Difficult
Looks and sounds rad for its time. But I don't have the patience to get past the second level.
Fuck this game.
Man, this game seems cool at first until you realize how difficult and kind of bullshit some of the stages are.
Incredibly hard, but still a very good platformer
One of the hardest games ive played
A dificuldade insana diminui a nota.
A fun sidescrolling action game elevated by its stellar presentation given its age, accurately representing the look and feel of the films, though its grueling level design and tough difficulty can deter less-patient players pretty quickly.
Be careful the empire might strike back
What is with the SNES and making terrible games based on existing movies? Toy Story, Lion King, and this are all awful games that I actively hate on. I don't think I ever got past level one
A tough game with fun gameplay. Sometimes the controls can be kind of slippery especially with small platforms but nothing not doable. The music is good, the stage designs switches up often enough to keep things fresh and the challenge is high. I dont know why people hate this game, it has to be becasue they are bad, right?
No continues or passwords made me not inclined to beat it since the other 2 in the series were hard as hell. Good game though.
Yep... I used to have this game... Tough as nails, that's for sure.
Star Wars was always this big cultural phenomenon, but there did exist a point in time between the original trilogy and the prequels where you could actually take a god damn breath before hearing about more awful Star Wars shit. Now days there's a new controversy every single week. Actors regularly get death threats, and ~content creators~ are profiting off a cottage industry built entirely around being Mad About Star Wars.
Back in my day, the only time I ever saw someone throwing a fit over Star Wars was because they kept dying in the cantina in Super Star Wars. These were better times. We were more civilized then.
I had pretty limited exposure to the Super Star Wars trilogy, having mostly screwed around in them at a friend's house back in the day. I think I rented Return of the Jedi once along with an SNES and just used cheat codes to experience as much of the game as I could. I always had a hell of a time with them. They're hard games and I don't think there's any shame in admitting that.
Coming back to Super Star Wars as an adult, it's every bit as much of a pain in the ass as I remember. No less, no more. The sort of game you turn on and five minutes in find yourself saying "oh right, this bullshit." Enemies flood the screen, respawn rates are absolutely insane, hazards are placed too close together making a lot of jumps inherently unsafe... But I still kinda like it. For as cheap as it is, the game still feels pretty good to play, and when you do end up clearing a level there's a real sense of accomplishment that goes along with it. It's one of those games where forward progress is made because you don't want to let the game beat you, where you "get good" out of sheer obstinance, if not outright hatred.
However, I do question whether my fondness for Super Star Wars is based primarily in nostalgia or not. I certainly see its many faults, but had I not played this back in 90s maybe it would be easier to dismiss it entirely, call it a bad game and move on. Yet, I can't. I still come back to this one regularly, and every time I do it finds some way to piss me off. Just like Star Wars.
Back in my day, the only time I ever saw someone throwing a fit over Star Wars was because they kept dying in the cantina in Super Star Wars. These were better times. We were more civilized then.
I had pretty limited exposure to the Super Star Wars trilogy, having mostly screwed around in them at a friend's house back in the day. I think I rented Return of the Jedi once along with an SNES and just used cheat codes to experience as much of the game as I could. I always had a hell of a time with them. They're hard games and I don't think there's any shame in admitting that.
Coming back to Super Star Wars as an adult, it's every bit as much of a pain in the ass as I remember. No less, no more. The sort of game you turn on and five minutes in find yourself saying "oh right, this bullshit." Enemies flood the screen, respawn rates are absolutely insane, hazards are placed too close together making a lot of jumps inherently unsafe... But I still kinda like it. For as cheap as it is, the game still feels pretty good to play, and when you do end up clearing a level there's a real sense of accomplishment that goes along with it. It's one of those games where forward progress is made because you don't want to let the game beat you, where you "get good" out of sheer obstinance, if not outright hatred.
However, I do question whether my fondness for Super Star Wars is based primarily in nostalgia or not. I certainly see its many faults, but had I not played this back in 90s maybe it would be easier to dismiss it entirely, call it a bad game and move on. Yet, I can't. I still come back to this one regularly, and every time I do it finds some way to piss me off. Just like Star Wars.
The boss at the cantina is impossible if you don't have any upgrades. The devs didn't even tested their game before releasing it.
Most unnecessarily stupid fucking hard game ever, and I love it for that
Went back and dug into this on an emulator years and years later. Really fun, much better than the NES or GB adaptations. Definitely crazy hard for SNES platformers
Crazy difficult, but still awesome
Feels excellent to play, but much, much too difficult to be reasonable. Best enjoyed using cheats, don’t put yourself through the trouble of trying to beat it legit.
A game from my childhood, I decided to start with this for my 500 follower celebration on Twitch!
