Those fast respawning green guys in the first level are actually a secret gun powerup. You stay there and kill them all and a gun power up appears on a rock. Awesome game.
When I was 12 in 1994 I had some health issues and had to spend a week in the hospital then some time on bed rest. My parents got me Super Return of the Jedi as an early Christmas present. I brought my snes to the hospital it kept me sain.
Fun fact: that's why they never made Return of the Jedi for the NES. They figured out that the SNES could replicate the music so we'll, so they just jumped ship and started over.
Back when Super Empire came out my brother and I got so good at it that we were basically speedrunning the game on Jedi difficulty before it was a thing. Almost 20 yrs later I get the game again and get my butt handed to me on Hoth, I guess I am just getting old...
Were you playing on a crt, with an actual SNES? The added input lag from basically any other method of playing could throw you off drastically, I would think.
Loved these games as a kid and still do. They may be tough but they are very fun. I do want to point out in the landspeeder level in Super Star Wars you don't randomly shoot Jawas until it tells you to go to the sandcrawler. In the top right corner it tells you how many Jawas need to be killed before it tells you to go to the sandcrawler. That was one of my favorite levels as a kid.
Looking at these they're the epitome of the anti-rental games of the SNES Era. Just fun enough that you don't want to quit, but hard enough that there's nearly no way a kid is beating this in a weekend.
From a certain perspective, they were the perfect rental games. You'd play it long enough to get hooked but not to get very far, and end up having to rent it another 8 weekends until you beat it. You have no idea how many "hard" games I rented as a kid that were actually just really lazily written and frustrating.
oh yeah one tip to beating darth vader in empire strikes back. Farm the debris for force power and use that to heal yourself. Once you do that consistently its actually one of the easier boss fights in the game!
I beat Super Empire Strikes Back in the late 90's at about 10 or 11 years old. It's nice to hear people commenting on the difficulty nowadays because I remember nearly having an aneurysm trying to get through it as a kid.
The best way to deal with these games is actually to dodge and avoid and fight only when necessary. When you treat it like that, the first game and Jedi are fairly decent in terms of difficulty. Empire will still stretch your sphincter, though.
I know I'm in the minority here, but I loved the Death Star flying missions in Return, yea it's pretty hard, but I just thought it was the coolest thing ever and loved the shift to first person perspective. It's hard to explain what a visual feat this was in the 16 bit days.
I loved it too! It was actually the highlight of the game for me. I believe the difficulty too was merited because it's literally the final stage. The level may be difficult, but there are glaring patterns to follow and obvious obstacles to avoid. It just takes practice, like any good and challenging platformer.
@@28Pluto No it doesn't. Maybe the basic bitch blaster because the bolts are so thin (Which was fixed in the sequels,) but even one upgrade is enough to mitigate that problem.
These were some of my favourite SNES games! Loved them as a kid and love them now! I never found them to be overly difficult, but that's probably because I've been playing them for eons.
For the blind jumps...with the L and R button you can make the screen move up or down, than it isn't a blind anymore. I loved all three titles, especially Return Of The Jedi which had some cheat codes.
i didn't know that, i'll use it for super return of the jedi, next time i play it fairly soon. i have beat that game, and that will make it even better!
Saw video in recommendations. "Man, those games were ridiculously difficult." First few seconds of video: "These games had absolutely brutal difficulty" (paraphrased) Damn right.
The Super Star Wars games were like Contra-type difficult. By modern standards, Cuphead-difficult. Not impossible, just grueling. You knew it was beatable, you just had to learn the level well and practice your skills. There were MANY games (particularly for NES) that were impossible because of some secret item you had to find that you'd never find unless you had read Nintendo Power or called the hint line. These were not enjoyable at all and simply wastes of my time. Unfortunately, these are also now called "ridiculously difficult" games, when in reality they were just lazy ones.
i just finally beat super ghouls and ghosts for the first time and really enjoyed it once i started getting the hang of it. maybe i'll give these games a go soon. i remember briefly trying out one or 2 of them at my cousin's house when i was younger but never spent enough time with them to make any real progress. i do remember them being frustratingly difficult and tedious though.
