STAR WARS: Ever wonder why......

Black Matrix

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Hey all,
I was just reading a post about a guy wanting to trade a Star Wars cockpit for a Warrior game when I had an odd string of thoughts.

Bear with me:
1st. Star Wars was released in 1983 as a vector game in a 19" upright and 25" cockpit form, and I think I heard 2500 cockpits was manufactured, but only a fraction was sold leaving a surplus of CP cabs.

2nd. Return of the Jedi was Released in 1984 as a raster game in a 19" inch UR and the surplus 25" SW cockpits but I think they only had a 19"raster montitor rather than a 25" raster monitor.

3rd. Empire Strikes Back is Released in 1985 as a kit form to reinvigorate the surviving Star Wars cabs that were apparently still popular enough to warrant a kit even though the experiment that was vectors were quintessentially considered a failure due to the problematic vector monitors.

Here's my thoughts.
1. Why was Return of the Jedi released before The Empire Strikes Back. I know ROTJ had dropped a year earlier, but assuming the nerd fan programmers at Atari had already seen all 3 movies, wouldn't they have picked ESB as it is generally considered the best of the 3. Plus, it would have increased the likelihood that 3 games would ultimately be produced.

2. Why was ROTJ (Jedi) designed in a Raster format and put in an odd aspect ratio that imitates Zaxxon. I know Zaxxon was popular in its day(1982), but I can't believe the earnings figures for Zaxxon would have been anywhere near Star Wars. And Atari should have known those figures unless they had their collected heads up their arse. So why not develop it in Vector and use those SW cabs they had laying about for another vector.

3. If they had good reason for both 1 and 2, then why would they have failed to use a 25" raster monitor in them as they were surely available. Considering Galaxian had already been the first game to offer a 25" color raster in it way back in 1979. Although, anyone that has a ROTJ with a 25" raster that they know is original is free to correct me. I can't say it didn't have one for sure. But if it didn't, why not go the extra distance to make the game special.

4. Assuming most game companies had a 1 year lead time for the planning and development of a game, why not wait to release the ESB (Empire) game in the surplus Star Wars cabs as a limited release dedicated unit. They surely knew that ESB was coming. Hell, it should have come first. So why not wait.

5. Since ESB was only released in a Kit upgrade, it was never dedicated. The kit included the marque translite overlay. Why did Atari never offer a silk screened marquee for ESB. I am sure many of the cockpit owners would have wanted them. Maybe I have never seen them. Has anyone here ever seen an ESB glass marquee for the cockpit conversion.

I was mostly just curious. I know hindsight is 20/20, but it seems any self respecting nerd of the day could have pointed out these oversights and at great length probably in a off key high nasally pitch. I was mainly fascinated by the order of the title drop. And I am sure I will get a lot of speculation. If I was speculating, here's my best guess.

1. Atari got permission to license another SW title in 1983 when SW the arcade game was still hot and ROTJ the movie had just dropped. So they figured they would cash in.
2. Amplifone production was in the crapper with massive amounts of parts request for the "dead Red" flybacks since Atari had their wet wire issue with the flybacks. So Atari opted for a Raster design. However, between 1983 and 1984, I would still argue that either most of the SW arcade games were still working or ROTJ the arcade game may have originally been slated as a vector game. Why imitate Zaxxon? Hell if I know on that one. Galaga would have been a better choice,....or Xevious, or R-Type or Vangaurd OR..........
3. In 1984 the video game crash had all the companies scared for their life and Atari, just wanted to unload all the excess inventory in an half-assed attempt to save money.
4.Unless Atari was scared for its mortal life, I have know idea on this one unless, Atari had no plans of making an ESB game until after ROTJ (the arcade) dropped.
5. Atari felt that not enough cockpits dropped to warrant a silk screened glass marquee for those guys or figured most would opt to not convert the much nicer cockpits.

