Star Wars has inspired more great video games than any other movie franchise in history. Yes, there have been one or two bad ones mixed in with the good, but before it sadly closed its doors developer LucasArts brought us some true video game classics set in that infamous galaxy far, far away.
Over the years there have been so many Star Wars games that it’s difficult to not let a few of them slip your mind, which is why we at CraveOnline have created this list of all the highlights (and lowlights) of Star Wars video games adaptations past and present. We’ve even added a look at the Star Wars games you can expect in the future, as Disney has acquired the rights to the Star Wars license and is working on bringing us more great titles very soon.
Read on to look at the past, present and future of Star Wars video games.
Star Wars Video Games: Past, Present and Future
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Star Wars (1983)
While not the first Star Wars video game as it is sometimes credited as being, Star Wars (or Star Wars Arcade, as it is now more commonly referred to as) was nevertheless the very best title in the first wave of games based upon the series.
Star Wars Arcade followed three 80s Star Wars games of equally dubious quality: Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1982), Star Wars: Return of the Jedi: Death Star Battle (1983) and Star Wars: Jedi Arena (also 1983). However, Star Wars Arcade was without a shadow of the doubt that put Star Wars video games on the map, being the instigator behind the huge amount of Star Wars games that have since been released and being the flag-bearer for the space combat games based upon the series such as Rogue Squadron and TIE Fighter.
While it received a number of ports to home consoles such as Atari systems, the ColecoVision and Commodore 64, the arcade version with its sit-down cockpit wasn't bettered, and it's now remembered as one of the greatest arcade games ever.
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Super Star Wars (1992)
Super Star Wars kicked off a trilogy of classic Star Wars games on the SNES, a trilogy that still stands as the Star Wars video game series with the most consistent quality across all platforms and all eras.
While there have certainly been better games than Super Star Wars, Super Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back and Super Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, we haven't yet seen a series where one game hasn't been simply "good" or "average". All three Super Star Wars games were great (albeit wth the first entry in the series and Empire Strikes Back being the most enjoyable) which is what makes this series stand out in the immense library of Star Wars video games.
All three games were mind-numbling difficult, and completing them all is a badge of honor that not many gamers get to wear. They also took advantage of the SNES' Mode 7 effects, which created pseudo 3D environments using 2D images, by having levels dedicated to cruising along Tattooine in a Landspeeder, attacking TIE Fighters on the surface of the Death Star and more.
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Star Wars: TIE Fighter (1994)
Star Wars: TIE Fighter was revolutionary for its time. Releasing on DOS, Macintosh and Windows 9x as a 3.5" floppy disk (remember those things?) TIE Fighter featured revolutionary graphics for its time and a gameplay twist that made it a must-buy for Star Wars fans - it allowed you to play as the villainous Empire.
Its first-person space combat gameplay made players feel as though they were actually in control of an iconic TIE Fighter, as they were tasked with bringing down Rebellion troops and, as the game progressed and the player-character showed more heroic tendencies, eventually taking on the Empire and Emperor Palpatine.
The game was later released in Collector's Editor format on CD-ROM, which only enhanced all the great things about the original version of the game, and it's regarded as one of the best PC games of all time.
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Star Wars: Masters of Teras Kasi (1997)
There are bad Star Wars games, and then there's Star Wars: Masters of Teras Kasi.
Star Wars has had its fair share of odd spin-off games in the past, with Super Bombad Racing (a kart game that featured Star Wars characters with big heads for some reason) and Demolition (which saw characters competing in a Star Wars-themed demolition derby, complete with a controllable Rancor) being high among them, but none were as poor as Masters of Teras Kasi.
Considering the source material you'd think we'd have been treated to a good Star Wars fighting game by now, but unfortunately Masters of Teras Kasi stands as only one of two games that LucasArts tried to give us cool one-on-one Jedi battles - the other being a multiplayer mode in the Revenge of the Sith movie tie-in game, which was overwhelmingly dull but was like playing Street Fighter II Turbo in comparison to Teras Kasi.
Teras Kasi wanted to be Tekken 2 with a Star Wars makeover, but it fell far short of the PlayStation fighting classic. Instead, it was weighed down by clunky, slow character movement and dull special attacks, which added up to make it a far more tiresome to play than its concept would suggest. How could LucasArts screw up having Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader fight one-on-one in a video game so badly?
As it stands, Masters of Teras Kasi is the pinnacle in awful Star Wars games. At least Super Bombad Racing and Demolition offered some remote semblance of fun.
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Star Wars: Rogue Squadron (1998)
Star Wars: Rogue Squadron convinced many Star Wars fans to go out and buy a Nintendo 64, and with good reason. While the PlayStation was at the forefront of the CD revolution, the N64 was often made to look like a more primitive console thanks to it still being a cartridge-based system.
However, with the purchase of the N64's 4MB Expansion Pak, Rogue Squadron's graphical resolution could be upped to an astounding (for its time) 640x480.