@bobbelonie yea i;ve beat all 3 games on easy. the trench run isn't hard, you just have to make sure to shoot the enemy projectiles, and not worry about the ships as much
I absolutely loved these games when I was young. Although I find it interesting that you praised Jedi the most, my favorite was Empire by far. While the difficulty was the only draw back in fact I still have never beaten Jedi. Could never navigate the Falcon out of the Death Star. Ever. Also, while you did have the music playing in the background I didn't hear you mention how utterly amazing the music was in this trilogy. Nearly flawless 16-bit representations of the source material. All in all these games were and are still fantastic and I could not recommend them highly enough. In fact I've introduced my 14 yr old and 8 yr old daughters to them and I catch them playing whenever they can use my old console. Mario is just tossed aside of Empire and New Hope everytime. Granted I hear a lot of angry groaning but nonetheless they continue to, well....continue. Great video, thanks for the channel and keep up the great work.
The first seconds of the opening theme of Super Star Wars and maybe overall sounded better than the other two. The other two had indeed much better graphics and I was impressed by Empire Strikes Back mode 7 where clouds go up and down.
Star wars (dark souls edition).. Finished all these games when I was a young man (boy) on the hardest settings.. Broke a few controllers.. So hard. So frustrating. So satisfying when you finally beat it. lol 😂 I loved all of them
Super Return of the Jedi is fair. well, the last part escaping the death star is kinda BS. gotta use L and R to straighten the screen out, but it's HARD. otherwise very fair. it's the best game in the series to me, easily
My brother and I used to beat these games as kids they were fairly easy we only had problems with the exit the Death Star level in super return of the Jedi. These games were phenomenal thanks for reviewing them! Keep up the good work!
All I wanted as a kid was a PC to play X-Wing an Wing Commander III, but I couldn't afford it, so I replayed the entire Super Star Wars dozens of times (even multiple times on Jedi difficulty) just to play the 2 minute Death Star stage at the end. It was easier with the sequels thanks to the password system.
Return of the Jedi on Super Nintendo was my first exposure to Star Wars as a little child. I Remember Loving that game so much and getting obsessed with Star Wars because of it. Still have the same cartridge too.
I never played these games growing up, but I did play a ton of Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures, also released by Lucasarts and JVC and covered the whole trilogy in one game. Very similar plattformer to the Star Wars games.
With the first game, there is an "Easy" mode option to be fair; its worth mentioning so people aren't put off, its still tough in places and so the challenge is more balanced is all. Also you can use L and R to shift the screen up and down which helps with some of the jumps, though yeah a lot of them are blind. And the mode 7 stages state the number of jawas you have to kill in the top right corner. Hate those levels anyway though.
I remember I learned how to go off screen in the first star wars, by pressing all the buttons on the controller at once, basically mashing buttons until this code showed on the top screen, possibly used by game developers to twerk the game before it got released, and as the character Luke it made me invincible and i could go through walls and to inaccessible sections of the game map etc. I sent the cheat to Nintendo Power and it got published! My first publication in a major magazine at 12 years old! I also was in contact with the very nice lady who was a publicity agent for the games, Tabitha Tosti, wrote her letters about the games. I got free posters related to all the games! It was freaking awesome like the posters were of art quality, made on the same paper as art prints, and I wish I had saved them, cause they could be collectibles today.
I loved these games growing up, even though I had to use the codes for them. The debug codes for these games were my first experience with boundary breaking, which I'm big into now!
How cool would be to see games of this style based in all the other movies of the franchise, can you imagine playing with Jar Jar Binks in Naboo....LOL I never had any problems with the shooting angle of the first game, you just have to jump and aim, being the jump button like a turbo button you just jump and jump. Plus the first level is super easy because you can finish it pretty fast just jumping the first enemies and using the sweep movement ignoring most of the enemies. The platforms in the sand crawler can by a little pain in the buttocks, but you forgot to mention that with the L and R buttons you can move the camera up or down to watch better the platforms. The boss that I hate the most is the one inside the sandcrawler. My favorite game is The Empire, the use of the force of Luke is much better than in Return of The Jedi, because in the last one they removed the ability to levitate, and changed the way the saber deflects bullets, now is with the A button instead of down and attack, plus the stages of Return of the Jedi sometimes feel endless. I don't think these games are as hard as everyone say, I owned the first one and played a lot, I get very good at it, then the other two were not as hard. I rented empire and beat it over one weekend, later, the same with Return of the Jedi. I played them again in my SNES classic, (thanks Hakchi2) I'm not as good as I used to be, but I finished them just like in the old days. I found that the hardest boss of the trilogy is the Rancor playing with Luke, good luck with it. :) And Leia is super strong in the first level and specially in the Sail Barge....just like Rey in The Force Awakens LOL For me act raiser 2 or Ghost and Goblins are much more harder, and I can't even beat the first stage of those games.....
