The MAG Segment: Give me some history! Star Wars, Part 1

I have the Star Wars brain. I caught it when I was two and a half at a drive in theater. I'm pretty sure the windows were rolled down (cause that's what you did at a drive-in theater) that allowed whatever musical tones and special effects to become lodged within my head, permanently. I've have come to grips to this after I discovered it was called "being a Star Wars fan." It has afflicted me, for good and for bad, ever since. It was just a matter of time before I started gushing about games in the Star Wars universe.

So a long time ago, in a cultural far, far away...STAR WARS!!! 1977. The first blockbuster movie, so called because lines went around the block. It was amazing, fantastic, everything that was missing from a good summer movie. Maybe. Who knows. I'm not here to talk about movies but about the merchandising from movies. And of course, in particular, about board games that had the Star Wars license on it.

I started researching the games that have come out since 1977 and found a lot. Instead of the one post, this will turn into a five part post: The Original Trilogy; West End Games; Special Edition; The Dark Years (Prequels); and the Golden Years. This first post will cover the table top games released between 1977 and 1994. Strap yourself in, we're going to make the jump into hyperspace, right after the jump.

The Original Trilogy

Star Wars: A New board game?

Star Wars exploded onto the scene in the late spring of 1977. Three board games came out shortly thereafter. Those three games were:

These three games were published by Kenner save for Adventures of R2-D2 which had help from Parker Brothers as well. Notice the interesting grammar. That was the names, my grammar did not fail me again...for the last time.

Of these, Destroy Death Star seemed to have the best mechanic. As a player, you take control of a squadron of X-wings and your goal is to fly down the trench and blow up the Death Star. You'd first have to orbit the Death Star twice and then hope to make the trench opening. This is all done via a spinner, a very common random number generator of the day. This isn't a huge problem (but those who remember using spinners know that they don't last forever, or worse, don't really work right of the gate errr box). To add to the fun, maybe frustration, is the Death Star rotates as well. You could be going around the Death Star quite a while as you need an exact move count to enter the trench.

Adventures of R2-D2 seems like a knock off of Candyland, with a spinner instead of cards. The player takes control of one of four different colored R2-D2 cardboard pawns. Spin the arrow and then move to the next circle of that color the arrow landed on. Rinse and repeat until you are at the end. Had I had this game as a child instead of Candyland, I probably would have ate it up and kicked Candyland to the curb.

Escape from Death Star seems like exactly what the name says. You control either Luke and Leia or Han and Chewie as you flee from the trash compactor, run through corridors, disable the tractor beam, pick up the plans for the Death Star (I must have missed this part in the movie), get on the Millennium Falcon, fly through some TIE Fighter and finally *deeeep breath* make it to Yavin. All using a spinner and chance cards, or formally known as Force cards.

I never had an opportunity to play any of these. If I ever find these in some local thrift shop, I'll be sure to drop down the $5 for it and take them home where I can then do a proper homage.

The Empire Plays Again

1980 rolled up and probably dropped off the best of all the existing Star Wars films, The Empire Strikes Back. It was dark. The bad guys essentially won, Yoda. It had it all. It also had the one epic battle on the ice planet Hoth which we all have played, played, played, and played again on various incarnations of computer and video games (I would hazard to say the Atari 2600 version being the first). But before there were the bleeps and bloops, there was Hoth Ice Planet Adventure game which had a spinner. Yeah, all too common back then. And the music from the commercial, it was in every Kenner commercial and I can't listen to it any more. Well, if you add some dub-step to it, I might listen.

The goal of Hoth Ice Plaent Adventure is to defeat the "fearsome" enemies and then eventually confront and defeat Darth Vader. So you circle the board, collecting Force cards, then battling it out. Battling is via simple betting based on the number of Force cards you choose to use versus spinning. You do the same for each minor boss and the same with Darth Vader. This seems like an ok game. My major grip on this is the premise.

