The latest movie of the Star Wars franchise, The Force Awakens (movie number 7 in the franchise), is only a matter of days away from its world wide release on December 17, 2015, and Star Wars fans are out in force waiting to see possibly what will go down as the biggest movie of 2015.  Here I take a look at the Star Wars trilogy on the Amstrad CPC computer.

Feeling some of the force in me, I look back at the Star Wars trilogy of games released on the Amstrad CPC home computers from the 1980’s.  In total there were four Star Wars games released on the Amstrad CPC, the other was called Droids but it will not be covered in this article.  Here I take a brief look at the three Star Wars games that were arcade releases by Atari and converted to the home computer market by Domark software.

I remember playing all three games at the video game arcades in my younger days, they were quite enjoyable and fast moving with plenty of sound and fast paced shoot-em up action that got you hooked for that one more go.  I remember sitting in an arcade cabinet covered with Star Wars logos, inside you sat in front of a large aircraft controller at the front of the video game screen, it made it feel as if you were in an X – wing cockpit, i was just a kid but it was real enough for me.

The graphics were line drawings otherwise known as 3D vector styled graphics of the space craft from the Star Wars movies.  In the movie they looked incredible but in the home video game the style chosen to represent them meant they were nothing special in appearance and the gameplay was just as basic. Just fly your X-wing in the realm of space blasting away at the enemy fighters.  It had some cool sound with fast action reminiscent of the space fight sequences from the Star Wars movies.

So I went back and played all three Star Wars games on my emulated Amstrad CPC.  While the basics of the arcade versions were present the feel and enjoyment just didn’t seem the same at all.  This wasn’t just for the first Star Wars game it was the same for all 3 games in the trilogy.  My curiosity led me to look back at the Amstrad Action magazine reviews of the games, the first Star Wars game was reviewed in AA#29, February 1988, with the review consisting of only a few lines, the minimal content being quite scathing with an overall rating of 44%, stating that another game, 3D Startstrike was basically the same game and better fun to play”.

When you compare it to the review by another Amstrad magazine, the March 1988 issue of CWTA (Computing With The Amstrad), it gave it an overall score of 91% and then at the home of online games reviews for the Amstrad CPC – CPC games reviews http://www.cpcgamereviews.com/s/index19.html Chris Lennard gave it a 9 out of 10.  He stated that it was “a brilliant, albeit simple looking game that’s a must for every Star Wars fan”.

Read into that bit of info and you either hated it or you loved it.  When i looked at the other two games of the trilogy, The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of the Jedi, the same again this time AA#38 wrote a full page article on the game but was just as scathing as it first review of Star Wars, giving Empire Strikes Back barely a pass mark with a 51% overall rating, stating “you’ll get more fun hiring the video”, in contrast, Chris Lennard from cpc games reviews gave the same game an 8 of 10.

The Return of the Jedi though changed from its 3d vector style graphics to a more conventional isometric scrolling game with large sprites which saw AA#41 giving it an overall of 82% and Chris Lennard from CPC games reviews a 6 out of 10.

Such a difference in review ratings, it seems that reviewers at Amstrad Action felt the vector style graphics and gameplay found in Star Wars and Empire Strikes back games were too old and past its use by date but Chris Lennard from CPC games reviews provided some high rating scores on both those titles.  I have played all three titles to re-live the Star Wars home computing 8bit experience and all three follow the arcade game license closely.

The Amstrad CPC conversions really do lack some quality sounds, tunes and in game sound FX.  They are there, just lacking in quality which may have improved the games greatly.    Personally the 3D vector graphics, I don’t mind at all its part of computing and gaming history and it has worked wonderfully well in other Amstrad CPC games in the past, unlike Amstrad Action, I didn’t think the vector graphics were old even though they are.  It’s not what makes the games poor, it’s the slowness of the action.  If the speed had been a tad faster perhaps a more enjoyable gaming experience from all 3 games in the trilogy.

The other main gripe is that there is little variation and it’s quite repetitive making all three games lack addictiveness and staying power.  There is the option of varying difficulty to select from but it doesn’t make much of a difference.  It really all depends on your point of view and what your personal tastes are, if you’re a mad Star Wars fan you’ll probably love all three games but if you’re not then you may not.  I am a mad Star Wars fan, i felt more of the force could have been used to make this Star Wars trilogy of games better.

5 out of 10

Pros

• Star Wars fans should love it
• trip down memory lane
• 3d vector graphics are fine

Cons

• Slow needs more speed
• lacks quality sounds
• lacking addictiveness and staying power

CPC4EVA