Star Wars The Arcade Game
February 1st, 2008 brettw06
While indulging myself in A Galaxy Far, Far, Away……through Star Wars the Arcade Game, I couldn’t help but think…Playing this game reminds me of the classic Greek tale of Icarus rolling the large stone ball up the hill. As I played the game and found myself blowing up Tie Fighters and towers on the Death Star, I did find it amusing to “stick it” to Darth Vader and the Empire, but after the fourth time of blowing up the Death Star I was beginning to lose all sense of hope (unlike the rebel alliance) as it seemed that like Icarus, I had the ball up the hill only to have it tumble back down upon me. After blowing up Death Star number five I thought, “Wow this Emperor has alot of funding!”
Not to bash this game as it is a classic in its own right paving the way for most arcade shooters using the recticle system such as “Run N’ Gun”, “T2: The Arcade Game”, and countless others. But I guess as an achiever, I would like maybe some change in what appears on screen, since the Star Wars story is a pop culture icon. However I realized that most players at the time of the release, saw this game as on the front line of technological advances as you sat in a sort of “cockpit” and felt like Luke Skywalker flying down the trench of the Death Star, “feeling the force flowing through them”. So in reality most gamers who played this game at its release didnt care if there wasn’t much change during the game, because it was innovative and new in their eyes, as they gripped the flight sticks and fired the lasers. Most players probably didn’t make it past the first and second levels anyway to notice the miniscule changes.
Entry Filed under: Game Log
1 Comment
1. asgoodwin | February 1st, 2008 at 10:02 pm
I think it’s actually Sisyphus who rolled the stone - Icarus was the one with wax wings who flew too close to the sun.
I completely know what you mean, though, and I think that’s a really good metaphor for a lot of these early games. I’m not a huge fan of pacman, as I mentioned in class, and I think this sense is part of the reason. I don’t particularly like the game plan and the urgency of running around, and if you succeed and get to the next level, what do you get? More of the same.
I think this also goes along with why I tend to be drawn to RPGs, or games with some plot be it narrative or emergent (but there). I like to feel like the progression means something, not just a step closer to a level that goes too fast for me to finish.
A lot of early games suffered from Sisyphus-syndrome due to lack of ability to save, too. I remember with the original Super Mario game, if you turned it off you lost your progress. That led to long periods of the game being on overnight or during dinner and such, but we definitely got more familiar with those early episodes than we wanted to just to get back partway up the “hill” to the later levels.