Good heavens, all this information (and
TBBK's even told us about the
bootleg!) and yet no-one has actually noded the Atari Star Wars vector.
(rolls up sleeves!)
The History
Video games of the early 1980s were mostly striving to be masters of
suggestion or
abstraction. Without the capable hardware available to any PC user after around 1996, or available to the gaming industry in the late 1980s, the machines of the time were severely limited in what they could display. There were a couple of roads to success. The game designer could try to rely on a media tie-in (
Star Trek, for example) to generate interest in a game and to foster forgiveness in the minds of players. Or, they could attempt to focus on gameplay, putting effort into the machine's responsiveness and into the play rules - if these were up to scratch, players wouldn't give a damn if the visuals weren't anywhere near
photorealistic or even 'realistic.' Some examples of 'pure gameplay' titles included
Tempest,
Qix, and
Zookeeper - only the latter had any semblance of a 'real life story' to explain the gameplay, and that was mere handwaving at best.
Into this split world leaped Star Wars in 1983. Atari's color vector title was one of the first media tie-ins to really evoke its namesake! This was partially due to new technology being available, but also to the Star Wars 'world' offering nicely packaged fantasies (space fighters) that could be mined for gameplay. On top of this, however, there was a healthy dose of genius which allowed these particleboard holodecks to take what were essentially boring-ass old oscilloscopes and use them to create a world of fantasy and power.
The Machine(s)
Star Wars was available in two forms, the
upright cabinet and the
cockpit version. The gameplay and game hardware was identical, the only difference being the mounting. Both formats were masterpieces of art and marketing; there was almost no place where they were not adorned with
overlays or
side art, which was of high quality for videogame ornamentation of the day. The monitor
bezel was obscured by a plastic molding that suggested the minimalist control panels of the Star Wars space fighters' cockpits as seen in the movie. The cabinet version stands exactly six feet tall, with a traditional
marquee. The monitor is midmounted in the cabinet and direct-view; it was originally an
Amplifone color
XY monitor but was later replaced by a cheaper and more readily available
Wells-Gardner unit. Inside, the
particleboard cabinet was fairly standard in its layout - a power supply and sound hardware attached to the cabinet floor, with logic boards on the side of the case. One point of difference: Star Wars
logic boards come encased in a single metal module, with endpoint connectors. This no doubt contributed to ease of
field maintenance, since
any computational misbehavior could be easily remedied by pulling this module and returning it for bench repairs. It is, however, irritating for modern collectors as it makes small repairs difficult. This is offset by the fact that Star Wars boards in the wild tend to survive quite well, protected by their metal shielding - assuming, of course, that someone doesn't look at the bare metal box, shrug, and throw it away.
The cockpit version was basic, and came in one piece - which made it a bear to move. It had a hard wooden bench facing a monitor and controls identical to the cabinet version, with additional side art covering the increased cabinet wallspace. The coin acceptors were on the left side of the machine, annoyingly far from the bench and rather high off the ground. While this made replays a pain in the knee, it also meant that the lower area (under the monitor) was mechanism-free, and hence had more legroom (and was more durable). (Note: At the time of this writeup, a picture of the cockpit version can be seen on TheBooBooKitty's homenode!)
One characteristic shared by both versions - they were heavy. The cockpit weighs in at over 450 lbs, and the cabinet tips the scales over 320 (~145 kilos)! Luckily they were quite stable, but they're a bear to move.
Gameplay
The game took place from the point of view of an
X-Wing pilot, ostensibly
Luke Skywalker. The objective was to close with the
Death Star, fly across its surface until reaching the
equatorial trench, and then navigate the trench to the end and fire a
proton torpedo down the
thermal exhaust port. This followed the action in the movie quite closely, which helped players fall into character.
