Star Wars

The Good
The game is fast and furious, but also very forgiving compared to other platforms' versions. The collision detection system gives you enough time to shoot / evade enemy missiles and obstacles. I put it on the plus side, because I strongly believe that modern gamer's reflexes are not on par with the arcade junkies' from the 80s. Back then it was all about HI-Score, so games had to be difficult; today the developers aim more for complexity, and thus our reflexes are not trained enough for the old games. The DOS version of SW manages to provide just enough challenge to make the game compelling but not forbidding to the casual gamer. The other advantages are the same as in all the other ports of this arcade - simple yet crisp graphics, three different stages per each wave (shoot TIE-Fighters / shoot towers on the surface of the Death Star / navigate along the exhaust shaft avoiding barriers and missiles to finally blow up the station), and sheer addictiveness.

The Bad
The sound department is virtually non-existent. The PC Speaker bleeps don't resemble the laser shots from the movies, there is no music and no voices like in most other versions. Together with simple gfx, it amounts to the loss of feeling that you are Luke Skywalker on the run to save the Rebellion. You feel exactly like what you can see on the screen - a four wire-frame cannons firing at various wire-frame objects. The keyboard control is totally awkward - instead of cursor arrows you are forced to use Q & A for up and down, and O & P for left and right. Fortunately you can choose mouse by pressing F1 AFTER the game begins (not on the start screen, which is a tad confusing). Apart from that the game has no other faults, not accounting for the inevitable repetitiveness.

The Bottom Line
A little cool game to come back to every now and again. Best played under DOSBox at 1,500 CPU.