Oh great, now you have me wishing that there were Super Star Wars games for the prequels. Imagine fighting Darth Maul? And how incredible would the final duel between Anakin and Obi-Wan be?
@@redsoxu571 I know right? I like to think about it, I wish some fan with video game programming knowledge could make that dream come true, I just love the Super SW games. There are a lot of characters to choose from in the prequels, can you imagine playing levels not only with Obi Wan - Anakin, but also with Qui-Gon, Yoda, Mace Windu, Padme, even Jar Jar in the Naboo would be funny.A space level chase with Jango and Obi Wan. A lot of ideas to choose from.
I've wished there was a Super Star Wars Prequel trilogy ever since Episode I came out. If someone made them into three games just like these I would be so excited to play them. Brutal difficulty and all.
Absolutely worth playing. My brother and I spent hours on these games as kids and mastered them all. I recently picked it back up for the first time in almost 20 years and was blown away by how punishing it was. I can't believe I beat these games as a kid, but they were some of my favorites.
Thank you for mentioning the difficulty level of these games... it seems like how people always talk about how great these titles are, but to me, due to the crazy difficulty level, they're just unplayable. But after seeing this review I might just have to give them another shot.
I played through and finished every one back in the day, I was hardcore back then. They are too hard for me today, but I found there are secrets you can look up to get an easy 99 lives or such that can let people access the enjoyment without *too* much frustration nowadays.
As others have said, I had no problem beating all three of these amazing games. And oh, how I loved the opening crawls and music. At the time, on my old CRT (with the VHF/UHF switch AND no remote) the games' openings felt like I was in the movies.
The Speederbike stages should have been a clone of 3D Death Race from the Spectrum (with a main menu option to play it for high score. That would have been awesome)
The Star Wars games were my favorite as a kid. After you beat them a couple of times you can do it rather easy on the harder difficulty settings as well. I never found them to be so hard. You just need to learn were the enemies might show up.
Personally, I always liked Super Return of the Jedi the least. I didn't really care for the level design because a lot of them were more open, but everything looks the same. I was playing it a couple months ago and got lost in the Rancor Pit. Eventually I reached a dead end and was like, "Am I back at the beginning of the level?" I gave up after that. Empire had some levels like that, too, but it wasn't as bad over all (except that Echo Base level with the elevators). Loved the Wicket levels because of the arrow jumping. Super Empire Strikes Back comes in second. I love the addition of the force powers, but I found the game to be the most difficult of the bunch by a long shot (though I probably haven't gone through this one in decades). I was also disappointed with the lack of a character selection. Sure it makes sense story-wise, but I still missed it. I now know there is a code to make it available, but I didn't know it as a kid. Super Star Wars is my favorite. Sure it lacks some of the improvements of the later games like the double jump and the password save, but I just know this game so well. I haven't thought of it as a difficult game in a long time. ... a long time. To be fair, that's probably because I would always load up on lives in that secret cave before you get the light saber, so I might have broke the intended difficulty. Plus I always played these games on Easy. I think the only difference between difficulties in all these games is how much health you start with. I was never Brave enough to go up to the next difficulty. I never really thought of these games as Run 'n Guns, and it's always weird to me when people call them that. Heck, to get semanitcal, you can't even run and shoot in the same time in the first game. If anything, I would place them somewhere between a Run 'n Gun and a Mega Man because of a fair amount of platforming, but there are still lot of enemies.
Peter Dacey. Totally agree. It's a shame that Slave Leia was only available for one level. Sure it makes sense for the story, but she was a lot of fun to play as. It probably didn't help that her Rebel form in the shield generator stage is so generic and didn't have anything unique about it.
Peter Dacey I used to use the debug code all the time for the first game and had a lot of fun with that, but I never found the equivalent code for the later games back during the SNES generation. But yeah, I should look playing those games again with cheats. I might skip the Rancor Pit level, though.
Your thoughts echo mine. I played/rented each one as they came out, and always had a blast, but Empire and Jedi were brutal. Super Star Wars was the easiest to me (at least after Mos Eisley), and I distinctly recall beating it on Easy without too much difficulty. You might just need to put in a solid few days or a week of grinding.
Nice review! Vader really isn't that bad, though. I just fired up the game recently and beat him on Brave difficulty on my first try. He's not very aggressive, so when your health gets low you can just stay away from him and destroy debris until you get the force power-ups to heal. Even my freakin' non-gamer dad beat Vader back in the day!
