Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
Super Nintendo
Nostalgia Factor:
I first reviewed Super Star Wars back on January 23rd, 2015 – a whopping six and a half years ago. My initial plan was to play all three Super Star Wars game in rapid succession and pump out some reviews talking about which of these games was the best. Obviously this never happened. Later is better than never, however, and it’s finally time for me to play and review Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. How would this game compare to the original? Quite well, actually. Read on for the sweet sweet details.
Story:
This game follows the basic events of the movie’s story. Obviously there are a lot of liberties taken with the story (do you remember when Han got into a blaster fight with the carbon-freezing generator? How about when Luke gunned down a bunch of security forces on his way into Cloud City? I sure don’t) but I really can’t hold that against the game as the movies don’t offer enough source material to fill an entire video game. Just like with the original Super Star Wars, you just kind of have to accept these wacky scenarios and take them as they come.
Gameplay:
At first glance this plays a lot like the original Super Star Wars. You run, shoot, hack things with your lightsaber, jump over pits, and generally destroy everything in your sight. Even the power-ups are the same. Lightsabers that extend your life bar. Darth Vader helmets that double and triple your points. Thermal detonators that kill everything onscreen. Pretty quickly, though, you begin to notice some major differences.
The first major difference is the addition of a double jump. I didn’t even really think about it that much as I played, but now in retrospect I realize how much of a difference this extra jump makes, especially in some of the more difficult platforming areas. You can’t choose what characters you can pick either, as the game does its best to follow the basic events of the movie. For example, it wouldn’t make sense to have Han training on Dagobah or Chewbacca fighting Darth Vader.
The game also seems a bit faster paced than the original. The original had some levels that seemed like they dragged on forever – like both the interior and exterior of the Jawa sand crawler. This game is comprised of many shorter, quicker levels. There were some that I beat in a matter of two or three minutes, which would have been unheard of in the original game. When you start a new level, you start with full health so that was always a welcome thing for me.
I mention full health because this game is HARD. I’m going to say something that may make you disown me as a serious gamer, and I’m fine with that. But I used save states to beat this game. I used them a lot, too, trying to make my way through each level while taking as minimal amount of damage as I could. If I majorly screwed up and lost too many lives or too much health, I’d reload the state and keep doing it again until I got it right. This may seem like “cheating” and I didn’t beat the game the way it was intended to be beaten, but I really don’t care. If I sat down to play this game and didn’t use save states, I’d probably STILL be playing it two weeks from now. It’s just so damn hard, and unfairly so too. Enemies pop out at random. They literally just drop from the sky in many different levels. They respawn when you kill them. They knock you off ledges. They constantly pester you every second of every stage. The game often feels cheap in its difficulty level, which is why I don’t have any problem with me using the save states. If it is going to play dirty, I’m going to too.
One plus side to this is that I was able to beat the game on its normal difficulty level, which I wasn’t able to do with Super Star Wars (which I had to play on easy). So there’s that.
Outside of the bosses, this game has some… uh… “fun” mode 7 flying levels? I appreciate that they tried to do something to break up the 2D platforming monotony, but some of these levels are flat out bad. They’re clunky, it’s hard to aim, and you are constantly getting cheap shotted left and right. If I had to pick one of these levels that I liked, however, it would have to be the Hoth stage where you pilot a snowspeeder and have to wrap the tow cables around the AT AT’s legs to trip them up. I loved this part in Shadows of the Empire, and I liked it here.
Graphics:
This game looks awesome. The bright colors, the giant character sprites. The levels look fantastic. There is so much detail everywhere you look. The world of the Empire Strikes Back is really brought to life in such a fun, colorful, cartoonish kind of way. I can’t say enough how much I love this game’s look. It is terrific.
Sound:
The game sounds amazing too. You can never go wrong with Star Wars music, even when it is pumping through a Super Nintendo cartridge. The lightsaber sounds great. The blaster shots sound great. The hectic nature of this game means there is always something wild happening on screen, and the game manages the chaos perfectly. The sound coupled with the game’s colorful look really brings this game to life. The presentation of this title is wonderful, and probably the best thing about it.
Overall:
I’m really torn when it comes to this game. It does so many things right. The presentation, the weapons, the nonstop action. This game looks and sounds amazing, and it is fun to play… to a certain extent. I thought this game was pretty tough and challenging even using save states. I can’t possibly imagine playing this game without them. I am sure it can be beaten, but it probably requires much more trial and error practice than I am willing to put in. I see that this game does include a password feature, so that is nice. You don’t have to start from the beginning each time you run out of continues. But still, this game is hard. And not just hard – fucking hard. And in a cheap, random way too. It doesn’t feel fair half the time.
And that’s the main problem I have with this game. I had fun with it, yes – with save states. I can only imagine that without them this game is no fun at all. You constantly die, the bosses are unfair, the level design basically sets you up for failure. I’m kind of at a loss as to how I should grade this.
I think this would be a really amazing game if it was more fair. All the tools for success are there. It’s just that the challenge level drags it down SO MUCH. It doesn’t matter how good a game looks or sounds if you aren’t having a good time playing it. If you are playing with save states like I did, you’ll have a much better time playing this game. If you aren’t… I really don’t know how you’d like it. I guess I’ll have to aim somewhere for the middle with my final score. For what it’s worth, I do feel this is a better game than Super Star Wars, which I gave a B-. But I just really don’t know if I can go any higher than that.
Final Score:
B-
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