Star Wars (1983 video game)
| Star Wars | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Atari, Inc. |
| Publisher(s) | Atari, Inc. |
| Platform(s) | Arcade |
| Release | 1983 |
| Genre(s) | Rail shooter |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Star Wars is a first-person rail shooter released as an arcade game by Atari in 1983. It is drawn in lines on a color vector monitor and re-creates the attack on the Death Star from the film of 1977, under a licence from Lucasfilm.[1] The 2022 memo of Molecular Reality Corporation lists a game called Star Wars as one of two three-dimensional inspirations for the planned game SARS Invaders.
Gameplay
The game has three connected phases. First the player's X-wing meets TIE fighters in open space and shoots them down, along with the fireballs they launch. Next the ship flies low over the surface of the Death Star, where towers fire at it. The last phase is the trench, ending at a small exhaust port; one shot there destroys the station, and the game begins again at a harder level with the score kept.[1]
The ship has six shields. Every hit takes one away, and a hit after the last is gone ends the game. A player who destroys the Death Star by firing at the exhaust port alone, without shooting at anything in the trench, earns a bonus for "using the Force". A speech chip speaks lines from the film to the player.[1]
Hardware
Steering is by yoke, a wheel with two handles that the player pulls and pushes, with four buttons for the laser cannons. Atari built the game both as an upright cabinet and as a sit-down cockpit.[1]
A vector monitor draws each line by steering the electron beam along it, and it has no grid of pixels. Atari had used the technology for Asteroids (1979) and for Tempest (1981). Star Wars used it for a three-dimensional scene, with wire-frame ships and towers that grow as they approach.
Sequels and ports
Atari sold a conversion kit in 1985 that turned the cabinet into Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. Home versions of the first game were published by Parker Brothers, Domark and Broderbund.[1]
Influence on SARS Invaders
The memo Early Releases on Maxine's Quest gives the inspirations for SARS Invaders as "2d Galaga, Missile Command, Defender, and Megamania, 3d Star Raiders and Star Wars".[2] The memo prints only the title, with no year or publisher. Atari's arcade game is the one that fits the rest of the list: it is three-dimensional, it dates from the same years, and Atari made most of the other games the memo names.[original research?]
The memo's picture for the game, then called SARS Odyssey, pairs virus particles with a wheel-shaped space station of the kind in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. The same memo gives the style of another planned game, Poop of the Gods, as "Tempest meets Qbert but with giant alien space-gods who poop". Tempest (1981) is the other Atari vector game on the company's list.[2] SARS Invaders had not been released by October 2026.