The game follows the story to the first of the original trilogy, but takes a whole lot of liberties too though, which lead me and my viewers to make fun of it with a "...just like the movie" pretext. To the point that the developers were VERY creative with any new monsters that they added.
There are a mixture of driving/shooting sections and platforming levels where you end shooting up monsters before getting the lightsabre, doing far more damage and making short work of most bosses.
Again, they take a lot of liberties with missions, such as a section with the speeder where you shoot down Jawas and according to this game, Luke's Uncle Ben didn't buy the droids, but Luke attacked a Sandcrawler, massacring all the Jawas and a ugly monster at the bottom of the thing that lives in lava-sand and was guarding R2-D2.
This is a trend that continues with the sequels, but it still makes it a very fun game, even if not very accurate to the movie.
Gameplay + Stream
The game follows the story to the first of the original trilogy, but takes a whole lot of liberties too though, which lead me and my viewers to make fun of it with a "...just like the movie" pretext. To the point that the developers were VERY creative with any new monsters that they added.
There are a mixture of driving/shooting sections and platforming levels where you end shooting up monsters before getting the lightsabre, doing far more damage and making short work of most bosses.
Again, they take a lot of liberties with missions, such as a section with the speeder where you shoot down Jawas and according to this game, Luke's Uncle Ben didn't buy the droids, but Luke attacked a Sandcrawler, massacring all the Jawas and a ugly monster at the bottom of the thing that lives in lava-sand and was guarding R2-D2.
This is a trend that continues with the sequels, but it still makes it a very fun game, even if not very accurate to the movie.
Gameplay + Stream
Needlessly difficult. Why not make you feel cool instead?
A pretty fun, but very difficult run and gun title. I never thought the Star Wars galaxy was THIS dangerous...
Super Star Wars is a run and gun developed by Sculptured Software and Lucas Arts for the SNES and released n November 1, 1992. It is based on the first ever Star Wars movie 'Star Wars' or 'Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope' as it's called now. There are over a dozen stages that take you through many familiar locations from the movie and (partly altered) scenes from the movie are used for cutscenes and overall storytelling.
I had not watched the first Star Wars movie before playing this, ever, so it was nice to get some motivation to finally do so. My conclusion: It's very good. The movie, not the game. The game itself is OK, not bad but not as good as I had hoped it would be.
Let's get this out of the way first. This is definitely on the upper half of licensed games in terms of quality. Whether it is in 2D platforming sequences, the vehicle stages (which tbh weren't that fun) or the trench run finale, all sections of this game are of high production quality relative to the majority of video games of its time. Animation work is also pretty solid, my favorite part being Luke Skywalker's hair flying in the wind as you run forward. Sprite work is good here too, though almost all enemies you face in this game are not from the actual movie.
In general, the game takes liberties in how it uses the movie framework. C3PO runs to Luke and tells him that R2D2 has been kidnapped, so you step into your landspeeder and destroy dozens of enemies on your to finding him. When did that happen in the movie? Or the bar fight scene, which is pretty much just Obi Wan and Han Solo shooting one guy each, but has you run through the bar with either Chewbacca or Luke and shooting another few dozen enemies. Or the 10+ boss fights, out of which I believe only the final one is actually somewhat part of the movie. As you do your trench run, Darth Vader's TIE Advanced appears in front of you, though is disposed of within seconds. This is all not a big deal, but worth noting.
One pretty poor design choice in my opinion that was made here is that enemies infinitely respawn for some reason. This was odd from the get-go, as you start the first level on a desert setting and run through sand dunes to get to the finish line and are constantly bombarded with enemies from all sides. Kill an enemy that is about 5 feet in front of you, and by the time you get to his position, he will have been replaced by a clone already. You're also constantly subjected to attacks and projectiles from all angles, and here is the second weird part about the game's design. Almost all enemies you kill drop a heart, which regenerates a little bit of your health. You might think that's excessive. On Easy mode, it kind of is. But you're also constantly hit and lose health, so it's kind of necessary to get this many healing items. How about you don't have enemies constantly respawn and rebalance things that way?
It doesn't help that projectiles are almost impossible to dodge because your character takes way too long to jump once you press the button, so you almost always get hit in your legs unless you know an attack is about to be made.
Again, to counteract this, you constantly get health refills and have a lot of health in general. You also get "Health Laser" power-ups, which extend your health bar, but only for the stage that you are on. Other power ups include a Darth Vader mask which gives you "2x points", a thermal detonator, a timer that adds to your overall time, a boost to your blaster and extra lives.
Most boss fights are pretty similar in how you approach them. You simply button mash and try avoid as many hits as possible with the limitations the controls set on you, and what happens in the end is that you simply try to deal more damage than you take to outpace the boss. Most boss fights are trivial, if you simply could actually dodge whenever you would press the jump button. Instead, you watch as slow projectiles hit your even slower character.