As such, Rogue Squadron boasted some of the best graphics of its time and, coupled with its action-packed gameplay that transported the player through a number of the Star Wars franchise's key aerial battles, this is one of the Star Wars franchises greatest moments in video game form.
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Star Wars Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast (2002)
With the recent revelation that all Star Wars video games are considered non-canonical we can now only consider Jedi Outcast protagonist Kyle Katarn's literature exploits as valid within the Star Wars Universe, which makes us more than a little sad.
Those who are familiar with Kyle Katarn from the Jedi Knight series often go so far as to rank him alongside Han Solo as one of the greatest characters in the Star Wars Universe, and with good reason: Katarn's character arch takes him from a bad guy serving in the Galactic Empire, to a mercenary-for-hire, to a member of the New Republic with skills second only to Luke Skywalker.
Jedi Outcast was the magnum opus of the Jedi Knight series, with Kyle becoming an embittered outcast of the Jedi order that slowly comes to terms with his Jedi heritage. Aside from featuring a story that gripped Star Wars fans in a Force Choke when it was first released, Jedi Outcast also boasted intuitive gameplay and graphics/animations that were well ahead of its time.
Using the Quake 3 Arena engine, Jedi Outcast's aesthetics still hold up well today on account of its realistic combat animations and diverse level design, making it a vast improvement over its predecessor and ensuring that its sequel couldn't possibly live up to the level of expectation fans had for it.
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Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003)
Star Wars fans have been begging for a Knights of the Old Republic 3 ever since KOTOR 2 failed to live up to its predecessor, which is frequently touted as being the best Star Wars game of all time.
These days the original Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is largely remembered for its huge plot twist, but there's so much more to this immensely engrossing RPG than a well-executed bait-and-switch.
First off, KOTOR's story is far better than anything George Lucas mustered up in the Star Wars prequels, and its characters far more interesting than Hayden Christensen's stunted take on of Anakin Skywalker could ever hope to be.
While the player's quest to take down the evil Darth Malak and Darth Revan - and the eventual discovery that the player-character was actually Revan all along, unaware of his/her past after suffering a bout of amnesia - is well-noted, it's the character interactions and Dungeons & Dragons-inspired gameplay that really make KOTOR stand out. The sardonic Hunter-Killer assassin droid HK-47 was a more fleshed-out character than anything Lucas came up with in Episode's I, II and III, which should be a good indicator of this game's quality and why it's so beloved by Star Wars fans.
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Star Wars: Republic Commando (2005)
Perhaps the most easily forgotten of the good Star Wars games, Republic Commando had the dubious task of making an enjoyable game out of the convoluted and tedious story of the prequels. Surprisingly it managed to achieve this, and provided Star Wars fans with some great gameplay on top.
Republic Commando received reasonably positive reviews upon release, but is now remembered as giving players one of the more enjoyable gameplay experiences within the Star Wars Universe, despite there being a notable lack of Jedi.
Unfortunately, Republic Commando didn't resonate so well with consumers at the time of its release, and a planned sequel for the game that would place players in the shoes of Imperial rather than Republic troops was scrapped before it even got past its conceptual stages.
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Lego Star Wars: The Video Game (2005)
This is where it all began. Like it, love it, hate it or tolerate it begrudgingly, the Lego video game franchise is still alive and kicking, with Batman, Harry Potter, The Hobbit and more having received a blocky makeover in the video game world to appease children and humor adults the world over.
The first Lego Star Wars: The Video Game was so immensely popular upon release that it was credited with revitalizing Lego altogether, introducing the toys to a whole new generation of kids via its simplistic, addictive and downright charming gameplay.
The key to Lego Star Wars' success, aside from its affiliation with one of the biggest movie brands in the world, was its vast amount of collectible characters. While many of these didn't necessarily offer huge changes to the gameplay, collecting more of the many characters in the Star Wars Universe and forming a team with our own merry band of heroes/villains was incredibly gratifying, and was the modern-day equivalent of collecting baseball cards for many children.
The Lego video game series is still going strong today, and the inspired first Lego Star Wars is to thank for that.
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Star Wars: Battlefront 2 (2005)
Bigger doesn't always necessarily mean better, but in the case of Star Wars: Battlefront 2 that was certainly the case.
The original Star Wars: Battlefront introduced us to the third-person, squad-based action that would win over Star Wars fans and people who didn't know their Midi-chlorians from their Mandalorians alike, and it swiftly one of the most popular local multiplayer games of its generation.
However, Battlefront 2 gave us something that we didn't even know we wanted: space battles. While these space battles look primiitive by today's standards, at the time stepping into a TIE Fighter or X-Wing and hurtling through the jet black vastness of that galaxy far, far away was a real selling point for Battlefront 2.
On top of those space battles, there were a plethora of new maps added into the mix, new vehicles and "special fighters", that allowed the top-ranking player on a team to take control of a famous face in the Star Wars Universe from Luke Skywalker, to Darth Vader, to Boba Fett and Yoda.
