Friday 22 January 2010

Super Star Wars - Return of the Jedi (Super Nintendo)

I've been involved recently in, if not exactly a war, an entertaining discussion around the relative merits of the Sega Megadrive and the Super Nintendo. Or, to put it bluntly, which is the best. It's the kind of argument that has enlivened many a playground break over the years, and it's nice to know that we, as grown adults, can still stoop to that level.

I was a Sega Megadrive kind of chap, mostly because we owned one from early on, and I only got a SNES late on. As I've mentioned before, that came about because my brother swapped my copy of Landstalker for it. That alone meant I felt some resentment towards the machine. Hardly owning any games for it didn't help matters.

Super Star Wars - Return of the Jedi has been recommended as one of the best games the system had to offer. And as it's one of the games I currently own (although probably not for long...), I figured I would give it an outing.


Yeah, I don't remember this bit from the film, either...

It didn't start well. The first level is in the F-Zero vein, only shit. You race into a brown landscape, jumping over holes and avoiding boulders. That's it, and it's terribly dull, almost enough to completely put you off.

Still, the second level reverts to a more traditional platformer, which is better. I wouldn't say it was terribly exciting, though. Lots of jumping and somersaulting, the odd bit of shooting or light-sabering, some being dumped back at an earlier point in the level or falling down holes you didn't know were there... run-of-the-mill, standard stuff, dressed up in a few bits of Star Wars clothing. You get a choice of three characters this time, although there's not that much of a difference between them, and you're going to go for Luke anyway.

And... that was it. I played for ninety minutes and couldn't get past that level. Too much finicky jumping, and getting knocked off a platform and falling miiiiiles down. Pity, I would have liked to have seen if things picked up or what else the game has to offer. Maybe another day, before the SNES is gone for good.

2 comments:

  1. I'm a SNES fan myself (though I did own both SNES and SEGA back in the day), but I don't think this game was that great. It's brutally unforgiving, has WAY too many difficult jumping segments, and doesn't even feel like Star Wars, really.

    If you want to see the best games that the SNES had to offer, take a look at Super Mario World and Super Metroid, which were absolutley amazing in their day and have actually aged very well. Super Contra and Kirby Superstar were also great platformers on the SNES.

    The SNES also had many great RPG releases, if you're into RPGs:
    Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy III, Earthbound, Zelda: Link to the Past.

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  2. This game is very good, but its extremely frenetic difficulty becomes it in a frustrating experience. Although there are a lot of players (as me) who like it and enjoy very much to play it in Wii VC. Buy Viagra Viagra

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