Overall, this was enjoyable enough thanks to its visual and auditory presentation. The characters you know, the orchestral sounds you're familiar with and the locations you revisit make for an experience that Star Wars fans at the time will have undoubtedly enjoyed, and it plays differently to most games, which I appreciate, but I can't say it was a good is at it could have been.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 4/10
- Story is of the first Star Wars movie with liberties taken here and there
- Story told after each stage and using images from the movie
- Overall, story takes a backseat to the gameplay though
GAMEPLAY | 11/20
- Controls have their highs and lows
- Varied levels, though landspeeder parts not that fun
- Platforming and Run and gunning enjoyable enough
- Many boss fights
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
- Voice acting limited to Obi Wan saying "Use the force, Luke"
- Sound design is really good, utilizing all the sounds you'll recognize from the movie
- Soundtrack faithful to the movie, so if you like that, you will like their SNES versions too
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10
- Locations you visit are from the movie, look great
- Animation and sprite work is on a good level
- Nice special effects
- If you like the Star Wart art design, you'll enjoy this from a visual standpoint
ATMOSPHERE | 8/10
- Sounds, looks and plays like a Star Wars movie, putting you in the role of your favorite characters, letting you drive a landspeeder, wield a light saber and fly an X-Wing
- All faithfully created
CONTENT | 6/10
- Over a dozen stages with bosses at the end of each
- Landspeeder levels not that fun, boss fights feel similar after a while
- Three difficulty modes, but plenty of unfair deaths on Easy due to slow jumps/dodges, don't want to know how Hard feels like
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 6/10
- Varied levels
- Poor choice to have enemies keep respawning
- Sometimes you can't see where you are jumping and fall to your death
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 7/10
- Overall a successful recreation of the first movie
- Pretty fun to wield a lightsaber
REPLAYABILITY | 3/5
- You can play some levels with different characters, but for the most part, they play the same
- You can play on three difficulty levels and try to beat your high score
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
- Worked well at all times
OVERALL | 67/100
(This is the 76th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
I had not watched the first Star Wars movie before playing this, ever, so it was nice to get some motivation to finally do so. My conclusion: It's very good. The movie, not the game. The game itself is OK, not bad but not as good as I had hoped it would be.
Let's get this out of the way first. This is definitely on the upper half of licensed games in terms of quality. Whether it is in 2D platforming sequences, the vehicle stages (which tbh weren't that fun) or the trench run finale, all sections of this game are of high production quality relative to the majority of video games of its time. Animation work is also pretty solid, my favorite part being Luke Skywalker's hair flying in the wind as you run forward. Sprite work is good here too, though almost all enemies you face in this game are not from the actual movie.
In general, the game takes liberties in how it uses the movie framework. C3PO runs to Luke and tells him that R2D2 has been kidnapped, so you step into your landspeeder and destroy dozens of enemies on your to finding him. When did that happen in the movie? Or the bar fight scene, which is pretty much just Obi Wan and Han Solo shooting one guy each, but has you run through the bar with either Chewbacca or Luke and shooting another few dozen enemies. Or the 10+ boss fights, out of which I believe only the final one is actually somewhat part of the movie. As you do your trench run, Darth Vader's TIE Advanced appears in front of you, though is disposed of within seconds. This is all not a big deal, but worth noting.
One pretty poor design choice in my opinion that was made here is that enemies infinitely respawn for some reason. This was odd from the get-go, as you start the first level on a desert setting and run through sand dunes to get to the finish line and are constantly bombarded with enemies from all sides. Kill an enemy that is about 5 feet in front of you, and by the time you get to his position, he will have been replaced by a clone already. You're also constantly subjected to attacks and projectiles from all angles, and here is the second weird part about the game's design. Almost all enemies you kill drop a heart, which regenerates a little bit of your health. You might think that's excessive. On Easy mode, it kind of is. But you're also constantly hit and lose health, so it's kind of necessary to get this many healing items. How about you don't have enemies constantly respawn and rebalance things that way?
It doesn't help that projectiles are almost impossible to dodge because your character takes way too long to jump once you press the button, so you almost always get hit in your legs unless you know an attack is about to be made.
Again, to counteract this, you constantly get health refills and have a lot of health in general. You also get "Health Laser" power-ups, which extend your health bar, but only for the stage that you are on. Other power ups include a Darth Vader mask which gives you "2x points", a thermal detonator, a timer that adds to your overall time, a boost to your blaster and extra lives.
Most boss fights are pretty similar in how you approach them. You simply button mash and try avoid as many hits as possible with the limitations the controls set on you, and what happens in the end is that you simply try to deal more damage than you take to outpace the boss. Most boss fights are trivial, if you simply could actually dodge whenever you would press the jump button. Instead, you watch as slow projectiles hit your even slower character.
