Retronauts Episode 266: The Empire Strikes Back

That sounded like a blast to record!

Normallyretro

Agree on most points, but I think you guys are a little hard on Shadows of the Empire. I owned both it and Super Empire, and with the SNES game I do remember thinking that I wished it felt more like Contra, instead of a relentless horde of enemies showed at you from every angle. The design (or lack there of) is very frustrating and I don't believe I ever completed it without cheat codes. However, in an age before internet, Super Empire at least felt like a genuine Star Wars experience for a starved fan. The graphics and music were truly amazing for the time and I always wanted to see the next crazy boss encounter, grueling as it would be. I didn't think of it as a bad game back then, just a very difficult one. Shadows of the Empire is an interesting relic of its era and while the on foot sections have aged poorly, for the time it wasn't much worse or better than most third person action games out there. The controls and targeting are from the wild west era when developers were still experimenting with how to navigate the third dimension and fire a gun at the same time. While the controls and combat are rough, some of the level design is actually quite inspired. The best example is the canyon planet, "Gall", where the layout is cleverly placed and you always see the structures you are exploring up ahead. And for all it's flaws I appreciated the attempt at delivering a cross-genre Star Wars "cinematic experience", meaning a variety of shooting, flying, gun turrets, speeder bikes, etc. Nothing topped the Snowspeeder introduction but it certainly delivered Star Wars throughout.

It's pricey, but Arcade1UP released the complete trilogy in a 3/4 scale cabinet a few months ago. Apparently it's quite well done compared to their work from last year.

Retronauts

Like A New Hope, I was introduced to Empire via the NES game and then Super Empire a couple of years later. If it weren’t for those debug modes I never would have run through the Super Trilogy, just brutal difficulty on all of those games, though it seemed Empire was the toughest of the trio. And the way they handled the ending was....interesting. I suppose it would have felt wrong to complete the game and then suffer a series of downer cutscenes, but that’s how the movie ended! I’m glad to see that history revised itself to note those games weren’t nearly as good as they seemed in the 90s, though to be fair I’d play them any day over Indiana Jones’ Greatest Adventures. One of these days I’d like to try that Atari Empire arcade game, a few years ago I finally got to play the Jedi cabinet and that was unremarkable, but I must complete the cabinet trilogy...

Andrew Grieve

Someone brought the Empire Strikes Back arcade game - actually there were 3 but 1 wasn't working- to California Extreme this past July. So if you ever are in Santa Clara next year for California Extreme, the owner might bring it around again. As far as the game itself, it's not as fun as the original...but a cool exposition of vector graphics. The biggest problem is that the game was too much for the hardware. There's a lot of slowdown and at some points is borderline unplayable. But from a historic point of view, it's still very cool.

Jason Lew