Most Star Wars games ask you to win a battle. Star Wars: Rebellion asked you to administer the consequences. It wanted to know where your ships were built, which planets paid for them, whether the local population supported your government, who was spying on your shipyards, which officer should command the fleet, and whether Luke Skywalker had enough spare time between diplomatic assignments to become a Jedi. Then it opened another window. Released for Windows in 1998, Star Wars: Rebellion was developed by Coolhand Interactive and published by LucasArts. In the United Kingdom and Ireland, the same game was released as Star Wars: Supremacy. There are no separate campaigns, altered mechanics, or regional design differences hiding behind the second title. Rebellion and Supremacy are the same enormous, stubborn, fascinating strategy game. The premise was almost irresponsibly ambitious. Instead of focusing on one battlefield, one fleet, or one group of heroes,…
1990s Games
Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999): The Movie Game That Survived Development Chaos
There are many ways to fail a diplomatic mission. You can insult the other side. You can misunderstand the negotiations. You can discover that the conference room is filling with poisonous gas while an army of battle droids waits outside. Or, in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, you can accidentally swing a lightsaber at the wrong person and turn the entire Trade Federation ship into a workplace dispute. Released for Windows and PlayStation in 1999, The Phantom Menace was Big Ape Productions’ attempt to squeeze George Lucas’ first prequel into a third-person action-adventure. Players moved between Obi-Wan Kenobi, Qui-Gon Jinn, Queen Amidala, and Captain Panaka across an expanded retelling of the film, mixing lightsaber combat, blaster fights, puzzles, exploration, conversations, trading, and side objectives. It was ambitious. It was awkward. It had a camera that occasionally behaved like it had also been hit with a Force push….
Star Wars: Yoda Stories (1997): The Tiny Desktop Adventure That Made the Galaxy Feel Like a Lunch Break
Some Star Wars games want to recreate the Battle of Hoth. Others want to simulate the pressure of commanding an Imperial fleet, surviving a lightsaber duel, or deciding whether your Jedi should remain noble or start firing Force lightning at everyone who mildly irritates them. Star Wars: Yoda Stories wanted to sit quietly in a small Windows box while you avoided doing actual work. Released for Windows in 1997, Yoda Stories was LucasArts’ second and final Desktop Adventures game after Indiana Jones and His Desktop Adventures. Rather than delivering one large campaign, it generated compact missions intended to be completed in short sessions, usually within about an hour. A Game Boy Color version followed in 1999, although that adaptation made some substantial compromises. It sounds modest because it was modest. That was the entire point. As part of our complete archive of every Star Wars game ever released, Yoda Stories…
Star Wars: Rebel Assault (1993): The CD-ROM Star Wars Game That Wanted to Be a Movie
There are Star Wars games that want you to learn systems. There are Star Wars games that want you to master mechanics. And then there is Star Wars: Rebel Assault, a game that mostly wanted you to slam a CD into your computer, stare at the screen, and say, “Wait, games can do that now?” That was the magic of it in 1993. Star Wars: Rebel Assault arrived at exactly the right moment: the early CD-ROM era, when developers were suddenly drunk on storage space, cinematic ambition, and the exciting possibility of making players feel like they were inside a movie instead of just standing near one. It was developed and published by LucasArts, and more than almost any Star Wars game before it, it sold itself on spectacle. Not depth. Not freedom. Spectacle. And honestly, that was enough. As part of our Complete List of All Star Wars Games…
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1992): The Sequel That Made the NES Star Wars Games Meaner
If Star Wars (1991) took A New Hope and turned it into a weird, hard platformer with a surprisingly personal grudge against the player, then The Empire Strikes Back (1992) looked at that formula and decided it needed more snow, more punishment, and a slightly darker mood. That was not a terrible instinct. Based on the 1980 film, the game launched on NES in 1992 and later came to Game Boy, with the NES version credited to Lucasfilm Games and Sculptured Software, and the Game Boy version credited to NMS Software. As part of our Complete List of All Star Wars Games Ever Made (1979–Present), this one matters because it continues a very specific and very early-90s idea of what Star Wars should feel like on home hardware. It also sits naturally in the Star Wars Games (1990–1999) hub, right after Star Wars (1991), because together they form a sort…
Star Wars (1991): The Game That Made A New Hope Weird, Hard, and Weirdly Memorable
There are Star Wars games that feel elegant. Clean. Heroic. Cinematic. And then there is Star Wars (1991), which looks at A New Hope and decides the best way to honor one of the most beloved films of all time is to make Luke Skywalker jump over bottomless pits, fight a surprising amount of hostile wildlife, and occasionally take on giant enemies that feel like they wandered in from a different genre entirely. And somehow, against all odds, that version of Star Wars stuck. Released in 1991 for the NES and later adapted for the Game Boy in 1992, this was one of the first really visible Star Wars console action games of the 1990s. It was published by JVC Musical Industries and developed by Beam Software, taking the broad story of A New Hope and reshaping it into a side-scrolling action-platformer that was much stranger, harder, and more game-y…