of the level.

Overall
“Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back” has got to be one of the hardest games ever, right up there with “Zombies Ate My Neighbors”. It is a highly entertaining and enjoyable game, however, a bit more than the first game as it throws us into newer, detailed, and richer environments. Some of the levels do come off as a bit boring (i.e. the Hoth and Dagobah levels). On other levels, however, the fun picks up, like on the Bespin levels and the encounter with Darth Vader at the end which is enough to pique your interest. Overall, this will be the toughest and most challenging game in the “Super Star Wars” trilogy you will come across

Rating: ****1/2

Trackback URI | Comments RSS