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The Star Wars saga. One of the greatest film series ever has had a rather checkered history when it comes to video games. From the earliest Star Wars game - Parker Bros.' Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back for the Atari 2600 to the latest as of this writing, Star Wars: Obi-Wan for the *shudder* X-Box and all points in between, there have been numerous hits and misses. Out of all the Star Wars games released, I would have to say my personal favorites are the Super Star Wars games for the SNES. The combination of great platforming action and Mode-7 flight sequences won me over from the first time I played Super Star Wars.

Coming in right below the SNES games for me, though, would be the NES game Star Wars. It's not one of my favorite NES games by any means, but for a Star Wars game, I like it quite a bit - despite the general consensus online that it sucks. I still haven't beaten the damn thing, though... it's certainly tough (let's not even bring up the second [and last] NES game, The Empire Strikes Back - that game was a major source of frustration that made Star Wars look like a freakin' bike ride). Perhaps someday, I will finish it - or not, I don't know.

Recently, though, I was offered a Star Wars game that I didn't even know existed - Star Wars for the Sega Master System! It was released only in Europe in 1993 (of course, the SMS was dead and gone by that time in the U.S.). The price was right, so I jumped at the chance.

Upon receiving the game, I discovered that it was actually a port of the NES game. The port was programmed by Tiertex, the infamous programming house that produced the absolutely horrible Genesis game Journey From Darkness: Strider Returns, and was published by U.S. Gold, who - coincidentally, I'm sure - also published Strider Returns. The fact that Tiertex handled the port didn't bode too well in my eyes, but I decided to give the game a chance. Surprisingly, I liked it. I may even take back a few of the things I said about Tiertex after playing Strider Returns... on second thought, no I won't. That game was an insult to the Strider name.

But back to the topic at hand here... Star Wars for the SMS is an exact port of the NES game - but better. Granted, there is a two-year gap between the two games (the NES Star Wars came out in 1991), but it still could have easily been botched. However, it wasn't, and the time they took on the port really shows. The graphics are a step above the NES version (because the SMS was a technically better system, I'll wager) - here, check out these comparison shots (NES shots on the left, SMS shots on the right):

As you can tell, the graphic detail in the SMS version is much better than the NES game. Aside from the improved graphics, a few other things about the SMS game make it a bit more fun to play than the NES game. For one, the game controls a bit better. That was one of the most frustrating parts of the NES game, and that problem was (for the most part) solved in the SMS game. The music in the SMS game is a huge improvement over the NES game, as are the sound effects (the sound of the lightsaber in particular). One particularly annoying animation routine from the NES game was replaced by a much better one in the SMS game - in the NES game, when Luke uses his lightsaber, he does a little hop and an overhead slash. In the SMS game, he swings the saber and doesn't jump, which looks much better, imo. You also can select between two difficulty levels in the SMS game, which also serves to make the SMS game a bit easier than it's NES counterpart.

All in all, as much as like the NES Star Wars, I like the SMS version that much better. If you have an SMS and liked the NES Star Wars at all, and you can find the SMS game, it's worth picking up. For those of you that hate the NES game, there probably wouldn't be very much in the SMS version that you would like - despite the improvements I mentioned, it is still a port of the NES game. If you've never tried either of them, the ROMs for both are readily available for download out there somewhere, so why not give either of them a shot?

Here's a few extra shots of the NES game, if anyone needs them for anything.