While the introduction of these characters was a little hit-and-miss due to their respective combat systems not being as fleshed out as they could've been, these issues were easily forgotten about when you discovered that you could actually pit each and every one of these characters against one another in a battle on Mos Eisley. Sure, balancing flew right out of the window, but it was heaps of fun.
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Star Wars: Force Unleashed 2 (2010)
The original Star Wars: Force Unleashed was a mediocre game but it did serve to give us one of the best uses of Force powers we'd yet seen in a video game. The combat may have been formulaic and it teetered towards the dull end of the gameplay spectrum more often than not, but it succeeded in making us feel like we were controlling an actual Jedi and it actually featured a decent story for Star Wars fans to enjoy.
Unfortunately, rather than build upon the promise of the original Force Unleashed, Force Unleashed 2 instead decided to offer us more of the same, only this time it was executed in a much worse fashion.
The story practically undid everything that was good about the first title, allowing the player to assume the role of Starkiller again via a hackneyed plot twist and giving players barely any bang for their buck, with the game being beatablle within a few measly hours.
The original Force Unleashed was decent enough, but nothing special. Force Unleashed 2 was notable because developer LucasArts took all of what was promising about its predecessor and completely overlooked it in favor of producing a lazy cash-in.
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Star Wars: The Old Republic (2011)
The ill-fated MMO Star Wars: Galaxies was followed by Star Wars: The Old Republic, which has fared much better since its release.
While it doesn't rival the popularity of Guild Wars 2 or the behemothic World of Warcraft, The Old Republic has still managed to curry favor with plenty of Star Wars fans despite being of middling quality in comparison to some of its MMO contemporaries.
Following its release The Old Republic began to lose subscriber support, which led to it being rebranded as a free-to-play game, thus introducing it to whole new batch of players. While The Old Republic isn't the Knights of the Old Republic 3 that most fans wanted, it's certainly a decent MMO that is worthy of the Star Wars license.
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Kinect Star Wars (2012)
The Xbox 360's Kinect didn't have a great track record with decent software, with the "Better with Kinect" slogan that was plastered on the box art of every game that featured Kinect support seeming like grim sarcasm rather than fact, and Kinect Star Wars is remembered as one of the biggest abominations that made use of the divisive technology.
Upon its reveal people were divided into two camps: those who were excited to (kind of) take control of a lightsaber with their own hands via the Kinect's motion sensor, and those who realized that the game probably wouldn't amount to much given the regrettable history of the Kinect library.
While Kinect Star Wars was definitely not the worst Kinect game out there, its dire use of the Star Wars license certainly made it the most reviled, with its 'dance off' mini-game receiving most of the hate thanks to forcing Han Solo to dance along to pop songs.
One good thing came out of Star Wars Kinect, though: an official Star Wars Xbox 360 bundle was released alongside the game, which saw the console designed to take the appearance of R2-D2's blue-and-white shell and featured a C3PO golden controller.
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Star Wars: Attack Squadrons (TBA)
Star Wars: Attack Squadrons is set to be a free-to-play online space combat game that will allow players to customize iconic ships from the Star Wars franchise before taking them into battle in its 16-player dogfights.
Aside from its core concept, little information regarding Star Wars: Attack Squadrons has yet been given by Disney Interactive, other than its the first brand new Star Wars IP to be launched by the company since its acquisition of the license. Still, customizing your TIE Fighter and X-Wing can't be anything but awesome, so this one's firmly on our radar.
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Star Wars: Battlefront 3 (TBA)
Battlefield developer DICE handling Star Wars: Battlefront 3 is a match made in heaven, and although we've seen nothing of the game since its reveal at E3 2013, this one's still one of our most anticipated titles of the future.
If Battlefront 3 can flesh out Battlefront 2's Jedi battles, add more varied vehicles into the mix and give us battles that can stretch from land to space within the same round, then we'll be happy. We have every faith in DICE to make a fantastic game out of the Battlefront license, and we can't wait to get our hands on some more details.
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Star Wars 1313 (Cancelled?)
We all bellowed a Darth Vader-esque "NOOOOOOOOOOO!" when we learned that Star Wars 1313 had been canned, as from its E3 reveal it looked to combine the gameplay of Uncharted with the Star Wars Universe, a combination that couldn't possibly go wrong.
But then it did go wrong as, before the game even had a chance to take in its first breath of air, LucasArts shut down, the Star Wars license was sold to Disney and the House of Mouse chose not renew the Star Wars 1313 trademark.
While this likely means that we won't be seeing Star Wars 1313 in the future, the chances are that we'll see something very similar, as Visceral Games is working on a Star Wars project that has the likes of Amy Hennig, the creative director and writer of the Uncharted series, on board.
While we don't know anything about the game yet (including whether or not it'll star Boba Fett, who was going to serve as the protagonist of 1313), we can at least hope that it's going to follow in the footsteps of what 1313 was planned to be.
