The Star Wars franchise has become as well-known as the old-fashioned book. I, myself, have never been overly excited about the movies and, as such, went on with other things.

However, this was an old SNES game that I received from a friend of mine on no important occasion. It wasn't new. Of course, I was excited, as I had bought the Super Nintendo not too long ago, and went on to play it.

My memories of playing it back then may be very vague, but after recalling the event and playing the excellent online game Star Wars Galaxies (a game I'll review in the future), I hooked up my good-conditioned (surprisingly) SNES and put it in. This entire Review is based on my recent playing of the game.

As you might have guessed, there is also a Super Star Wars: A New Hope and a Super Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, which I have never played. This game (as some of you might have guessed) is rated E, for something you'll probably see in almost every game, violence.

Since there is nothing really big that I can use from this game as a rating scale, I shall now use a rating scale what shall appear in every Review from now on forth: 1-5.

Story: 1

As this is a game version of The Empire Strikes Back, you should not be expecting an original story. Please note that my Reviews are on how good the story is and most importantly (definitely most important of all), the originality. If you are basing it on something, at least add something new to it!

You control the not-so-original Luke Skywalker in his battles against the not-so-original Darth Vader. If the rest was something good and new all-together, I would have given this a better rating. While some things weren't in the movie, they still don't make sense in the game's storyline.

All in all, watch the movie, you know the game. Don't watch the movie, the storyline is still pretty basic.
 

Graphics: 2.75

While I wasn't truly impressed by these graphics, they are pretty much mediocre. The lightsaber looks okay and the enemies look like creatures (or snow troopers), but I was not as visually impressed with these as I was with Donkey Kong Country 2.
 

Characters: 1

We all know Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. However, all the monsters except that ice beast from the beginning of the movie and the stormtroopers are a mystery. An ice hog, a green bat (the flying one, not the baseball one), a plant that shoots fire, a beaver/porcupine, a- what the?

Yoda only appears on the game over screen, and that is pretty much nothing the green man is worthy of. I think they should have put a little more work into the characters.
 

Theme: 1.5

*sigh* The entire Star Wars series is a space-based franchise, so why doesn't this get a good score?

It lacks the space theme.

Sure, you'll be traveling on Hoth (in places unknown to you) and the interior of buildings in Cloud City (the interior of buildings also unknown to you). It doesn't ever take place in the X-Wings or TIE Fighters Star Wars is known for. You just run around, lightsaber in hand, cutting people up who all want to kill you even if it's for no reason. Obviously this deserves a low score.

I am kind of being generous with the score, but it is kind of good in bringing back the places in The Empire Strikes Back. That's really it.
 

Sound: 4.5

And you thought it would be all low. I'm quite impressed with the animal grunts, the waterfalls, the lightsaber humming, and the blaster fire. I took off half a point because the lightsaber humming gets a tad bit annoying after a while.
 

Music: 4

Once again, another strong point to the game is here! Though I pledge my loyalty in music quality to the Final Fantasy Series, Mario Series, and Donkey Kong Country 2, for a SNES game, they did I nice recreation of the Imperial March and some other good tunes. My friend is more excited than me because he p;lays the French horn, and that is the main instrument in the songs.

Why'd I bring that up? I can clearly hear the French horn out of the pack, and it sounds good, very good. I took off a point because it's a little repetitive.
 

Scare Factor: Absolutely Nothing!

I think this is a meaningless section when reviewing this particular game, as you would not expect much from this game in Scare Factor. I never let loose a yelp in fright in my entire playing time of this. Does that lower how good it is? No, but let's wait until the other sections have said what is needed to be said.
 

Hankie Factor: What do you think? NO!

Also meaningless in the reviewing of this game, I am only using this here because it is a tradition for every game I review. Unless I feel sorry for the ugly creatures dieing, which I don't, no, it's not sad at all. Luke has a very unrealistic death. It looks like he slipped on a banana peel and was sent flying back several feet. I don't feel sorry for him because of that. It isn't even laughable.
 

Bosses and Enemies: 1.75

Why add enemies to this section? I feel that enemies aren't taken into account for how good a game is. After all, you'll be seeing a lot of them.

The bosses had hardly any work to them. They're so easy it isn't even laughable. The snow monster from the beginning of the movie looks like cardboard hands and a cardboard head plastered onto a wall. It doesn't even have a body. When you kill it, it looks like it just collapses off the wall like CARDBOARD. The probot (those floating droids) look like cardboard on an invisible stick being moved around. I know I'm bringing up the cardboard word a lot, but that's what they look like. CARDBOARD!!!