Rented Super Star Wars in 1992 and played it for about a week and it was a tough game.I got through the first two levels maybe to the third but gave up after that. Picked up a copy of SSW about three years ago and giving the game another go. Ive played Star Wars Return of the Jedi on ZNES emulator on my PC eight years ago and enjoyed it. I might pick up the second and third SW game on SNES some day soon. Great insightful video!
I actually loved the first one of these. It was amazing. It was, out of all my cartridges, one of the ones that spent the most time in my system because it was that compelling and fun.
I remember watching this game being run by gamers on YTV during Saturday morning cartoons.... As a SEGA guy through and through these 3 games made me want to get a SNES
I have a pretty soft spot for these games in my heart~ Super Star Wars was my first Star Wars game, later I got the other two, and since I was a pretty die-hard Star Wars fan when I was little, I put in the effort to beat these games like I had never done for any game this difficult before... It was on the lowest difficulty setting for each though...
Very enjoyable video on the series. Your mileage may vary with these games. I know many still love these, which is fine. I got a SNES in 1994, partly for the Star Wars games. I picked up Super Empire Strikes Back with my system. I "enjoyed" all three of those games at the time. After getting back into the old 8-bit and 16-bit games a number of years ago, I revisited all three. While I really wanted to like them, I just didn't anymore. I believe they got by on their presentation back when they were new. The level design and game balance are not good, in my opinion. In Empire, it's far too easy to slide around or get pushed into spikes in the opening stage. In Jedi, which I could beat back in the day, the first platforming stage has tons of blind jumps. The last time I played it, I did a blind jump and, when I landed, was immediately trapped and juggled in a corner by a standard enemy which depleted my entire life bar. Not good. And those boss fights are far too tedious to be fun to me. Again, I'm not knocking anyone who feels differently, or trying to change any minds. This is just how I feel about these games now. There are some who take issue when top-games lists for SNES omit these games, but I think it's that these games are quite polarizing, and with good reason. I agree about that kind of jumping often being weird. However, in Sunsoft's Batman on the NES the jumping feels really good for some reason despite being similar.
my favorite is Super Return of the Jedi. it's by far the easiest of the 3. very fair difficulty. i don't think the others are unfair, just really hard. i have beat Super Star Wars on easy, no deaths. harder than ROTJ for sure, but beatable and worth the effort (i'm far from an expert). haven't tried empire strikes back a good serious attempt yet. usually play through it with game genie just for fun. seems like the hardest for sure. hopefully one day i'll beat it too, and will be able to say i've beat them all. great games
Fun fact: The pixel art for these games (and probably many others, though not often documented) was a fantastic drawing program Deluxe Paint 2. It was very good at this sort of creation and supported pretty much every platform at the time, not to mention a bevy of support for graphics extensions that we take for granted today but were ahead of their time way back then. Sauce: Avid DXP2 user back in the 90s, and an EGM magazine that had shots of their sprite charts clearly open in DXP2.
I watched your video because when I rented this game as a kid. I couldn't get as far as the you. Most of my childhood was playing snes games. Glad I get to go back in nostagia and watch your videos. Have you done one on Earth worm Jim yet? That was another classic. Oh, the 90's and early 2000's lol.
As a big Star Wars nerd back then, I got each one of these as they released and played them to death. Both then and now, I have to say that ESB is by far the most difficult. On anything above easy, a few of the early Hoth stages can be very punishing but where the game truly dials up the frustration is Cloud City. Particularly the first Han stage. The enemies are respawning damage-sponges with unavoidable attack patterns, the stage goes on forever and the boss has a ridiculous health bar. RotJ might be the best of the trilogy overall. If you only play one of them, play that one. But honestly, I think the entire series is worth playing, even if you never beat them. Great graphics and music. Plenty of stage and enemy variety. Huge bosses. Every one of them blew me away back then and they are still worthy of your enjoyment.
I remember as a kid having no idea idea what I was supposed to do in speeder lever. I feel like I have memories of just flying along in every direction possible trying to figure out what the he'll was going on. I know I stopped playing at that level more than once before figuring it out.
To be fair the turricans also tend to make you take it slow, but there you also have the roll move to fall back on at times. Out of these the third one is the only one I'd recommend today. I also liked the GG version of it. I have to disagree about Empire, while it does some things better than the first and the powers are cool it was the most frustrating one for me. In a way they were all a step back from the first 8-bit one (SMS ver. is the best) in that they are just straightforward action games instead of action adventure but they do control better (well, 2 and 3) and have pretty nice presentation.