There were a few constants on the screen. The player's current deflector shield strength was centered in the top, an integer digit with a ramped bar-graph above it. The tips of four blaster cannon (mounted on the S-foils of the player's X-Wing) protrude into view, two on each side of the screen. Although they would shift position very slightly in hard maneuvers, they were essentially static. These guns were controlled by maneuvering a targeting cursor (whose shape was also fairly faithfully copied from the movie) around the screen, using a wheel-and-yoke controller that (legend has it) originated on the semi-mythical Army Battlezone or Bradley Trainer. Those same controls showed up in many of Atari's games, including Firefox, S.T.U.N.Runner, and Roadblasters. They consist of a square central unit with two handles, one on each side; the handles can be swiveled front-to-back. There are four fire buttons, two under the forefinger position and two on the back of the handles under the thumbs. All four fired the cannons.
The action came in three distinct stages, or acts. In stage one, the player must approach the Death Star while avoiding destruction at the 'hands' of several waves of TIE Fighters, which will fly out to engage. The player has some 'vague' control over their direction of flight; it is possible to influence the attitude of the X-Wing by continued hard deflection. First priority, however, is those TIEs! The TIEs both attack and protect themselves by firing slow-moving fireballs (proton torpedoes?) at the player. Blaster bolts will dissolve the fireballs, and destroy regular TIEs on impact. They will fire streams of fireballs, so it's not enough to assume a couple of shots at a TIE will do the trick - you need to keep firing until there is no red and white scintillating glare, and then continue until you see the TIE disintegrate under your guns. There are times when the TIEs aren't facing you that they're completely vulnerable, usually when they first appear and sweep out past the player.
In addition to the standard TIEs, Darth Vader will show up in his distinctive TIE Advanced X1 prototype (thanks Walter!) which is flatter than the standard, with forward-extending (and unlike the TIE Interceptor) corner-tucked wing panels. While his weapons are identical to his cohorts', he has one advantage - he has six deflector shield levels, just like the player. Hitting him results in a glare of green from his shield, and his ship will temporarily lose control and begin rolling away. Eventually he will regain control and begin firing and closing again, so beware! It is rumored that all manner of goodies can be had by actually hitting Darth the mystical seventh time and destroying him during the first phase - but I don't think it's possible. He's invulnerable while recovering from shield damage, and the time spent doing so six times leaves precious little for additional mayhem.
Eventually, the Death Star slides in to fill the player's viewpoint as any surviving TIEs rush off in a straight line towards it, shrinking in the distance. The player flies straight at the Death Star, and the view slides to black as it closes in. The second stage consists of flying across the surface (represented by a scattering of green dots on a plane) trying to avoid fireballs shot at you by both bunkers (low red oblongs) and laser towers (tall yellow structures, active versions with white tops). It is possible to avoid many shots by flying around them, but it's just too hard to resist blasting away at stuff. The red bunkers and the white laser tower tops are vulnerable to your cannon, but be careful - you can run into both the towers and the bunkers, and the yellow tower structures are invulnerable! Hitting either will cost you a shield point, as your view heels crazily around and Artoo berates you. There is a fixed pattern to the threats in this stage; in the first level of play, the player simply avoids red bunkers which do not fire. The second level sees them shoot at the player, and the laser towers show up in level three. After that, the number of 'live' towers increases, as does the difficulty in their placement (across the screen from each other), the speed of flight and the thickness of the towers. Eventually, you find yourself trying to kill four or five targets onscreen at once, all while finding a safe path through a thicket of towers and trying not to shoot at the incoming fireballs because doing so will pull you off course enough to hit a tower. Remember, moving the cursor does affect your direction!
Should you survive this, you do a showy barrel roll into the trench, which is the third stage. Threats here include catwalks which stretch across the trench and gun turrets which line the trench walls and floor. As the difficulty progresses, the player will find themselves threading flight paths which force them to unhesitatingly pick the one-eighth segment of each catwalk wall which is free (they are a 4 x 2 grid), with zero time to maneuver between, and still dealing with incoming fire (which isn't troubled by collision detection physics and can hit you right through those same catwalks that you slam into). Eventually, you will come to the end of the trench; the exhaust port comes into view on the floor, and firing quickly at it for long enough causes your proton torpedos to launch towards it. If you hit, your fighter will pull away and you'll be treated to a colorful explosion as the Death Star dies; otherwise, you'll lose a shield point and have to refly the trench.
