Super Star Wars (SNES)

The Force is Strong with this one

The Box Art for Super Star Wars

I think being a child born after the release of Star Wars almost guaranteed that you were going to grow up with it in some capacity. My Dad’s side of the family were particularly into it, in that my Uncle had a decent amount of the toys, including the old AT-AT and said Uncle also has a son called Luke, I can only assume because of his love for Star Wars. As a child, we had the black box VHS’, the digitally remastered versions, before they did the Special Editions with the added tweaks, such as that weird Jabba scene in A New Hope or the worm-like mouth on the Sarlacc Pit Monster. I should see if my parents still have all those editions in the loft… But yes, as a child I grew up with Star Wars very much entrenched into me, and you better believe this extended to the video games.

I am sure I have mentioned this a few times somewhere, but this is one of the few American SNES games I owned as a child, in fact, this was the first one. I remember the cheap looking little adaptor we had for it, which was a thing looking piece of plastic with two slots on it. One on top, and one at the back, there was a label stuck to it, the label indicated that Star Wars needed to go on the top slot, and the back slot specifically said Street Fighter 2, which we also had. For the longest time as I child, I thought it was a requirement that we used Street Fighter 2 in the adaptor. Even to the point where when we got a newer adaptor, I made sure we used Street Fighter 2 as the bypass cart.

Luke fighting Womp Rats in the Dune Sea

Super Star Wars, I have mostly gushy praise for, as far as video game adaptations go, I think this one and the rest of the trilogy, are perfect. Everything from the opening title crawl when you start a new game, the sprite work, the music, the voice samples, the sound of you swinging the lightsaber. It is all just divine. Sure, Ishambard, but what about the gameplay? I could say it is faultless, but each game has their quirks that I will talk about separately, because they deserve that much. Let’s focus on Super Star Wars, which is the adaptation of A New Hope. This is the game where everything is at its most rough, and even then, the quality of this game is stellar. The game has decently challenging gameplay, with mostly fair platforming challenges. I think there are probably three instances of the game where the platforming can be frustrating, and admittedly they are all in the first act of the game.

The game offers good gunplay as your primary means of attacking. Each character has a blaster, that can be upgraded by finding blaster power-ups, some of them hidden, some of them out in the open. There are 5 levels of blaster power in total, and honestly, as nice as the final stage is, I find the seeker weapon to be the most useful, even if it does have some behavioural quirks, like tracking projectiles it can’t destroy. The initial starting blaster is infuriatingly weak, this is a trend across the board for the trilogy, and dying at any point during a stage will reset your blaster power. Graciously, for Super Star Wars, when you play as Chewbacca or Han you start with the tier 2 blaster. That was always something I really enjoyed about the game; it allowed you to play as different characters after you unlock them. In this game they pretty much play the same, though Chewbacca’s hitbox is probably larger, but he does start with a little more health than Han or Luke. Luke also gets a Light Saber which is… Okay at best. It does decent damage, but the range is short. You’re more likely going to be taking damage as you attack things, stick to the blasters, this game doesn’t require sophisticated weaponry.

Luke Joyriding in Tatooine, blasting Jawa in his speeder

The game itself follows the core aspects of the story, changing only a couple of things up. The first level is the Dune Sea, Luke fights the Sarlacc Pit Monster and ends up finding C3-PO at the escape pod crash site, where he tells you that R2D2 was kidnapped by Jawa. I mean, it’s not film plot accurate, but gives perfectly good reasons for the levels that follow. Between most levels there is a short narrative sequence to progress the plot, with some decent artwork to go with it. Besides the 2D platformer there are a few vehicle sections that utilise Mode7 and for Super Star Wars, these work, for the most part. The Death Star battle is a bit of a confusing mess where depth perception is more of a concept and trying to avoid enemy shots is experimental. The final Trench Run is quite cool, if potentially overwhelming, but if you focus on shooting down enemy shots you will be fine.

Luke fighting Lava Beast Jawenko in the Sand Crawler

Super Star Wars can be challenging, especially on higher difficulties. There are a few moments where a death can lead to a bit of a death spiral, as some sections of the game really benefit you having a couple of upgrades. One particularly rough encounter is the Sandcrawler and the boss of that, Lava Beast Jawenko is a tough fight, where if you die and must come back with the level 2 Blaster, it is a bit of a crapshoot if you’ll kill him before he kills you. Sure, you can try to jump over his attacks, but that can be quite challenging as the range and speed of his lava shots is seemingly random. Dying and getting a game over won’t help you, as using a continue will put you at the mid-level checkpoint and not the start of the level. Another potential death spiral is the boss for the Cantina stage, do you remember that weird monster that is on the space chess board that is on the Millenium Falcon. I mean, there is a bunch of them, but there is one that R2D2 uses to defeat one of Chewbacca’s pieces. Yeah, he’s the boss of the Cantina stage, and he pulls no punches. Dying against him sets you back a little bit, but you’ll be on very few resources. Easily the hardest boss in the game. Everything after that is not as bad, though this is coming from someone who played and beat this game a lot. Don’t be surprised if you don’t make it past the Sandcrawler on your first play of this game, but this is a game where patience and perseverance will get you far. You might see a timer in the top corner, but you can let that run down to zero without penalty, a fact that I only learnt the recently, the timer is only for bonus points. Some stages and some areas have endlessly respawning enemies, this is quite helpful as almost every enemy will drop health restoring pickups in this game. So, using them to slowly regain health is not a bad strategy at times, and might even be mandatory in certain situations.

Chewbacca fighting the Kalhar Boss Monster in the Mos Eisley Cantina

Overall, it is a relatively short experience, at a guess I would say it would clock in at about an hour, providing you don’t fall into any death spirals. The shortness isn’t a bad thing, Super Star Wars doesn’t come with a password system, unlike later entries. When I was a kid, I only ever played this game on Easy mode, it is only this year that I took the plunge and played through the game on Jedi, which did take a couple of hours as I was struggling with the Cantina boss and the Valley of the Bantha. But what I will say is, if you were or still are a Star Wars fan, Super Star Wars is a game I highly recommend you check out, perhaps that is my personal attachment to this game and Star Wars as a whole speaking. Even though this one I had beaten several times as a child, it still brought me great joy to get to the blow up the Death Star and see that message, “Great shot kid, that was one in a million”.

Luke has just blown up the Death Star and Han sends him this message