Of course all this is speculation as I really have no idea. I thought maybe some of you guy's would know for sure. Either way, my conclusion is as follows. ESB needs a glass marquee(I'm looking at you Rikitiki). Second, once that marquee has been produced, its a moral imperative that some crazy Star Wars fan assemble all 3 cockpits in order each running a bright sharp 25" monitor. I know there's a psycho game collector out there for this one somewhere. You probably already own both the SW CP and ROTJ CP. Now you just have to swap in that 25" monitor you have in the corner into it. Might I suggest a nice K7000 with the narrow mount frame. That or pick up Takeman's new frame mounts he's working on. Hopefully he's doing 25" as well. And lastly, Star Wars and arcade fans alike are lucky as hell that Atari had the foresight to release its final vector title in 1985 even when the popularity of those games was waning. Admittedly, it may not have been AS GOOD as Star Wars, but it was still good, and it was better than ROTJ dammit! Thoughts comments and perplexities are now welcomed. And to anyone that may be offended either by the comments, tone, or suggestions of these statements, please consider that I have a head and chest cold and I may be slightly hopped up on codine cough suppressant....so there :p
 
ESB's marquee is made of the same material as Star Wars... it's an OVERLAY rather than an "underlay" or translite.
 
Here is my take on a couple of those questions....

What was ROTJ released first?
Answer: I answered it. Still trying to capitilize on ROTJ since it was a year old. ESB at this time was 4 years old. Looking back, I think we all can agree that ESB was the best of the bunch. For me, back then though, I actually liked ROTJ better. Maybe the same for the Atari staff?

Why was ROTJ raster?
Answer: Correct me if I'm wrong, but were Vector games being phased out in 1984 - don't remember too many vectors from that year... Maybe people were think that raster *looked better* than the vector graphics....

Why was the gameplay of ROTJ isometric?
Answer: I thought about this and maybe it was cause of hardware limitations back then?
Imagine Star Wars gameplay (first person) w/ raster graphics - could have it been done?

Why was ESB vector again?
Answer: Because ROTJ tanked at the arcades... Atari was still trying to make a profit from the license so... ESB was released.

This is all my opinion of course.....
 
Am I the only one who didn't realize ROTJ was released before ESB? It just seemed natural to me that would be what happened. I guess my mind is kinda blown to realize ESB was actually the last of the three. I am new to owning a Star Wars so bear with me ;)
 
Here's my thought: None of these games were released with the homeowner/nerds point of view in mind. All the manufacturers were scrambling to put out a product that would make money (and nothing else) so looking at it from todays point of view is quite irrelevant
 
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Here is my take on a couple of those questions....

Why was the gameplay of ROTJ isometric?
Answer: I thought about this and maybe it was cause of hardware limitations back then?
Imagine Star Wars gameplay (first person) w/ raster graphics - could have it been done?

This is all my opinion of course.....

The only thing that makes sense to me is that Star Wars (as with most of the Vectors) are as close to 3-d as you can get. Zaxxon is a pseudo3-D or 2.5D game from 82. It would be cheaper and easier to copy than to make another Star Wars game. Maybe the monitor thing had something to do with it, but I think it was just plain laziness even though it does look much better than Zaxxon. Think about this. Blaster is a 2d first person shooter made in 83 and Space Harrier is a first person shooter in 85. Pole position 1and 2 came out 82 and 83 respectively. I think if Atari had opted to do a head on first person shooter style game, it would have been interesting even if it was more evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Just some thoughts. And mostly just opinions at that.
 
You make it sound like RotJ was a bad choice at the time. That's one of my favorite games. ESB, not so much. The view worked for me. Looked better than games like Sapce Harrier. I also always figured the release had to do with the movie being newer.

Hector
 
Am I the only one who didn't realize ROTJ was released before ESB? It just seemed natural to me that would be what happened. I guess my mind is kinda blown to realize ESB was actually the last of the three. I am new to owning a Star Wars so bear with me ;)

I'm worse than you... I didn't know it was ever released until I started collecting in around 2004. Never played an actual kit to this day -have only played it in MAME.

Played a ton of the original Star Wars and ROTJ... None of the arcades, deli's, convenience stores, etc ever got an ESB. Kind of crazy. The only other Atari vector I don't distinctly remember playing on location is Quantum.
 
