"Not to be confused with the non-super return."

I remember being quite fond of all three games in the “Super Star Wars” series when the Super Nintendo was still the latest and greatest. After-all, even to this day my favorite genre remains the 2D platformer. Because of this, it was especially jarring to pull “Super Star Wars: Return of the Jedi” out of my retro shelf only to find out my childhood memories were about to be shattered.

It’s amazing how much better games can appear through the rose-tinted glasses of our memories. Eight-year-old Jesse would like me to believe that Return of the Jedi is a flawless platformer on par with other greats in the genre. Eight-year-old Jesse is a filthy liar.

Maybe it was the fact that I was obsessed with Star Wars at the time, satisfied that I no longer had to use my imagination (coupled with some Star Wars action figures) like a sucker to “play” in that universe. Maybe it was the fact that, when you’re eight, even renting a game is a huge financial ordeal that forces you to latch on to the precious game that your money brought home. Either way, the only thing that could save this game from present-day Jesse was nostalgia, and frankly that just wasn’t enough.

One of my biggest problems with this game is the play-control. Jumping, one of the most important actions a platformer can have (unless you’re Bionic Commando), feels terrible. If you want to perform a full jump, naturally you’re going to be holding down the jump button. Unfortunately, it’s “all too easy” to perform additional unwanted jumps, especially if you’re jumping to an especially high ledge. The game features a double jump, but half the time the game decided to count my first jump as the second… just to mess with me.

The controls for using a blaster are based on the order in which you press the buttons. If you hit forward on the d-pad before hitting the fire button, you’re set to “run and gun”. But if you shoot before hitting forward, you will stand in place and the d-pad will be used solely to aim your weapon. This all sounds fine in theory, but I found myself in many sticky situations where I would want to run away and accidentally be stuck standing in place instead. I would have rather seen the “L” and “R” buttons used to aim diagonally up and down like in “Super Metroid”.

But alas, they needed those two buttons to make up for another one of the game’s flaws. The game features some poorly executed level design peppered throughout certain areas resulting in blind jumps. Or at least the jumps would be blind if you couldn’t use the shoulder buttons to look up and down.

In spite of all these shortcomings, I wouldn’t have as much of a problem dealing with them if they weren’t combined with atrocious hit detection. I often wondered if Luke had some sort of symbiotic link with his lightsaber, as it seemed to take damage with me in some instances. There were a few unfortunate checkpoint locations that resulted in me sustaining seemingly random damage from enemies who entertained the thought of attacking me before my next attempt to take down the current stage’s boss.

Even though this game effectively crapped all over my childhood memories, it isn’t without its good aspects. There are a variety of characters to choose from as the game progresses. Each of them has at least one key ability that sets them apart from the others and it’s nice to be able to approach the levels with different strategies, though Luke can no longer toggle between the blaster and lightsaber as he could in the past two games.

The graphics are nice for the most part. There are a few clever uses of mode 7 in both the game’s opening cinematic and the obligatory vehicle levels. Each of the famous characters are easily recognizable and there is enough variety in the enemies and backgrounds to at least keep things interesting. It’s also a treat to hear SPC renditions of the classic tunes from the movie.

The vehicle levels are very “hit or miss”. Strangely enough, the game actually starts out with a level involving the drive to Jabba’s palace. And by that I mean the drive to a random location eight-hundred miles away from Jabba’s palace (get walking!). There are a couple levels where you take control of the Millennium Falcon and take down a set number of Tie Fighters. These levels were actually mildly fun.

Two of the vehicle levels, however, I found to be incredibly annoying. The speeder bike scene through Endor in which you have to wait for Scout Troopers to fly in front of you so can shoot them from behind, and the escape from the second death star. Just as the game started with a vehicle level, it ends with one. From inside the cockpit without so much as a reticule, you must not only dodge, but rotate the axis of the ship through narrow pathways. Hitting “SELECT” during this level will toggle the option at the top of the screen between “real” and “flat”. Through no fault of the options’ names, I found this just swapped the strafing and tilting buttons. Even eight-year-old Jesse remembers hating this level.

If you are a huge fan of “Super Star Wars: Return of the Jedi” even after playing it recently, don’t let this review get to you. The game is still not without its charms. However, unlike many of the other SNES and NES games I’ve decided to give a present-day playthrough, this one just didn’t stand the test of time that my memory thought it would.

Tags: licensed games, Lucasarts, platformer, Return of the Jedi, Sculptured Software, SNES, Star Wars, Super Star Wars

This entry was posted on Friday, August 28th, 2009 at 11:00 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.