Overall, this was enjoyable enough thanks to its visual and auditory presentation. The characters you know, the orchestral sounds you're familiar with and the locations you revisit make for an experience that Star Wars fans at the time will have undoubtedly enjoyed, and it plays differently to most games, which I appreciate, but I can't say it was a good is at it could have been.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 4/10
- Story is of the first Star Wars movie with liberties taken here and there
- Story told after each stage and using images from the movie
- Overall, story takes a backseat to the gameplay though
GAMEPLAY | 11/20
- Controls have their highs and lows
- Varied levels, though landspeeder parts not that fun
- Platforming and Run and gunning enjoyable enough
- Many boss fights
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
- Voice acting limited to Obi Wan saying "Use the force, Luke"
- Sound design is really good, utilizing all the sounds you'll recognize from the movie
- Soundtrack faithful to the movie, so if you like that, you will like their SNES versions too
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10
- Locations you visit are from the movie, look great
- Animation and sprite work is on a good level
- Nice special effects
- If you like the Star Wart art design, you'll enjoy this from a visual standpoint
ATMOSPHERE | 8/10
- Sounds, looks and plays like a Star Wars movie, putting you in the role of your favorite characters, letting you drive a landspeeder, wield a light saber and fly an X-Wing
- All faithfully created
CONTENT | 6/10
- Over a dozen stages with bosses at the end of each
- Landspeeder levels not that fun, boss fights feel similar after a while
- Three difficulty modes, but plenty of unfair deaths on Easy due to slow jumps/dodges, don't want to know how Hard feels like
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 6/10
- Varied levels
- Poor choice to have enemies keep respawning
- Sometimes you can't see where you are jumping and fall to your death
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 7/10
- Overall a successful recreation of the first movie
- Pretty fun to wield a lightsaber
REPLAYABILITY | 3/5
- You can play some levels with different characters, but for the most part, they play the same
- You can play on three difficulty levels and try to beat your high score
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
- Worked well at all times
OVERALL | 67/100
(This is the 76th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
Quit during the first person mode 7 shooting stage near the end lol
The super star wars games in general are really tough and its most apparent with this one. The first two or so stages give an extremely bad impression with how frustratingly difficult they are; its made quickly apparent that enemies just keep respawning and spawning on and on and on, and the platforming takes a little while to get used to due to the jump timing (and there being technically two jumps, a regular jump and a high jump).
There are mode 7 stages that just kinda suck tbh lol, moreso than the regular stages.
The game isn't all terrible which makes me even more frustrated with it. It gets better later on and there's clear effort put into making this game fun. But they really fumbled with the difficulty and that awful, awful first stage.
The game also has some really bad framerate issues for like 90% of the game. If you can I'd suggest playing it overclocked or whatever.
I don't really have much to say otherwise. I'd comment on how it portrays the star wars franchise but at the time of writing this I have not watched any Star wars movie. Game looks nice and the music sounds good, and the three playable characters are distinct enough from each other.
The super star wars games in general are really tough and its most apparent with this one. The first two or so stages give an extremely bad impression with how frustratingly difficult they are; its made quickly apparent that enemies just keep respawning and spawning on and on and on, and the platforming takes a little while to get used to due to the jump timing (and there being technically two jumps, a regular jump and a high jump).
There are mode 7 stages that just kinda suck tbh lol, moreso than the regular stages.
The game isn't all terrible which makes me even more frustrated with it. It gets better later on and there's clear effort put into making this game fun. But they really fumbled with the difficulty and that awful, awful first stage.
The game also has some really bad framerate issues for like 90% of the game. If you can I'd suggest playing it overclocked or whatever.
I don't really have much to say otherwise. I'd comment on how it portrays the star wars franchise but at the time of writing this I have not watched any Star wars movie. Game looks nice and the music sounds good, and the three playable characters are distinct enough from each other.
real fun ! real bad at it !
Experiencia star wars en la snes
A classic SNES title that works its way through the movie's major beats with care and authenticity (with just a little creative liberty where it's appropriate for the excitement of the gameplay). However, this was wayyyyy too damn hard and without save states I really doubt I would've gotten through it.
Really the only way to beat this game as a young kid was to memorize the layout of every level and the placement of every enemy, and make damn sure you don't die-- ever. If you die in this game, especially in some of the later levels, you might as well hit reset as it removes all of the gun levels you've accumulated up to that point.
Very difficult game, but very rewarding to complete. It was worth it.
A 16 bit Star Wars side scroller sounds right up my alley, and while the presentation is top notch, it commits one of my biggest gaming sins: infinitely respawning enemies. You can't stand still for half a second without people dropping on top of you. It ends up being the best way through is to try to just run past everything. Was honestly planning to beat the game despite the unfairness of it at times, but I'm convinced the final trench run level is impossible.