I wouldn't say irrelevant. I simply thought someone that was more knowledgeable than myself would know how the actual history played out on the time line. Or maybe some of those ex Atari programming guru's might remember how all this played out. Like SuperGunGuru, I too was quite perplexed by the order and was mostly wondering how and why it all happened that way. Even if its purely anecdotal to share with your own nerd buddies when they are visiting the game room. But even if Atari was scrambling to put out money makers, surely they should have realized the real possibility that ROTJ would not be as well accepted as the SW before it. They surely had their reasons. Just wondering what those reasons were. And I think your word scrambling sums it up pretty well. They hastily put out a project to make as much money ASAP. But you get what you pay for. Don't take the time to build a suitable product and no one will buy it or play it. These are the tragic lessons that all gaming companies have been learning and relearning ever since. But I'm still not ruling out that they were too lazy to do it right. ;)
Here's my thought: None of these games were released with the homeowner/nerds point of view in mind. All the manufacturers were scrambling to put out a product that would make money so looking at it from todays point of view is quite irrelevant
 
I'm probably one of the 'few' that actually liked ROTJ (game) Bitd. It is still on the bottom tier for me as the series goes.

I think the real detriment to the game was the control scheme w/ the isometric view. I know it took me awhile back then to get used to it. Can't imagine how it was back then.

Since ESB used the same cabs and identical hardware to Star Wars... well.... you get the third game being a vector again.

*Didn't realize there was people on here that didn't know the order of release... Understandable though. I saw ESB in the arcades only a couple of times, and the first was in cockpit form, at a pizza place by me.
 
I'm not saying that it was a bad choice. If they wanted to make a game franchise movie close to the release of the movie, and you had just released Star Wars (the game) the same year Jedi the movie came out, then picking Jedi might have been an obvious choice at the time. But considering what a huge hit the first game was, why not follow the same formula. As for the game play, never owned a ROTJ. I have played once or twice in my life. It does follow an episodic formula that all the games shared. But why in the hell would you have the player fly back out of the Death Star with the controls reversed ala "goofy foot" style unless you just wanted to drink whatever ships they had left. I think to call it challenging would be a huge understatement. The word quarter muncher comes to mind. Can't recall if it had a continue. Again, I think it could have been much more popular if it used some hybrid vertical/horizontal scrolling shoot em up style with Xevius style backgrounds over the 2.5D they went with. Although, Vanguard (1 and maybe 2) is the only game(s) that I recall kind of like that a the time. And if I played it more, maybe it would grow to be one of my favorites. Who knows.

You make it sound like RotJ was a bad choice at the time. That's one of my favorite games. ESB, not so much. The view worked for me. Looked better than games like Sapce Harrier. I also always figured the release had to do with the movie being newer.

Hector
 
Well, I'll be damned. I think I may have just figured out the obvious answer as to why ROTJ is nothing like Star Wars. Firefox released in 1984. I had forgotten that in the demo of Firefox, the team that is given credit is IIRC Roy Osborne and the Star Wars design team or something like that. If Firefox was a project that was already in development when ROTJ was greenlit, Atari had already payed for the licensing of Firefox. It would have lost money to have either shelved Firefox or pulled the team off Firefox to work on ROTJ or delayed ROTJ. So they handed it off to some other designers. And they did the best they could. So maybe, the true evolution of Star Wars goes: Star Wars, Firefox, ESB. With ROTJ as the wacky cousin.

But just consider if Atari had decided to shelve the Firefox game, taken a bath on franchise rights, and used their progress on ESB. Then ESB could not only have been a Raster first person shooter. It might also have been a laserdisc game.

I can't say it would have been awesome, but I bet it would have been more popular than Firefox.

Of course, like most of this post, that's all wild speculation from a codeine addled mind.
 
ROTJ was a raster because good color graphics were what people wanted at the time, they wanted a movie or cartoon. Why do you think Dragon's Liar was so popular? People wanted realistic graphics because in video games there was no such thing at the time especially on their home systems if they had one.

ESB was released to try and make a few bucks and give operators a way to try and make some more money from their SW machines since they weren't the easiest to convert to something else.
 
But why in the hell would you have the player fly back out of the Death Star with the controls reversed ala "goofy foot" style unless you just wanted to drink whatever ships they had left. I think to call it challenging would be a huge understatement. The word quarter muncher comes to mind. Can't recall if it had a continue.

It's not that hard at all. Just takes a little getting used to. This was one of my games of choice BITD because I could last almost an hour on one quarter, something I didnt have very many of. I dont think there is a continue option. But it does have the standard Atari-choose your starting wave/level.

Here's my world record run on the game. Twin Galaxies never mentioned it so not too many people know about it.



Hector
 
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