How to play The Empire Strikes Back online
- Fly the snowspeeder: arrow keys (up, down, left and right). To slow down, change direction
- Fire missiles: Space bar
- Start a new game: F12 (the console’s Reset switch)
- Choose a game number (1–32): F11 (the console’s Select switch)
- Repair pad size: F4 (Player 1 difficulty; A is smaller, B larger). F9 does the same for Player 2
- Save and load your progress: Ctrl + 0–9 saves to a slot, Alt + 0–9 loads it
Gameplay
A column of up to five Walkers marches from left to right across a battlefield eight screens wide, heading for the Rebels’ power generator. Only one Walker fits on the screen at a time, so the radar band shows where all of them are. When the lead Walker reaches the right end of the radar, the generator blows up and the game ends. A warning sound and a flashing sky come just before.
Each Walker takes 48 hits to the body; shots at the legs do nothing. Every eight hits change its colour, from black through grey, blue, purple and red to yellow, and each stage makes it slower and less accurate. The quick way to kill one is to hit its bomb hatch, a flashing square that sometimes appears above or below the head or on the back.
Your speeder changes colour as it takes damage and can survive up to five hits, though it may explode sooner. Landing in a valley repairs it, twice per speeder. You start with five speeders and earn another for every 2,000 points. Survive for two minutes and the Force is with you: for 20 seconds the speeder flashes and nothing can hurt it.
| Action | Points |
|---|---|
| Hitting a Walker | 1 |
| Shooting down a Walker’s missile | 10 |
| Crashing into a Walker without destroying it | 25 |
| Destroying a Walker | 50 |
| Destroying a Walker through its bomb hatch | 100 |
| Shooting down a smart bomb | 100 |
Game variations
Games 1–16 are for one player and 17–32 for two players taking turns. They come in four groups of four, and within each group the Walkers get faster and shoot more often and more accurately:
- Games 1–4 / 17–20: the standard game
- Games 5–8 / 21–24: smart bombs, homing missiles that follow your speeder
- Games 9–12 / 25–28: solid Walkers, so flying into a body destroys your speeder (the legs are safe)
- Games 13–16 / 29–32: smart bombs and solid Walkers together
Tips
- Damage the lead Walker, but don’t kill it. A weakened leader slows down the whole column behind it.
- Do the same with the last Walker. Keeping it alive delays the arrival of new, tougher Walkers.
- Use the Force. While invulnerable, fly right up to a Walker and fire nonstop.
- Crash as a last resort. With solid Walkers, ramming one takes away three colour stages, and it destroys a Walker already weakened to purple or beyond.
History
Parker Brothers was best known for board games, and in 1982 this cartridge and its version of Frogger were its two best-selling video games. Reviews were mixed. Some praised the graphics and sound; the science fiction author Harlan Ellison dismissed it as a “shamelessly exploitative little toy”, partly because you can never win. An Intellivision version followed in 1983, where a Walker needs only 30 hits.
Similar games to play next
- Star Wars: Jedi Arena – Parker Brothers’ lightsaber duel
- Star Wars: Return of the Jedi – Death Star Battle – fly the Millennium Falcon against the second Death Star
- Star Wars: The Arcade Game – the 2600 version of Atari’s vector arcade game
- Defender – a side-scrolling shooter with a radar map of the whole battlefield