I bought this for my Vita and I finally completed A New Hope on easy! By constantly saving it! lol. I never got past the sandcrawler as a kid at my cousins.
I loved that you had an invincibility code on half the time. Not knocking at all... Just shows that these games are as tough as everyone says and you needed to use it to get decent footage! :) Great coverage. Love these games.
1:29 You can crouch-fire. You have to hold down on the D-pad first and then start to fire. You can let go of the 'down D-pad' after that and shoot where ever. It's kind weird at first, but has a deliberate design that fits into how the game wants you to play and starts to become second nature.
You forgot to mention that the second two games got rid of the timer. I think it is helpful even though they gave you enough time to complete the level.
With the Sandcrawler levels the game expects you to have gotten through Dune Sea without dying and getting the Flame blaster. Then it gives you an upgrade outside the Sandcrawler which gives you the homing seekers. Inside the crawler you get another upgrade to get the Rapid Ion, which can ricochet off surfaces. This is important to help you take out the turrets while mitigating damage by shooting at the floor to make the shots ricochet up at a 45 degree angle into the turrets' sponson. With the lightsaber don't waste your time doing Luke's up slash when his normal slash is a lot faster with less delay between swings.
I’ve been waiting an eternity for a Super Star Wars Trilogy video. I love Super Star Wars and Super ROTJ. Some of my favorites. Haven’t played Empire because I hear it’s brutal. Thanks for the vid!
I love these games. They are one of the few games I mastered. But it came with the price of hours of trial and error. Like every difficult game there are tricks to everything. Infamously the final stage of Return of the Jedi _ escaping the Death Star, here is the trick, don't use the directional pad to dodge walls that are zooming at you. Use the L and R buttons to strafe. It becomes much easier. Love you videos.
The first one and Jedi were the only games I had during the recession. Got to where I could wreck the first one. Keep up the great work SnesDrunk! Really enjoy your channel mate!
I remember that I found all three of these games in a used videogame store for like 5 bucks each. That was back when N64 first came out so they weren't too outdated yet. I had a lot of fun with them honestly.
I remember how psyched I was to play this game when I saw it at blockbuster. Rented it and spent a weekend of frustration only making it inside the jawa crawler level, I think. All my platform intuition was useless! Super Empire Strikes back was better once I found it, also the Yoda continue screen was cool.
I haven't played this series yet but Hagane, Cybernator and Contra 3 seem better than these titles. But I look forward to giving this series a try at least. I love a good action challenge as long as the game is fair. Some parts seem iffy but if I can get pass those parts, than I could enjoy these games overall.
Once again, you've given one of the most fair and thorough yet concise reviews on a somewhat under-acknowledged game/series like this. I can agree with your thoughts completely -- essentially, they're all good games (with fantastic soundtracks! the SNES soundchip is a beast at recreating the orchestral John Williams sound!) but you have to kind of 'master' them to truly enjoy them, similar to many NES games like Ninja Gaiden. And yes, each is a bit more manageable and enjoyable than the last, though even the first is worth checking out if you're willing to work with it a bit more.
super return of the Jedi is great, loved how stages were built to cater to a specific character. for example I found that stage 1 lends itself best to laya, stage 2 to Luke, the rancour stage to Han etc...
Thanks Drunk. Me and my brother played the first one a ton back in the '90s and could somehow make it to the Death Star but never beat it. I had all three of these put on my SNES Classic and your video has made me want to go back and try them. Great video
Neat video, man. I totally agree with your ranking. But a few things. The collision detection can be a little wonky, specially with the lightsaber & some of the blaster bolts. Like, you'll see the sprites overlap, but no collision is detected. The input detection can be a little off, and your character can & will jump or slide even after you release the jump button. And the random behavior of some of the floating enemies border on unfair. On the flip side, most of the awkward shooting can be dealt with by squatting & shooting. (Press down, hold down the fire button, release down.) And the blind jumps can be avoided by looking down & up with the shoulder buttons. Last but not least, in Super ESB, if you cancel out of a slide by firing a weapon, and continue to fire the weapon without moving, you're character is invincible until something moves him.
