Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

History of Star Wars Video Games

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the use-the-cart-luke dept.

Leafel writes "UGO has posted a feature on the history of Star Wars video games, dividing the timeline into 4 categories: The Golden Age (up to 1990), The Silver Age (1991-1996), The Gaming Renaissance (1996-2000), Modern Age (2001 on). From the article 'December 2004 saw the latest release in a long line of Star Wars related video games. As a sequel to one of 2003's top role playing games, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords has made a lot of Xbox owners and RPG fans very happy. In honor of KOTOR II's release and in anticipation of May's Revenge of the Sith movie event, we take a look at the long history of interactive Star Wars entertainment, complete with all of its highs and lows.'"

5 of 241 comments (clear)

  1. Milkin' It by Tackhead · · Score: 4, Funny
    > The Golden Age (up to 1990),
    > The Silver Age (1991-1996),
    > The Gaming Renaissance (1996-2000),
    > Modern Age (2001 on).

    The Failure to Suck Age (1977-1990)
    The Suck Age (1991-1996)
    The Apart From TIE vs. X-Wing, It Pretty Much Sucked Chrome off a Trailer Hitch (1996-2000)
    The Sucked Neutron Stars Through A Straw Age (2001-2002)
    The KOTOR Age, in which somebody at Lucasarts goofed badly by giving a contract to someone who actually gave a shit about storytelling (KOTOR, 2003)
    The Jar Jar Binks Age (Star Wars Galaxies: A Galaxy Milkin' It)

    Move along, nothing to see here, indeed! The goggles, they do NOTHING!

  2. They missed a whole 'era' ... by kclittle · · Score: 3, Funny
    The first 'Star Wars' game I played on a computer was an ASCII-art version, in 1980. Using the VT100 control set, a 10x10 grid of single-character symbols was displayed (lots of extra whitespace was used, so the grid way probably 20 colums wide by 10 lines long). The 'interface' was a simple command line parser. The characters in the grid were a '.' for empty space, a '*' for a star, a 'p' for a planet, an 'E' for the Enterprise, a 'K' for a Klingon, and an 'S' for the dreaded 'Super Commander' (oooooo!)

    The command line interface allowed you to move, to shoot photon torpedoes (an 'o' would track across the 10x10 grid as the torpedo moved), call for help, etc.

    This was on a Prime 500. The game was, IIRC, written in Fortran and originally written an a PDP (8 or 11?).

    Sigh! Those were the days! :)

    --
    Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
  3. Rouge Squadron? by ccharles · · Score: 2, Funny

    Was that a French game based on the Death Star attack?

    Chef Rouge! Chef Rouge!

  4. WARNING: INCOMING FLAMEFEST by DLWormwood · · Score: 2, Funny
    he first 'Star Wars' game I played on a computer was an ASCII-art version, in 1980.
    [snip]
    The characters in the grid were a '.' for empty space, a '*' for a star, a 'p' for a planet, an 'E' for the Enterprise, a 'K' for a Klingon, and an 'S' for the dreaded 'Super Commander'

    Uh, oh. Woe betide to you, you've confused Star Wars and Star Trek on Slashdot. It was nice knowing you; I'll greet your kin at the funeral.

    In all seriousness, I remember that game. It was ported to as many systems as Adventure and Rogue were. I first played it on a Apple II at my (then) local library.

    --
    Those who complain about affect & effect on /. should be disemvoweled
  5. Re:Stale Franchises? by Jim+Hall · · Score: 2, Funny

    Similarly the first time I read LOTR, I wanted to be one of the Fellowship, and had there been a game around back then, it would have been great.

    Allow me to introduce you to Dungeons & Dragons ...