Just to keep things sporting, you have the option in this phase of using the force - if you successfully traverse the entire trench without destroying anything (or maybe firing, I'm not sure) you receive an extra 100,000 points! This can be tempting if you're just within reach of an extra shield point - but remember, it will be almost impossible to avoid taking damage during the run since you can't shoot down incoming fire.
Eye and Ear Candy
There is an awful lot of this. The game boasted two
CPUs and
five sound chips (four
Pokey sound chips and an additional unit for speech samples).
John Williams' ever-familiar
anthems are used for mood music - the pace of the track varying with the intensity of play. In addition, there are several sampled voice-over comments which are played during the game both randomly and in response to game events - such as Luke exclaiming "
Look at the size of that thing!" as the first stage ends and the Death Star swells in the viewport.
Firing produces the oh-so-familiar Star Wars blaster sounds, and lots of 'em. Explosions are nice bassy constructs, not just random static - things go BLAM a lot when dying in this game. In addition, the vector nature of screen entities allowed for cheap but realistic disintegration effects, as the polygons comprising the destroyed object are randomly rotated and moved apart from each other - pieces fluttering away. Taking damage not only produces convincing squeals of failing systems (and fright from Artoo) but some nicely fuzzed-out, overbright graphics stings across the screen. During attract mode, the game will play the Star Wars Main Theme softly; when the high scores screen is displayed, the Cantina bith jizz band's tune bounces happily out of the cabinet.
Where to play
These are actually fairly common for vector games. Accorded by some the honor of 'the end-all be-all of color vector gaming,' Star Wars machines are highly sought after, if expensive! Be prepared to shell out anywhere from $1500 to $2500 for a good-condition original upright cabinet from a dealer, and remember - this is an XY monitor we're talking about. Spend the money on a Zanen kit early, and learn how to fix them to be safe. One hint: installing a cooling fan across the high-voltage power supply for the monitor seems to increase their lifespan a lot, as does leaving them powered down when not in use. Both the cabinet and cockpit version generate a lot of heat, and neither does a good job dissipating it. I tend to operate mine with the back panels removed and decent air circulation in the room.
As of 2004, there are several 'new production' multigame cabinets (commercial, not MAME) that offer the Star Wars gameplay, along with other vector games. Beware, however - these are using standard 25" raster scan monitors, with emulated vector graphics. One reason the color XYs are so addictive is that their monitors generate a color saturation and contrast ratio that no raster system can match - the blues and reds of a properly tuned Star Wars or Tempest are unrivalled in videogaming history. Coupled with the high contrast and line brightness of the XY monitor, placing one of these in a dark environment helps one come very close to forgetting the machine is even there - there are just the colors floating in the black.
MAME will play Star Wars, as will other emulators. The machine ran on dual Motorola 6809 processors, running at 1.5 MHz, so the main obstacle for modern machines is emulating the graphics system. Modern versions of MAME will antialias the vector lines, which helps immensely. However, the true aficionado will want a cabinet of his or her very own. The experience of playing these things wasn't just son et lumiere - there was the smell of heated particleboard and components, the slight buzzing from the capacitors that caused faint vibrations in the controls, the feel of the metal paddle handles. You can still find these in 'Eighties theme' arcades, rarely.
Sources:
- CoinOp.Org ( http://coinop.org/g.aspx/100180/Star_Wars.html )
- The KLOV at http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?letter=&game_id=9773
- Original game operator's manual, Atari 1983
- Personal experience owning and operating the beasts
Thanks to TheBooBooKitty for setting the gold standards for videogame noding!