 SNES DRUNK! Hey wait a second, there isn't an SNES Star Wars games video on this channel yet? What's taking me so long? Oh, is it the absolutely brutal difficulty of these games? Is that it? Well, I'll get to that in a bit, I'll have plenty to say about that. But yeah, here we go with the Super Star Wars games on Super Nintendo. I should mention real quickly that the nice thing about these three games is that for third-party games, they're consistent in terms of presentation and gameplay feel because all three are developed by Sculptured Software and published by JVC and LucasArts. Another thing I should quickly mention is that all three games do a great job capturing the vibe of the original Star Wars trilogy. Sure, they take some liberties here and there to help the story fit a video game structure. For example, you can't simply have Luke go out and buy 3PO and R2 from the Jawas. He's got to fight tons of Jawas and climb a ginormous sandcrawler. Other than that, though, the characters' likenesses and each respective game's story is portrayed really well here, all things considered. That's not something you can say for many other 16-bit games based on movies. So let's start with the first game. Super Star Wars released in 1992 and right away we're met with the most polarizing aspect of all three of these games, the difficulty. There's no other way to put it. These games are freaking hard. Any way you slice it. There's several reasons Super Star Wars in particular is so difficult. One is the enemy respawn rate. These things jump out at you seemingly by the dozen and they're all much faster than Luke is capable of reacting. This imbalance between Luke and the enemies is incredibly frustrating. Sure, Luke can fire in seven directions, but what's really strange about the first level in particular is all these odd angles you have to deal with. Look at this, you can't just fire across. You have to get up close and then fire at a downward angle. It's awkward. If Luke could fire down while in midair, that would help mitigate the awkwardness, but since we can't do that, the best advice I can give someone trying to deal with this game's difficulty is to go about it slowly. I know this is a run and gun game, but really, if you want to get any good at this game, you have to treat it like a walk and run game for a bit. Scroll the screen just a little bit at a time, take out what comes at you, and don't bother looking backward. But yeah, the angles here are so weird and unlike any other run and gun games, even though next level inside the Sandcrawler has this bizarre layout where you're just jumping around in any which direction. Later in the game, the layout is a little more streamlined and player-friendly, but I think it was a mistake making the first section of the game so odd, creating such weird shooting angles. Jumping is also unorthodox. At first, you might think there's a delay between when you press the B button and when your character actually jumps, but it's actually the sprite animation. They took the time to bend their freaking knees before they jump. Oh, come on, was that really necessary? Here's the thing though, once you realize that, it makes platforming sections much easier to stomach. It's one of those things that's not exactly game-breaking, just annoying. You do also have a slide move here as well, pressing jump while holding down and forward and that helps a little bit. I would compare Super Star Wars to Super Ghouls and Ghosts. That's another game that's brutally difficult with wonky jumping, but it's a game you have to come to a compromise with. It's like you have to say out loud to the game itself, okay, fine, I'll try things your way. Meaning you can't approach this game or any of the SNES Star Wars games the same way you would Contra or Turrican or Earthworm Gym. These games are kind of out there in their own universe and I don't just mean the story. Eventually, you can unlock Han Solo and Chewbacca. Han is quicker and has a roll maneuver and Chewie is a bit slower, but can take more damage. Luke also eventually gets a lightsaber instead of just a blaster and that's when the game really gets fun. Getting out of the tired desert setting is also nice and like I said, the later levels are a little better designed and less awkward. Still a big time challenge to get through, but at least it's the right kind of frustrating at that point. The fact remains though, Super Star Wars gets off to such a rough start. The first stage has the shooting angle problems I talked about, but later there's the mode seven land speeder stages and those are kind of a downer. I mean, what the hell am I even doing? Where am I going? You're supposed to just kind of aimlessly shoot Jawas until the game finally tells you to head toward the Sandcrawler in the background. The X-Wing level at the very end of the game has the same sort of idea and that's pretty cool but not everyone is gonna be able to get that far to experience that and sadly, there's no password system or battery save in this one but there is a stage select code if you wanna look it up on game facts but even then, good freaking luck. That level is hard as hell. Super Star Wars is easy to dismiss because it's such a tough game but like I said, if you're able to get past the first two annoying level layouts and get out of the Sandcrawler and eventually unlock Han and Chewbacca, this game is a lot more fun. I'm just saying it's easy to quit on this one right away. Those blind jumps in the Sandcrawler stage are ridiculous but there's some good stuff here. You just gotta put in the work to get it and to do that, you gotta play this game by its rules. Super Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back or just Super Empire Strikes Back as I'm gonna call it is a great sequel because it improves a lot of things from the first game. For one thing, Luke gets two weapons to switch from right off the bat so you have both the blaster and the lightsaber which he can use to block with plus you have this sweet ass lightsaber jump at your disposal and you get to ride a tauntaun which expands your health meter even further. In addition to that, there's an area here with invisible platforms that you can use to power up the hell out of your blaster plus there is a password system here and you're gonna need all that help because once again the first level is such a slog with this weird uneven terrain that creates oddball angles that