The Complete History of Star Wars Games | MojoPlays

The second-highest grossing movie franchise of all time and one of the most loved fictional universes in history, it’s no surprise that “Star Wars” has seen its fair share of video games. In fact, it has more than a hundred games to its name, partly because of its sheer popularity and partly because so many core “Star Wars” tropes – outer space dogfights and lightsaber battles – translate so well to gaming. Without further ado, let’s get into the history of “Star Wars” games. “Star Wars” games got off to a bit of a rocky start thanks to George Lucas giving over the licensing rights to different companies to make them. He did this even before the release of “Return of the Jedi”, and the first game to be released was developed and published by Atari in 1982, a version of “The Empire Strikes Back.” The only gameplay was flying around as a tiny, X-Wing sprite during the Battle of Hoth, taking out an array of pixelated AT-ATs. After the release of “Return of the Jedi”, Parker Brothers made a follow up with roughly the same gameplay, “Return of the Jedi: Death Star Battle,” which saw plays man the Millennium Falcon for the final assault on the rebuilt Death Star. But neither of these releases are as remarkable of the 1983 “Star Wars” Atari arcade game, which was ported to the 2600 the following year, featuring flashy vector graphics and the first-ever digitized speech from a movie into a game. This was the first game to be based on “A New Hope.” But all of these games had something in common: one way or another, they were all about the space battles, none of them featured “Star Wars’” best asset: lightsabers. Luckily, this was rectified with “Jedi Arena”, yet again in 1983, though this game turned out to be a “Pong” knock-off that was already outdated. After this early rush surrounding the release of “Return,” things died down until Namco started developing games, the first of which came out in 1987. It told its own inconsistent version of the story and was released exclusively in Japan, on the Famicom. But despite its weirdness, it paved the way for further “Star Wars” side-scrollers down the line. By this point, LucasArts existed and had made games based on other big blockbuster properties, like “Indiana Jones”, but hadn’t really touched “Star Wars” until they co-developed the “Super Star Wars” trilogy on the SNES. These games were successful action platformers which faithfully adapted all three films. But in 1993, LucasArts finally got the exclusive licensing returned to them, and their very first solo “Star Wars” was a doozy. “X-Wing” was a revolutionary aviation simulator released on PC, launching a whole franchise of other equally difficult spin-offs. Despite how hard it was to master, it was hugely successful, as were many of the other games LucasArts turned their hand to in the 90s. “Star Wars: Rebel Assault” was almost single-handedly responsible for the switch from floppy disc to CD-ROM, since it was only available on CD, despite the fact that “X-Wing” was running rings around it where sales were concerned. After making flight simulators, side-scrollers and arcade games, “Star Wars” switched gears again with the release of “Dark Forces” and “Dark Forces 2” in 1995 and 1997, which were “DOOM”-style FPS games. Throughout the 90s, releases from LucasArts had been slow and steady, but all that stopped when the prequel trilogy launched. In 1999, “The Phantom Menace” reached theaters, and the gaming market quickly became completely bloated with “Phantom” spin-offs. The first tie-in came out the same day as the movie, “Star Wars Episode I: Racer”, and was an entire game based on the pod racing sequence. While this game was decent, many of the others weren’t. The PS1 direct tie-in was pretty lacklustre, and “Star Wars: Obi Wan” went forgotten. The volume of poorly-executed prequel tie-ins got so bad that in 2002, LucasArts issued an apology, and thankfully dialed things back for “Attack of the Clones” and “Revenge of the Sith” – the latter of which only got one video game tie-in in 2005. Thankfully, not every “Star Wars” game was a direct movie tie-in. In 2002 and 2003 “Jedi Outcast” and “Jedi Academy” released to acclaim from the fanbase. That same year we also got the now-legendary RPG “Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic,” cementing BioWare as a major developer. This series would continue in 2011 with “The Old Republic”, an MMORPG which since release has grossed over $130 million in profit. In 2004 and 2005, right as the prequel trilogy was wrapping up, the original two “Battlefront” games released, giving us a big “Star Wars” multiplayer shooter. Also around the same time we would see the beginning of a completely different, long-running “Star Wars” saga: “Lego Star Wars”. This title was Lego’s first mainstream success with video games, and they haven’t stopped since, adapting not only every single “Star Wars” film more than once, but also countless other blockbusters. It wasn’t until 2008 that we got another big, single-player “Star Wars” adventure in the form of “The Force Unleashed,” following Darth Vader’s apprentice Starkiller in a time between “Revenge” and “Hope”. “The Force Unleashed” and its 2010 sequel were well received, and a third game was said to be in development until one huge thing happened: the Disney acquisition. When Disney got control of “Star Wars,” LucasArts was all but shut down, with “Star Wars” licenced exclusively to EA from 2013 onwards. And the first major games we got were developed by DICE and were new iterations of the “Battlefront” franchise. Both games weren’t without controversy, however; the first for its lack of a single-player campaign, and the second for its gratuitous microtransactions and pay-to-win mechanics. This has given EA a bad reputation within the gaming community, but hopefully, this can be repaired by the release of “Jedi: Fallen Order” in November 2019, a big, single-player release with original characters – the first of its kind since “The Force Unleashed”. And of course, we’ve got “The Skywalker Saga” to look forward to, a Lego compilation of all nine movies coming in 2020. “Star Wars” games can be some of the worst games you’ve ever played, era-defining classics, or somewhere in between; but one thing’s for sure, there are plenty more to come.