I was 20 when SSW came out, but it was a year or so later, once all three were available that I finally took the plunge and spent a small fortune buying all of them at once. Took me soooooooooo long to beat them all, and as I'd spent a lot of money on them (either £150 or £180, I forget now) in total (I live in the UK, and I picked these up on US import... 60hz) I didn't even think about buying another game until I was done. Great games, and a tremendous sense of satisfaction when completed.
These games were difficult, but I have to thank my constant practice at the classic Contra series on Nes to take on these games. Easily the best part of my middle school days.
Perhaps my favorite bit of video game pride is that the SNES was the first console I owned and the first games I got with it were Mega Man X...and Super Star Wars. Loving the presentation of each and being really excited to own my own games for once, I had no concept that I had landed two of the most famous tougher games on the console...but at least that set my bar higher and made other games feel easy by comparison! As a bonus, for a number of years we only had a black-and-white TV to play on, and the lack of color was an extra handicap for an increased challenge. Whoo! P.S. My siblings and I took turns playing when we first got started (we put SSW in first, of course) and would trade off after any death. Needless to say, none of us lasted in the playing chair for long that day - I was the first one who managed to simply get over the first tall hill with the first big scorpion in the opening level, and that took a while!
The key to that X--Wing level in Super Star Wars is to fly as low as possible. Skim the surface of the Death Star and you'll fly faster so you can avoid enemy fire easier, and you'll also clip the TIE Fighter spawns so they won't appear as much. If you gain too much altitude in that level you'll end up flying more slowly and you'll leave yourself wide open to both tower and fighter attack. Also, with regard to the jumping, use Right on the D-pad + B for most of your jumps; you get the same lateral distance as the Diagonal Up+Right/Left flipping jump, but it's way more manageable than the flip. Oh - and in that first game (and for the majority of the other two) just forget about the lightsaber in straight combat - stick with the Plasma blaster, save for when you have to use it (ie: Vader). Empire is easily the toughest game in the series, though, with Jedi being the easiest.
as a huge star wars fan i played all three of them a thousand times as a kid and never had any big problems beating them. i just knew them in and out, knew where all the secret blaster power-ups and health pick-ups were and the best strategies to beat the bosses. just completed them again on medium difficulty and at least the first and third really aren’t that hard if you know what you are doing. empire strikes back is a completely different beast though. that game is indeed very hard, but it is doable. the final boss fight against darth vader is one of the easiest boss fights of the trilogy though, if you know the right strategy. overall some of the best snes games ever made.
Thank you for this video, I think the best way to describe these games is they got better with each one. Adding and removing things like time limit (why), better controls, more music (why only a few songs in the first and second game?), more special weapons, more people to play as, and moving while shooting. For me the force powers didn't make a lot of sense. There are so many in the 2nd game that I'm not sure what all of them do but in the third the cut them down but didn't bring back the one I wanted which is levitate, why not? Also why did we have to find the force power ups in the game that were hidden? Still, love these games and went back not long ago and played them again.
Absolutely love Star wars growing up, these games were incredible! They were really hard though, I believe it used to game genie to actually play through the whole thing. Empire strikes back was probably my favorite with the horsepowers as well as return of the Jedi, but I like the first one too.
Excellent reviews - very fair. Had these for 20 years or so now - I had a lot of patience for Super Star Wars as a kid (played that sandcrawler soo many times) and I did learn how to beat it. I remember how satisfying that was. Just take your time and they are all doable - I'm not that great a player or anything. I can't beat Mario 3...
I remember playing and beating the first game, didn't play the others. I never thought it was overly hard, but then again back then I was lucky to get a game.
I am actually kind of proud that I managed to beat that game in a single sitting as a kid (no cheating) True, that sitting took an entire day and several restart attempts but at the end of the day, the death star was blown to pieces. But man this game was hard. One of the bosses I struggled most with was the one from the mos eisley cantina fight.
I beat it today in one sitting. Agree that the cantina fight was really tough. If you aggro him and push him back while stearing back in the middle of the jump using seeking you cann cheese him.
Thankyou for reviewing all three super Star Wars games as someone who has never played it and just got an original retro snes I may just get super Star Wars return of Jedi but at least you have done a good job of explaining the challenges and differences with each one great job 😎👍🏻
This video reminded me of Gun Valkyrie on xbox. It was such a misunderstood game that people tried to play like Halo or other 3rd person shooter games. It got so-so reviews and basically dropped off the earth. But the game is actually intended to be played almost completely in the air using various maneuvers and is a blast to play like that. It's a completely different style which to be fair may not be for everyone but totally worth checking out.