allow enemies to get in a ton of damage. Once you get past that first level though the game gets a lot better. The difficulty here is a bit more manageable because you can block with Luke's lightsaber like against these guys here and the slide move becomes a lot more useful. See if you did this in the first couple levels you just end up getting stuck and taking tons of damage but here it's effective. Again it sucks that this game gets off to such a rough start just like the last game but at least you have a lot more help this time around and once you get through it Super Empire Strikes Back gets so much better. For one thing each character can also double jump now and it makes the platforming section so much more manageable. I wish I could go back and add the double jump to the first game. There's a bit more variety in the gameplay with these horizontal shooter levels where Luke commandeers a vehicle and then later a T-47 airspeeder which is pretty cool. The mode seven levels are back but are much more fun this time around mostly because it's just shooting at anything that moves without those stupid rocks getting in your way like in the first game. Plus you get to take down AT-ATs with a toe cable just like in the movie. There's even first person space shooting levels from the Millennium Falcon which are straightforward but pretty dang tough, you know just like the rest of the game. Also new here is Force Power which is only available to Luke. Press select and use the L and R buttons to scroll through the different force powers Luke can use. There's elevation, invisibility, slow motion. It's pretty cool and it really helps mitigate the difficulty the further you progress in the game especially since you can use it to replenish your health as well. Chewbacca has his own power-ups too while Han has plasma bombs. Super Empire Strikes Back has the same kind of difficulty as the first game tons of respawning, enemies that are way too fast to keep up with but in particular the boss fights are nuts especially later in the game they take forever since they have like a thousand hit points and don't get me started on the Darth Vader fight even on easy it's freaking impossible. So yeah, like I said earlier Super Empire Strikes Back is a great sequel because it fixes certain flaws from the previous game and adds a ton of great qualities like the shoot-em-up stages and the force power-ups. I also think this movie in particular just kind of lends itself better to a video game structure if that makes sense. But yeah, despite the difficulty the endless boss fights and the continued presence of that awkward jump animation Super Empire Strikes Back is well worth checking out. But it might not be as good as its follow-up Super Star Wars Return of the Jedi or Super Return of the Jedi. First and foremost this game looks spectacular it's one of the best looking SNES games period the lighting effects look awesome especially when you fight the ranker it really gives off a creepy claustrophobic atmosphere. Once again, however, just like the other two games this one gets off to a bad start where right away where you're piloting a vehicle avoiding rocks and jumping over this giant void this really isn't that bad because it's not very long it's just weird more than anything else. After that you get to choose from three characters right away Luke, Chewbacca and Leia dressed as the bounty hunter how cool is that? Later on you can play as Slave Leia and whip the crap out of enemies that is badass and further down the line you play as Wicked the Ewok. The power up layout is very similar to Super Empire Strikes Back it's a separate meter you can see in the upper right Chewie and Leia have spin attacks and Luke has this powerful force attacks where you can freeze enemies turn invisible or replenish your health among other things it's pretty cool. The platforming levels here don't appear to be as brutally difficult as in previous games I actually felt like I could beat this game for one thing. One thing that stands out to me in that regard is the level design and the use of the double jump they did a really nice job here balancing the range of your second jump with the platforming layout this is still a really tough platformer with some tricky jumps but it actually feels doable this time around. One irritating thing though is that anytime your character takes damage they make this grunting sound it really gets old. They went a little bonkers with the gameplay variety too in addition to controlling the land speeder there's also a gallery shooter stage where you can shoot stuff with a millennium falcon that's a pretty fun one but then there's the speeder bike stages and yeah I know I said this game looks great but this is the exception here this looks downright ugly. The final two stages are in a first person perspective where you've just blown up the Death Star and you're escaping the blast from the core not only does this look weird but it is really tough and really frustrating. Again thankfully there is a password system here though. Anyway yeah Super Star Wars is tough to get into but eventually gets better the further you progress Super Empire Strikes Back is difficult but a lot more accessible and Super Return of the Jedi is arguably the best of the three because it feels a lot more balanced. It's just a bummer about the other game modes you have to deal with but yeah it's always a challenge to write about games that have such a steep difficulty curve because it's easy to dismiss them as bad or broken. Especially since certain NES games for example could be categorized as that off hand like Silver Surfer or X-Men. With stuff like the Super Star Wars games it's like there's a good game buried in there somewhere you just have to dig to find it and personally I think there's less digging in Super Return of the Jedi so I'd call that one the best of the bunch and digging in this case doesn't necessarily mean grinding until your thumbs turn to mush it just means understanding how the game wants you to play and making adjustments accordingly. Now I understand if you don't want to deal with blind jumps onto moving platforms like in the first game that's frustrating in the wrong kind of way but Super Empire Strikes Back and Super Return of the Jedi are definitely worth checking out today and even if you're willing to slog past the first couple levels of Super Star Wars that one eventually gets pretty good too.