Star Wars: The Arcade Game

Star Wars is an arcade game produced by Atari Inc. and released in 1983. The game is a first person space simulator, simulating the attack on the Death Star from the 1977 film Star Wars. The game is composed of 3D color vector graphics. This game was developed during the Golden Age of Arcade Games and is considered the #4 most popular game of all time according to the readers of Killer List of Videogames.

The player assumes the role of Luke Skywalker ('Red Five'), as he pilots an X-wing fighter from a first-person perspective. Unlike other arcade games of similar nature, the player does not have to destroy every enemy in order to advance through the game; he must simply survive as his fighter flies through the level, which most often means he must avoid or destroy the shots that enemies fire. Each hit on his craft takes away one shield (of the six he started out with), and if he runs out of shields and takes another hit, the game ends.

The player's ultimate goal is to destroy the Death Star through three attack phases. In the first phase of the game, the player begins in outer space above the Death Star. He must engage in a dog fight with Darth Vader and enemy TIE fighters. In the second phase, the player reaches the Death Star's surface as laser turrets on towers rise to confront the player. The player is awarded a bonus if they manage to destroy a certain number of turrets. In the final scenario, the player must navigate the trench of the Death Star, avoiding obstacles and gun turrets until finally firing a proton torpedo at the correct time for a direct hit on the exhaust port target. If the player is successful, the Death Star explodes and the player is awarded a bonus shield up to a maximum of 6. Should the player fail to hit the exhaust port, a shield is lost and the player must attempt the trench again. If the player manages to destroy the Death Star without firing at anything but the exhaust port, they are awarded a bonus for 'using the Force.'
The game then resets to the first phase. Each successive Death Star run greatly increases the difficulty; TIE Fighters shoot more often, there are more Laser towers and batteries in the second round, and there are many more obstacles and laser fire during the trench run. Unlike the movie, where the units shoot beams similar to lasers, the enemy units in this game shoot projectiles resembling fireballs, in order to give the player a chance to destroy the fired shots.

The game was originally designed for the arcade by Mike Hally. It was converted first by Parker Brothers in 1983 and 1984 to numerous 8-bit consoles and computers. These include the Atari 2600, Atari 5200, the Atari 8-bit family, ColecoVision and Commodore 64. The home console version for the ColecoVision was designed by Wendell Brown. The Atari 5200 version is infamous for its commercial, in which a guy overreacts while playing the game, telling the cashier at the video game store he's in that it was 'some game!'.

The same game was converted again, in 1987 and 1988, for the Amiga, Atari ST, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, Acorn Electron, BBC Micro and Enterprise 64; the game was also converted again for the Atari 8-bits and the Commodore 64. All conversions were developed by UK-based Vektor Grafix (the Atari 8-bit version by Zeppelin Games being an exception) and were published in Europe by Domark. That same year Brøderbund acquired the rights to develop Star Wars games from Lucasfilm. Brøderbund published the Apple II, Apple Macintosh, Commodore 64 and DOS versions of the arcade game in North America in 1988.