These games are the most loaded games on SNES IMO, The characters, abilities, there are hundreds of sprites, crazy amounts of enemies, levels, gameplay modes. Theres so much going on its amazing
As a kid, I could never get over Luke's Wiffle Bat-sized lightsaber. I know they were going for motion blur, but no. Luke looks like Fred Flintstone wielding a comically oversized piece of Brontosaurus meat.
These were some of my favorite SNES games. They are difficult, but not impossible. Good thing about tough games is they last longer, they make you a better gamer, and when you do beat a level there is such a sense of accomplishment that isn't felt when you beat an easy videogame. I remember the first time my brother beat Return of the Jedi and I was so impressed because we had been playing that game for like 4 or 5 years at that point.
Halie Symmons with games like that, it's practice, practice, practice. I don't always like games that hold my hand for me. And you're right, the games do last longer and they become more fun once you're used to its system.
When I was about 9 or 10, I rented Super Return of the Jedi from Video Depot every few weeks to try to beat it (I love SW and it was the only SW game they carried for SNES). The Bib Fortuna boss fight was my biggest roadblock, but when I beat him and then the whole game, it felt like a massive accomplishment.
I forgot how hard these games are. Played these as a kid and loved them. I best Empire and Jedi once each, but I beat Star Wars three times. I'm wanting to play them again, but seeing this video I remember how difficult they were, and that was on a system I was familiar with. I'm not familiar with the SNES anymore, so I'd have to relearn it as I go. It'd probably be a bigger challenge than the first time lol
My first contact with these games was with Super RotJ. Played the other two (which I found even more difficult) but, for their time, they were some of the best Star Wars games available. At least I had my SW gaming at its best with later games on PC (Dark Forces, Shadows of the Empire, Jedi Knight, Battlefront, etc).
Those fast respawning green guys in the first level are actually a secret gun powerup. You stay there and kill them all and a gun power up appears on a rock. Awesome game.
Ikrr i remember
Yup! There were lots of cool things like that
They’re actually Womp Rats, according to the manual.
I thought you aim up and shoot until the gun appears on the first rock
Theyre called womprats
When I was 12 in 1994 I had some health issues and had to spend a week in the hospital then some time on bed rest. My parents got me Super Return of the Jedi as an early Christmas present. I brought my snes to the hospital it kept me sain.
Super Return of the Jedi didn't come out until '94 tho...
@@user-dv2hc8zt3o You're right I had surgeries in 1994 and '93 I guess I got my hospital stays mixed up. I'll edit it for you.
@@danlab99 Um sorry?
Why lie about your story you creep 🗣️
@@user-dv2hc8zt3o Awkward ass nigga 😂😂😂
The music is also pretty well represented as far as 16-bit renditions go.
Especially Super Empire Strikes Back
You know you’re going to trick loads of dyslexics
Fun fact: that's why they never made Return of the Jedi for the NES. They figured out that the SNES could replicate the music so we'll, so they just jumped ship and started over.
Back when Super Empire came out my brother and I got so good at it that we were basically speedrunning the game on Jedi difficulty before it was a thing. Almost 20 yrs later I get the game again and get my butt handed to me on Hoth, I guess I am just getting old...
Were you playing on a crt, with an actual SNES? The added input lag from basically any other method of playing could throw you off drastically, I would think.
We don't get old, we get better
Loved these games as a kid and still do. They may be tough but they are very fun. I do want to point out in the landspeeder level in Super Star Wars you don't randomly shoot Jawas until it tells you to go to the sandcrawler. In the top right corner it tells you how many Jawas need to be killed before it tells you to go to the sandcrawler. That was one of my favorite levels as a kid.
Looking at these they're the epitome of the anti-rental games of the SNES Era. Just fun enough that you don't want to quit, but hard enough that there's nearly no way a kid is beating this in a weekend.
From a certain perspective, they were the perfect rental games. You'd play it long enough to get hooked but not to get very far, and end up having to rent it another 8 weekends until you beat it. You have no idea how many "hard" games I rented as a kid that were actually just really lazily written and frustrating.
This was one of the few games I rented over and over rather than buy. I think I rented a copy for over 2 straight months.
@@Brocuzgodlocdunfamdogsonyou are the reason games like this were made.
oh yeah one tip to beating darth vader in empire strikes back. Farm the debris for force power and use that to heal yourself. Once you do that consistently its actually one of the easier boss fights in the game!
