SEGA CD

Star Wars: Rebel Assault

The trouble is, Sega CD doesn't have that much juice to begin with: Thanks to the system's slow disc access and limited color capabilities, this version of the Star Wars fighter ship never quite reaches light speed.

Bottom line: It's a decent enough game and it's good for showing off what your Sega CD can do, but if you want a knuckle-whitening challenge, try again.

Rebel Assault is actually one of the Sega CD games most worth owning. If you want a Star Wars game that sort of takes elements from each of the three original movies and combines them into one game, you will probably enjoy this. Just don't get too offended when it's Rookie One and Jake Farrell that stop Darth Vader and blow up the Death Star instead of Luke Skywalker and Han Solo.

Older fans (and they must be pretty old by now) may find the challenge worthwhile, but most everyone else will avoid this Assault like a rebel with a cause. Fans of the movies may find this game wistfully engaging, but fire up a tape in the VCR for a better experience.

Rebel Assault isn't for everyone, but it's still one of the best Sega CD games I've played. If you have money to burn, buy it - if not, give it a rental and see what you think.

This game had so much hype around it, it's almost sad that it came off so badly, particularly due to limitations of the Sega CD. The color palette is so poor in many scenes that you never know you're going to hit something until it's too late. The music is right from the movie, the voices are good and the cinemas are nice and lengthy, but alas, the color palette kills them. Hey, how about bringing this to the 3DO?

Star Wars Rebel Assault ends up being a fairly half baked game with some redeeming values that keep it from being a truly bad game. Star Wars fans might find more to enjoy in this title, with all the different characters and such, but other gamers might just find this is a messy and awkward game that just is not that much fun to play. Yoda once said "Do or do not, there is no try." That's how I feel about this game. Either make a good game that excels in gameplay, audio, and visuals, or just drop it. The force is really not with this one.

Finding Rebel Assault will be far more trouble than it's worth. Everything in here was done much better once actual 3-D gameplay, which is ultimately what all the computer renders here are trying to simulate, comes around. Rogue Squadron for the N64 is a good example of this, and seemingly rips off a few missions from this game, but with much better results. If you're really insistent on playing Rebel Assault, I'm pretty sure a version was released for the PC, and will almost certainly contain better graphics than the ones found here. Still, the only real chance for greatness with this game would be if there was a compelling new story, and likeable, emotional characters. Of course, the cheap way was to rehash the movie plots and slap in wooden dialogue and boring characters. And what have we learned about the corporate mindset? The cheap way always wins.

The steering controls are extremely unresponsive, and determining your position from the pixilated graphics is difficult. Rebel Assault could have gotten by on graphics alone in 1993, but it hasn't aged well. I didn't enjoy playing this at all.