Star Wars

The Good
I used to play this game back in my younger days, when I'd boot this up at DOS's launch (ah, the DOS booter days...a lot of people missed out on an era). And it was pretty good fun. Not a patch on the X-Wing series, of course, but it was a simpler version of Rebel Assault.

Game controls are pretty reasonable. It's best with a joystick or mouse, but still possible with a keyboard. Most of the game play revolves around dodging/shooting enemy fireballs shot out of TIE Fighters (?) and Darth Vader's TIE Advanced (??), lest they sap away your shields and kill you. And there aren't any continues (at least, not that I can remember), so staying alive is nice if you want to rack up a good high score. If you survive the approach to and the surface of the Death Star (though you don't have to worry about the second sequence on easier difficulty levels), you've got the trench run, with is probably the most difficult section of the whole game - it usually doesn't get too insane until the higher difficulty levels though.

Actually, the game is pretty reasonable on the difficulty scale. It's a reflex based game, but if they are up to snuff then you really shouldn't be having any problems until level 7 or 9.

Also the graphics are pretty decent, using a very fast wireframe vector system. The colors are CGA-only, but you have enough to work with so that everything is legible. The designs on the models are simple, but nice.

The Bad
The sound on this game isn't anything to write home about. It's PC Speaker, but not quite ear-grating as some soundtracks of that type can be. It would have been nice to have some Adlib support, though, which would have been possible around this time. FM modulation would have been a nice bonus.

But it's a minor point, it doesn't really detract from the game too much.

The Bottom Line
It was a fun game, and I'd still play it if I had a 5.25" floppy drive laying around. Still, if you have a copy floating around on your hard drive and a copy of DOSBox, give it a spin.