View source for Star Wars (1983 video game)

{{Short description|1983 vector-graphics arcade game by Atari}}
{{Infobox video game
| title = Star Wars
| developer = Atari, Inc.
| publisher = Atari, Inc.
| platforms = Arcade
| released = 1983
| genre = Rail shooter
| modes = Single-player
}}
'''''Star Wars''''' is a first-person rail shooter released as an arcade game by Atari in 1983. It is drawn in lines on a color vector monitor and re-creates the attack on the Death Star from the film of 1977, under a licence from Lucasfilm.<ref name="guynes">{{cite book |last1=Guynes |first1=S. |last2=Hassler-Forest |first2=D. |title=Star Wars and the History of Transmedia Storytelling |publisher=Amsterdam University Press |year=2018}}</ref> The 2022 memo of [[Molecular Reality Corporation]] lists a game called ''Star Wars'' as one of two three-dimensional inspirations for the planned game ''[[SARS Invaders]]''.

== Gameplay ==
The game has three connected phases. First the player's X-wing meets TIE fighters in open space and shoots them down, along with the fireballs they launch. Next the ship flies low over the surface of the Death Star, where towers fire at it. The last phase is the trench, ending at a small exhaust port; one shot there destroys the station, and the game begins again at a harder level with the score kept.<ref name="guynes" />

The ship has six shields. Every hit takes one away, and a hit after the last is gone ends the game. A player who destroys the Death Star by firing at the exhaust port alone, without shooting at anything in the trench, earns a bonus for "using the Force". A speech chip speaks lines from the film to the player.<ref name="guynes" />

== Hardware ==
Steering is by yoke, a wheel with two handles that the player pulls and pushes, with four buttons for the laser cannons. Atari built the game both as an upright cabinet and as a sit-down cockpit.<ref name="guynes" />

A vector monitor draws each line by steering the electron beam along it, and it has no grid of pixels. Atari had used the technology for ''Asteroids'' (1979) and for ''Tempest'' (1981). ''Star Wars'' used it for a three-dimensional scene, with wire-frame ships and towers that grow as they approach.

== Sequels and ports ==
Atari sold a conversion kit in 1985 that turned the cabinet into ''Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back''. Home versions of the first game were published by Parker Brothers, Domark and Broderbund.<ref name="guynes" />

== Influence on SARS Invaders ==
The memo ''[[Early Releases on Maxine's Quest]]'' gives the inspirations for ''SARS Invaders'' as "2d Galaga, Missile Command, Defender, and Megamania, 3d Star Raiders and Star Wars".<ref name="early">{{cite web |title=Early Releases on Maxine's Quest |publisher=Molecular Reality Corporation |year=2022}}</ref> The memo prints only the title, with no year or publisher. Atari's arcade game is the one that fits the rest of the list: it is three-dimensional, it dates from the same years, and Atari made most of the other games the memo names.{{Original research inline|date=October 2026}}

The memo's picture for the game, then called ''SARS Odyssey'', pairs virus particles with a wheel-shaped space station of the kind in the film ''2001: A Space Odyssey''. The same memo gives the style of another planned game, ''[[Poop of the Gods]]'', as "Tempest meets Qbert but with giant alien space-gods who poop". ''[[Tempest (video game)|Tempest]]'' (1981) is the other Atari vector game on the company's list.<ref name="early" /> ''SARS Invaders'' had not been released by October 2026.

== See also ==
* [[Star Raiders]]
* [[SARS Invaders]]
* [[Defender (1981 video game)|Defender]]

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

[[Category:1983 video games]]
[[Category:Atari games]]
[[Category:Arcade video games]]
[[Category:Rail shooters]]
[[Category:Star Wars video games]]