A playthrough of Sega's 1994 license-based 3D arcade shooter for the Sega 32X, Star Wars Arcade.
Played through the entire 32X mode in one-player mode.
Star Wars Arcade was an outstanding arcade title when it was originally released in 1993. Running on the powerful Sega Model 1 hardware - the same as games like Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter were using - it was a fully 3D space-combat action game with unbelievably smooth, clean, and fluid graphics. The game used events from all three movies of the original trilogy to form the stage objectives, Admiral Ackbar barks orders at you between levels, and you get to make lots of stuff explode. Great fun.
The Sega 32X version retains the large majority of what made the arcade game such a hit. Of course the graphics and sound have been pared waaaaay back from the arcade original, but you easily forget that once the game gets going. It plays almost identically to the original (just like the 32X Virtua Fighter port did to the arcade version) barring the differences in controllers, and it can throw up a lot of stuff on the screen without ever slowing down a bit. The amount of stuff that is going on on-screen can actually be quite disorienting at times, especially in the final Death Star stage, and it's amazing that the 32X pulls it off as well as it does.
The 32X version also features new stages, which are well worth playing once you've gotten your feet wet in the much shorter and somewhat easier arcade mode.
And you will need practice. Lots and lots of practice. Star Wars games have something of a reputation for being extraordinarily difficult (especially the ones from the 90s), and SWA is no different. The first couple of stages start out fairly easy, but there is a massive jump in difficulty every time you finish a full mission (comprised of 3 stages each), and you will want to cry by the time you near the end. It becomes bloodthirsty. I have been wanting to do a video of this forever, but it took forever to get good enough to finally get through it consistently. I played this on and off, heavily at times, over the course of a year before I finally got around to sitting down to do this recording, and I think I really did need the endless practice. If you play your games until you've mastered them, this one will keep you occupied for a very long time.
I really love Star Wars Arcade, but this is one of those rare occasions where I've got to say it was too hard for its own good. The game is a blast, but the difficulty level really tempered the enjoyment I got out of some of the more extreme stages. I 100% recommend the game to anyone with a 32X - it's one of the best games on the system - just do be warned that it doesn't give up its ending easily.
Star Wars Arcade for the 32X is a title that does a lot of impressive things, and shows us that the 32X was indeed a capable piece of hardware that could deliver experiences that were not possible before. It's an excellent game that capably brought the arcade experience home. I still wish that Sega had released an upgraded port for the Saturn or Dreamcast, though!
*Just a side note: the entire Star Wars theme during the game's intro sequence is a sampled recording. If I had included that here, the video would have been muted or blocked by KZfaq. In order to sidestep this, I replaced the game's theme song with a recording of taken from Star Wars: X-Wing (Dos PC game from 1993) playing on a Sound Blaster 16. The SB16 uses an OPL3 chip for FM synthesis, in case you were wondering why it sounds so similar to the music that plays in-game.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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