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…
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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…