Konami and LucasArts had a brief partnership in the 16-bit days which yielded a few decent games. Most people know of Zombies Ate My Neighbours, but Metal Warriors was overlooked by audiences at the time – their loss. It’s a lot like Cybernator – another great SNES mech-based action-platformer published by Konami, although the games have nothing to do with each other.
Day of the Tentacle is one of the finest games from the golden age of adventure games, and a painful reminder of how LucasArts was once a developer and publisher that did more than just coast off the Star Wars license.
Star Wars: Rebel Assault II – The Hidden Empire featured what was the first live action Star Wars footage shot in over 12 years when it was first released. The game features a decent storyline set in a post-Return of the Jedi era, but, like its predecessor, doesn’t really have much in the way of gameplay.
Stop the zombie apocalypse with a water pistol.
Zombies Ate My Neighbours (or just Zombies here) was a collaboration between LucasArts and Konami. It was one of LucasArts’ earliest console specific efforts, mixing up classic horror tropes with LucasArts trademark comedy stylings. It’s a bit long in the tooth and quite unforgiving, but worth playing.
Factor 5, masters of GameCube secret voodoo magic.
Star Wars: Rogue Leader was one of the first Star Wars games that could really match the scale of the battles which happened in the movies thanks to the increased power of the sixth generation of console hardware. In fact, despite being released in 2001, it still puts many Wii games, which run on similar but more powerful hardware, to shame.
Occasionally, you still get a good Star Wars game.
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic was the first RPG based in the Star Wars universe. Set thousands of years before the Battle of Yavin, Knights of the Old Republic gave us an insight into what went on between the Sith and the Jedi when they were at their height. Of course, it seems very little changed in terms of technology in those 3000+ years.
Who said that they all had to be good?
Star Wars: Masters of Teras Kasi is the infamous Star Wars fighting game, and arguably the best example of the point in time when Star Wars games took a turn for the worst. Apparently Teras Kasi is Finnish for steel hand.
Not as good as you remember.
Super Star Wars came out at a time when the Star Wars saga was in a kind of hiatus – 10 years or so after the release of the Return of the Jedi, almost a decade before the prequels, and just prior to the onslaught of Star Wars video games. It’s technically accomplished, but needlessly difficult.
We’ll never see another stretch of quality Star Wars games like we did on the PC in the 90s.
Star Wars: Dark Forces puts you in control of Kyle Katarn, a former Imperial officer who has turned into a rogue for hire. The Rebel Alliance has sought out his help to find the plans to the Death Star, but he discovers a much more sinister threat while on this mission – the Dark Trooper project. Arguably one of the best Star Wars games released.
Developed here in Melbourne by Beam Software.
While not the first Star Wars game to debut on Nintendo’s 8-bit system (a Namco developed game for the Famicom predates it), Beam Software’s take on Star Wars was hyped up as one of the biggest things to hit the NES. It wasn’t particularly great, but you’d have been easily convinced otherwise judging by the press reaction of the time. Then again, Lucas hadn’t allowed the worst of the Expanded Universe to happen yet, and had not touched Star Wars himself for many years. In fact, if I am not mistaken, the NES game was the first time LucasArts (then Lucasfilm Games) was allowed to do anything with the Star Wars IP.
