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Star Wars (arcade game)

Star Wars
Starwars arcade.png
North American arcade flyer showing the standup and sitdown versions of the game
Developer(s) Atari, Inc.
Publisher(s) Atari, Inc.
Designer(s) Mike Hally
Platform(s) Arcade
Release date(s)
  • NA: May 1983
Genre(s) Rail shooter
Mode(s) Single player
Cabinet Upright and sit-down cockpit
Display Vector horizontal

Star Wars is an arcade game produced by Atari Inc. and released in 1983. The game is a first person space combat game, 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.

The game then resets to the first phase. Each successive Death Star run greatly increases the difficulty; TIE Fighters shoot more often, laser towers appear in the second round, and obstacles appear in 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 shots.

The game features several digitized samples of voices from the movie, including Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi, James Earl Jones as Darth Vader, Harrison Ford as Han Solo, the mechanized beeps of R2-D2, and the growls of Chewbacca. The game is available as a standard upright or a sit-down cockpit version, both of which are elaborately decorated. The controls consist of a yoke control with four buttons — two trigger style and two in position to be pressed by the thumbs — each of which fired a laser positioned on the four leading edges of the X-Wings.


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