Star Wars – Return of the Jedi – Ewok Adventure

How to play Ewok Adventure online

• Dive and speed up: up arrow (joystick forward)
• Climb and slow down: down arrow (joystick back)
• Turn the glider clockwise or anticlockwise: left and right arrow keys
• Sling a rock: Space bar
• Start a new game: F12 (the console’s Reset switch)
• Save and load your progress: Ctrl + 0–9 saves to a slot, Alt + 0–9 loads it

Gameplay

The glider flies like a real one. Diving gains speed but loses height, and climbing does the opposite, so you are always trading one for the other. Large swirls on the ground are thermals: fly over one and you gain height without losing speed. Imperial speeder bikes, walkers and stormtroopers patrol the forest. You can throw rocks at them, but your supply is limited and shown at the bottom of the screen. If you fly over an enemy vehicle at exactly its height, you take it over. The shadows on the ground help you judge your altitude.

From level two onward, the glider needs explosives to blow up the bunker, which you collect from a friendly Ewok in the woods. A captured vehicle can destroy the bunker without them. From level three, your glider is hard to control until you fly over another Ewok. Clear the sixth level and each new level greets you with the words “Tribe Member”. The game has no music: Gelberg said the graphics took up so much of the 8K cartridge that there was no room left for tunes. His initials are hidden somewhere in the game as an Easter egg.

Why it was never released

Gelberg wanted realistic hang-glider controls. Parker Brothers’ marketing people wanted a simpler mode where the Ewok just goes in the direction the joystick points. He refused, and in his own words, they “ultimately killed the game”. A prototype box exists. The ROM reached collectors in 1997, through a friend whose father had worked at Parker Brothers. A PAL copy followed in 2001, and another NTSC prototype later turned up in a thrift shop near Boston.

Expect the controls to feel backwards at first. Once diving for speed and climbing on thermals makes sense, you can see what Gelberg was aiming for.