Your pawns are of the Millennium Falcon. You are collecting Force cards. Why are you collecting Force cards if you are the Falcon? The enemies that you have to defeat are the following: Snowtroopers; Probot (always thought this was a Probe droid); Boba Fett; AT-AT. Why the hell is Boba Fett on Hoth? You're trying to take down Darth Vader. On Hoth. Yeah, no. I feel like the game designer was handed all those things and was told to make a game.

After the Hoth adventure came the Yoda The Jedi Master game in 1981. Can you guess how you move around the board? Yep, that spinner. The game, as stated by the stats on BoardGameGeek.com, say this is a kids game, much like the Adventure of R2-D2. Maybe an older-ish child. Your cardboard pawn is of Luke Skywalker (in his Tatooine outfit??) and your goal is to make him a Jedi Knight. By spinning. Yoda would not be impressed.

The final game that seemed to have come out in the Empire Strikes Back time frame was Star Wars Ultimate Space Adventure, circa 1982. First, I need to say that this is not ultimate or has any adventure. It is in space. One out of three ain't bad. Wait, it is. This is another game where you have to orbit with your starfighter pawn around something, two planets in this case. And can you imagine, you move via spinning a spinner? Yeah, I know. Pretty forward thinking. There is actually two, one for the players and another for the Imperial, or Darth Vader.

The ultimate (oh, wait there it is) goal is to escape Hoth and make it to Dantooine, just like in the movie, being chased by Darth Vader in his TIE Advanced. Maybe that was in the first draft of the script. Yeah, I'll go with that. It does really seem the three games in the Empire era were really a cash grab but this is speculation. Given how these three games are, it must not be very far from the truth. It has always been one of my peeves about staying somewhat close to the source material. Be creative with what's available.

Return of the Money

Return of the Jedi splashed down in 1983 and the Ewoks took over. While they are not on the level of Jar Jar Binks, it was more implausible that they could take out the Empire on Endor than what the Gungans did on Naboo. Three games were released in the same year, two of which were clearly aimed at the kids (I'm sure I was in the bracket being 7/8 and all at the time). Parker Brothers/Funburst put out Return of the Jedi: Wicket the Ewok and Return of the Jedi: Ewoks Save the Trees. Then Parker Brothers, by themselves, did Return of the Jedi: Battle at Sarlacc's Pit.

Wicket the Ewok. I can't find much information about this one other than the game board is on a circular track and the goal is to collect food stuff at various points on the board. How this is done is unclear. There is no sign of a spinner included (which would be a first for the Parker Brother games). There are some movement tokens included which kind of leads me to believe that based on the type of movement token you are using, you move whatever speed it is for your turn. If anybody has any additional information on this one, please send it on.

The trees need a saving with Ewoks Save the Trees. The Phlogs are there for the trees and the Ewoks are all that are there to save them all. The game is very much like Candyland where you move based on a color. Instead of a spinner or cards (like in Candyland) there is a dial. You turn this dial and then move based on that color. I'm not sure how this dial works though. I suspect some turning is involved. I'll just call it that. One cool feature of this game is a pop-up board. Yes, the game board goes 3D. The Flip the Table podcast crew seemed fairly impressed with that feature. Give a listen to their podcast to get their point of view on the vintage game.

The final game from the original trilogy (as of 1983) was Battle for the Sarlacc's Pit. I think I'll just be lazy and point you to the play-through that the Beer and Board games crew did last year. They tend to be a little NSFW but are always amusing (and have several seasons. You'll see them again here).

Conclusion

That was a total of nine board games released between the three original trilogy movies around the same time as the movies. You got to have tie ins board games or you're doing something wrong. As with licensed games, they were merely feeding the coffers of George Lucas. Destroy Death Star seemed to be the only game that offered anything unique. Too many of them were just Candyland clones, namely aimed for kids, the ones that ask their parents once every five seconds until they got what they wanted.

It was a sad time but it was all there was. I never played any of these games though I have vague recollections of the Sarlacc's Pit. I'd actually enjoy trying to play all these games and give a more thorough review.

Next time on "Give me some history!" I'll continue on to a period where West End games picks up a license and tries to be all tactical about it. And there were D6 dice involved, too.