At least the enemies had a little work on them. If I could only figure out why some of them were attacking me...
 

Realism: 1

This is the last newly added section that's going to be in the rest of my Reviews, I promise!

Okay, Star Wars takes place in space in the midst of a war where you have lightsabers, which are plasma swords, to kill the enemy and there's a giant slug named Jabba the Hutt who's the leader of a criminal organization. Sounds realistic? I thought not...

If so, why'd I add this section? Even if these things are in this Star Wars universe, the characters have to have some realistic touches. I mean, they have to talk with other people and such.

Luke isn't very talkative. He only talks in a few scenes, and that's through a walkie talkie. Sometimes you wonder how he gets the information he has to get to people if he's that shy (in the movies, he is far from shy). The only thing that boosted this score was the fact that Luke is human (or at least looks human) and there are a few talking scenes, which is what happens in reality.
 

Humor: chilling 0

I kept a straight face throughout my entire playing of the game. There were no jokes whatsoever, or, at the least, none that I was aware of. Look here, I have watched plenty of comedies (ex: Shrek 2, Top Secret, Airplane, Hot Shots Part Deux, etc.) to understand plenty of jokes, and this had no joke whatsoever. Well, the only joke here is most of the game..
 

Difficulty: 4

The game collapses even further down the steep hill when we talk about difficulty...

Now, I have never played Super Star Wars: A New Hope and I don't plan to play Super Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. I think the game makers expected you to go and play A New Hope before The Empire Strikes Back. I think I now know why the Mario series was meant to be timeless.

All the Mario games start out easy and progress to harder levels. The Empire Strikes back starts out Downright Frustrating and goes up until it reaches unbearable. I can't stand to think how Return of the Jedi turned out.

Monsters swarm on you and attack you beneath your feet. Your blaster is practically weak, your life bar depletes too fast, and your lightsaber can't attack too high or too low, so those pesky rodents that attack your feet are hard to attack.

The worst part is, every time you move off-screen, the monsters respawn and attack you from behind. I was trying to fend off a miniature version of the ice monster (about a head taller than Luke), and suddenly, an ice monster I had killed a screen back leapt down and clawed me in the back, killing me. Was that funny? Was that okay? No, it was frustrating!

There are parts of the game where if you jump you will float up into a secret area with power-ups (most likely). However, if you jump just to avoid an attack because you're low on health and you're drawn up to this secret area, there are BOUND to be spikes, and you'll probably get yourself killed by the spikes because you won't know what is going on or notice the thin area to land yourself on. They could have made it so you double jumped to go up these areas. Besides, maybe that could be the only place to double jump, because you can't normally double jump.

Another hard thing: this game adds a feature which I hate. You get a limited number of game overs before you are given a password 'briefly'. Now, unlike Super Bomberman 2, these passwords are impossible to memorize by heart, and you will most likely not have paper and pencil standing by to jot it down. If you don't remember it, you'll have to start over. Makes me glad that now we have memory cards to store data so we can start from where we left off...

Most of the power-ups are pretty much useless, and just raise your score like in an arcade game.

Need I say more? It's difficult and downright frustrating!
 

Gameplay: 2

*sigh* Whenever you base a game on a franchise or such, you need to add something new to the franchise. This is just another hack and shoot game. All you do in this game is hack and shoot. You don't do anything else. Just to remind you, all you do is hack and shoot.

In Mario, you would do so much more. There were places to explore, more things to do. What message am I getting from this game? Hacking and shooting makes the world go round? It seems like it. This is dull, unimaginative, and boring.
 

Fun Factor: 1

You'll have fun the first 20 seconds of playing this game. The rest is pure madness and torture.
 

Replayability: haunting 0

If you manage to live to the day you beat this game, then you have practically no reason to go through the torture again. Nothing new, just the same dullness.
 

Overall: 1

The only good thing about this game is the sound and music. I think you get the message by now. The force is definitely NOT with Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. Add something new for once to the franchise, and make sure it has some quality. If they improved the difficulty and fun factor, it would have been pretty mediocre, but no, they made it almost impossible!

In a game, if it has a high difficulty rating, and I can't do something, I give the reader, the challenge.

*Challenge* *Challenge*

This game is practically unbeatable. If you can beat this game through one run, tell me so if you send a feedback. If you do it WITHOUT losing a single life, then I will hand down my gaming title (I am a pretty good gamer in my neighborhood) to the victor and I will toss this game out the window. It's that hard. So, if you manage to do one of those two things, tell me in a feedback form, and please tell me how it ends. I never had the patience and tolerance to go through with this to the end.

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