Label: Domark
Author: Vector Grafix
Price: £9.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Graham Taylor
Star Wars, the Spectrum edition is the first of a trilogy of coin-op conversions from Domark.
In principle this is good. In fact if you look at the screen shots that advertise the the game you may notice that there is almost no visual difference between the Spectrum and the ST versions.
The reason is the coin-op uses vector graphics - the graphics are for a coin-op primitive - but they're very, very fast!
The things that are wrong with Star Wars the Spectrum version are not technical.
Technically the 3D vector graphics are at least as fast and impressive as those on the excellent Starglider. Not only that, but the colour appears virtually attribute-clash free. Awesome. But...
Imagine playing a fast shoot'em-up in complete silence. Not a bleep or buzz or pathetic whine. No dramatic explosions, no nothing. Imagine blasting things to bits without a single noise to register a hit. Nothing.
The reason for all this silence is technical. It seems that using the 48K sound slowed the game up so much that Domark felt it would be too slow to play.
Perhaps so, but this problem only arises on the 48K mode and any 128K music would be absolutely fine. Problem solved? Well, no there isn't a special 128K version. For reasons best known to itself there is no 128K music and so no way of escaping the silence. This decision by Domark is, how can I put this, a serious mistake!
I found playing the game in silence very off-putting. It almost put me off the game.
Star Wars is three games in one. It's based, like the coin-op, on three scenes from the original film. These are: flying in space blowing things up, flying over the planet blowing things up whilst dodging towers and then flying down the channel trying to survive long enough to reach an exhaust port which will, as in the film, blow the Death Star to bits.
In game terms this translates into lots of vector stuff, a nice illusion of hurtling at great speed and mucho zapping.
Difficulty level translates into the 'select your Death Star' option in the opening screens.
Choose the easy level and you get to miss the 'dodging the towers' bit entirely, the mighty Empire forces are about as threatening to your health as a small boil and rush towards your gunsights saying 'kill me! kill me!' if you get through all the sections of the game and obliterate the Death Star you move on to the next, more heavily defended, one - the equivalent of selecting a higher level of difficulty on the opening screen.
If you play at the easiest level you will almost certainly make it through to the last section of the game. This is good in that you can see all the sections of the game but bad in that it's a bit too easy for my taste. At later levels it's quite challenging but not completely impossible.
If you can live without any sound, in almost all other respects this is a mighty conversion and faithfully recreates the coin-op.
At £9.95, though, Domark isn't doing anyone any favours.
If you don't know the plot of this one, you must have been buried up to your neck in sand on Tattooine for the last ten years. This is the game of the great science-fiction action adventure of all time, George Lucas's Star Wars, based on an Atari coin-op and converted surprisingly well to the Spectrum.
Taking as its scenario the last section of the movie, where Luke Skywalker attacks the giant Death Star space station in his X-Wing fighter, the game uses vector graphics to represent enemy TIE fighters, asteroids, and the Death Star itself. This could well have been a case of "May the farce be with you", but in fact the animation is impressively fast and smooth.
Having seen off the TIE fighters, steering your cross-hairs around the screen and blasting them to bits with your lasers, you have to manoeuvre between blasting laser towers then fly along the Death Star's trench to drop a bomb down its plughole.
With three skill levels to CQmplete, Star Wars isn't a difficult game to complete, but it's very well done and if you should add it to your collection.
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