Star Wars

"At last! The most famous coin-op Arcade Game and one of the most successful films of our era come together in this Domark publication. Faithful to the original, the home computer version of STAR WARS® should win first place in any game players collection, and will always be the one you go back to time after time. The first scene is the Space Attack, with waves of hostile space-craft attacking your lonely but powerful ship. You battle to the Deathstar, and once there fly close to the ground in a daring attempt to blast the space towers and flying stars, steering your way through the barrage. Finally, you emerge in the trench, jumping and ducking the stretch barriers and shooting the missile emplacements fastened to each side of the death defying walls. There are many levels to the game with stirring music and speech synthesis* fast and furious action is guaranteed throughout."

Not a bad conversion for the C64, certain better than the Spectrum that didn't have any sound! The game controls fine although the framerate can get pretty low when the screen gets busy. There are three stages to play through and the game loops round after defeating the Deathstar at a high difficulty level. I'm not sure how many levels the game has but it is endless.

There are a few oddities with the C64 game though in that in the early levels there doesnt seem to be enough towers to destroy to receive the bonus and later, there are extra towers after reaching the bonus. I don't recall it working this way in the Spectrum game. Also, the spectrum game says to use the force during the trench run. The C64 game does not and initially I thought this mechanic was missing. I show this on wave 10 where you are not allowed to fire at anything and only shooting the torpedoes at the right moment will in fact award the bonus.