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"Gold Leader, this is Red 5. I'm going in!" In the Summer of 1983, I fed probably $300 in change into this Atari arcade game (the upright model) at a Waterville, Maine pizza parlor. That was the Summer after my last year of High School, and I was working at a paper mill to make money for Art School. In the evenings, I would meet up with a few of my friends for pizza and
Star Wars. If I recall correctly, this same restaurant also had the
Astron Belt laserdisc game (with the
Message from Space movie footage) for a while, but that one was infuriatingly difficult to play.
Star Wars, on the other hand, was so damned much fun, with its colorful vector graphics, John Williams themes and soundbites from the movie. If I recall correctly, we all got pretty good at it (the owner must have had it set on "easy" mode!), and spent hours at that joint eating mediocre pie and pumping quarters into the game. Considering how few other customers I can recall ever seeing in there, I suspect we were keeping the place in business all by ourselves....
I remember crashing into those pillars shown in the second screen shot! It was in the seated version which added a unique visceral quality to the experience. I had never played a seated game before, and with the movies fresh in my mind it was easy to imagine I was a Jedi flying an X-Wing. But probably to ensure a faster quarter turnover I think our arcade had the difficulty set to hard because, although I never had a lot of quarters in those days, I remember crashing a lot.
ReplyDeleteMan did I pump a lot of quarters into this game. I still remember the feel and responsiveness of the flight yoke and the feeling of being in tune with the Force when flying down the trench. I had the pleasure of experiencing the sit-down model, if memory serves, at the mall in Natchez, MS. It was much more satisfying than the stand-up version. This is one of those games that made going to the arcade truly great. Thanks for the post.
ReplyDeleteWow... that was one of my favorite games, EVAR, and still is... I loved vector graphics over pixel graphics back in the day.
ReplyDeleteI played "Space Wars", perhaps the first coin-op vector game, when I was about 12 or 13 years old, at a campground at Hershey, PA. I'd never seen anything like it and I was utterly entranced. (This would be 1977-1978 or so.)
Not only was it fun to play, both versions of the Star Wars arcade game had really kick-butt cabinet art, too. The local fun park (Pirate's Cove) in my hometown of Bradenton, Florida had both the standup Star Wars and Astron Belt game as well.
ReplyDeleteI remember reading a story about the Lucasfilm computer division (later to be Pixar) having that sit down version. Someone in the computer division had modded it with an add on switch labeled "the force." It made it give unlimited lives & shields or something.
ReplyDeleteSpielberg played it once, then ordered one himself....he later asked "where's the force switch?" His had come from the factory....
One of the greatest arcade games ever made. I'm not sure what else needs to be said.
ReplyDeleteIn 83-84 my dad was in a Friday night bowling league. I would tag along and he would give me a few bucks to go play games at the nearby arcade. The Star Wars game at the arcade always had a line. Then they put one in at the bowling alley and no one played it except me. I got good it and was able to stretch those quarters. I never really saw the side cabinet art before because the one at the bowling alley was wedged in between Galaga and Burger Time.
ReplyDeleteThe best thing about tech school was I found a bowling alley that had the sit-down version. Spent a good portion of every weekend there feeding quarters to this thing.
ReplyDeleteAlso remember doing a lot of Astron Belt back in the day.
Even before those, there was some sort of jet fighter game in the local arcade with a chair that swiveled back and forth and a large curved screen with your targets projected onto it. When you shot the targets they flipped to a picture of an explosion and the sound effects rattled the whole thing. In my mind, I wasn't shooting pictures of jets but rather mowing down TIE fighters from the gun turret of the Millennium Falcon.