Star Wars: Rebel Assault

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Description

Star Wars: Rebel Assault is an arcade flight/shooting game based on the original Star Wars trilogy. Players control Rebel recruit Rookie One (who can be set to have either a male or female voice) in combat against the Empire. Story events (which don't follow the films to the letter but instead offer their own interpretation and characters) include Rookie One's basic training, an Imperial assault on Tatooine, the battle of Hoth from The Empire Strikes Back and the Death Star battle from A New Hope. Players will control four different Star Wars craft: Skyhoppers, A-Wings, X-Wings, and Snowspeeders.

The game's fifteen levels encompass navigating canyons, caves, and asteroid fields, battles against TIE Fighters in space, attacks against a Star Destroyer and an Imperial Walker, a battle on foot against stormtroopers, and the famous Death Star trench run. There are three different types of flight sequences: seen from either behind the own craft, from an overhead perspective, or from a first-person cockpit view. All follow an 'on-rails' model, utilizing motion video backdrops displaying pre-rendered environments. The third-person levels allow some degree of free movement to dodge obstacles, while the first-person levels limit movement to a minimum, mostly requiring accurate shooting instead. Some levels offer a choice of branching paths. The on-foot level takes place on static screens, with Rookie One seen from behind, stormtroopers moving in from side corridors, and the player being able to take steps to the side to avoid enemy fire. The game features a password system - a password is given after every level in the console ports, but only after a group of levels in the PC version.

Screenshots

Promo Images

Trailer

Alternate Titles

• "מלחמת הכוכבים: מתקפת המורדים" -- Hebrew spelling

Part of the Following Groups

• Genre: Action - Trench run shooter
• LucasArts Classic / Collectors Series / Collection releases
• Star Wars licensees
• Star Wars: Rebel Assault series
• Visual technique / style: Digitized sprites
• White Label releases

User Reviews

A cool game, which fathered the video backdrop shooter sub-genre	DOS	Mickey Gabel (379)
Technologically impressive.	DOS	Trixter (9116)
Good old video-action games, can't beat 'em can you...	DOS	Quackbal (51)

Critic Reviews

PC Games (Germany)	DOS	Jan, 1994	91 out of 100	91
Power Play	DOS	Dec, 1993	87 out of 100	87
Mega Force	SEGA CD	Sep, 1994	83 out of 100	83
Power Unlimited	DOS	Mar, 1994	8 out of 10	80
Mega Fun	3DO	Jul, 1995	79 out of 100	79
Entertainment Weekly	SEGA CD	Jul 15, 1994	B	75
Game Players	SEGA CD	Aug, 1994	72 out of 100	72
Svenska Hemdatornytt	DOS	Feb, 1994		67
Score	DOS	Apr, 1994	50 out of 100	50
Just Games Retro	SEGA CD	Jun 13, 2004		40

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Trivia

3DO ratings

While the US release of the game had a 3DO rating of 12, the Japanese version was rated E.

Technology

One nice touch about the video background is that it is larger than the screen. This allowed the developers to shift it up/down/left/right according to player movement, and it helps mask the fact that it's on rails. Another nice trick is a very quick interpolation and rotation section of the video playback code, which allows them to rotate the backdrop +/- 15 degrees if you bank left or right.

Awards

• GameStar (Germany)
  • Issue 12/1999 - #16 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking
  • Issue 01/2007 - One of the "Ten Most Influential PC-Games" (It is almost solely responsible for the fast establishing of CD-ROM drives for PC games. This allowed other developers to free themselves from space restrictions and experiment with new ideas, e.g. FMV sequences.)
• FLUX
  • Issue #4 - #5 on the "Top 25 Worst Video Games of All-Time" list
• Power Play
  • Issue 02/1994 – Best CD-ROM Game in 1993

Information also contributed by Big John WV