This
Yes. Combine this with strategically using the lightsaber to block debris and Vader becomes significantly easier.
Wow, those games look beautiful. I’m impressed how well they have held up.
I beat Super Empire Strikes Back in the late 90's at about 10 or 11 years old. It's nice to hear people commenting on the difficulty nowadays because I remember nearly having an aneurysm trying to get through it as a kid.
The best way to deal with these games is actually to dodge and avoid and fight only when necessary. When you treat it like that, the first game and Jedi are fairly decent in terms of difficulty.
Empire will still stretch your sphincter, though.
I know I'm in the minority here, but I loved the Death Star flying missions in Return, yea it's pretty hard, but I just thought it was the coolest thing ever and loved the shift to first person perspective. It's hard to explain what a visual feat this was in the 16 bit days.
I loved it too! It was actually the highlight of the game for me. I believe the difficulty too was merited because it's literally the final stage.
The level may be difficult, but there are glaring patterns to follow and obvious obstacles to avoid. It just takes practice, like any good and challenging platformer.
Playing this level on Jedi mode was the hardest stage I ever played in a game. These are my all-time favorite SNES titles.
Luke can crouch and fire straight ahead.
Yeah, but the bullets go over small enemies!
Indeed.
@@28Pluto I don't think so. Not the ones he showed in the video.
@@28Pluto No it doesn't. Maybe the basic bitch blaster because the bolts are so thin (Which was fixed in the sequels,) but even one upgrade is enough to mitigate that problem.
Yes! I kept wondering why Luke kept shooting at his feet. "You know you can couch and shoot, right?" LOL
These were some of my favourite SNES games! Loved them as a kid and love them now! I never found them to be overly difficult, but that's probably because I've been playing them for eons.
For the blind jumps...with the L and R button you can make the screen move up or down, than it isn't a blind anymore. I loved all three titles, especially Return Of The Jedi which had some cheat codes.
Yup it remember using Wicket all the time because he was pretty powerful if I remember correctly.
I'll actually keep that in mind.
i didn't know that, i'll use it for super return of the jedi, next time i play it fairly soon. i have beat that game, and that will make it even better!
Saw video in recommendations. "Man, those games were ridiculously difficult."
First few seconds of video: "These games had absolutely brutal difficulty" (paraphrased)
Damn right.
The Super Star Wars games were like Contra-type difficult. By modern standards, Cuphead-difficult. Not impossible, just grueling. You knew it was beatable, you just had to learn the level well and practice your skills.
There were MANY games (particularly for NES) that were impossible because of some secret item you had to find that you'd never find unless you had read Nintendo Power or called the hint line. These were not enjoyable at all and simply wastes of my time. Unfortunately, these are also now called "ridiculously difficult" games, when in reality they were just lazy ones.
@@harveywallbanger3123This ^ ^ ^
5:15 I don't know if anybody mentioned yet, but you can double jump in the first super Star Wars, you only need to press "up" and "B".
They are still worth it but you better have patience.
very worth it. really fun games
i just finally beat super ghouls and ghosts for the first time and really enjoyed it once i started getting the hang of it. maybe i'll give these games a go soon. i remember briefly trying out one or 2 of them at my cousin's house when i was younger but never spent enough time with them to make any real progress. i do remember them being frustratingly difficult and tedious though.
bobbelonie that trench run was super annoying but I managed to beat it.
@bobbelonie yea i;ve beat all 3 games on easy. the trench run isn't hard, you just have to make sure to shoot the enemy projectiles, and not worry about the ships as much
So many falls off the sand people vehicle it was super painful but rewarding af when I finally beat the game.
I was surprised that in Super Empire Strikes Back, they didn't include the Dark Side Cave as a level.
I absolutely loved these games when I was young. Although I find it interesting that you praised Jedi the most, my favorite was Empire by far. While the difficulty was the only draw back in fact I still have never beaten Jedi. Could never navigate the Falcon out of the Death Star. Ever. Also, while you did have the music playing in the background I didn't hear you mention how utterly amazing the music was in this trilogy. Nearly flawless 16-bit representations of the source material.
All in all these games were and are still fantastic and I could not recommend them highly enough. In fact I've introduced my 14 yr old and 8 yr old daughters to them and I catch them playing whenever they can use my old console. Mario is just tossed aside of Empire and New Hope everytime. Granted I hear a lot of angry groaning but nonetheless they continue to, well....continue.
Great video, thanks for the channel and keep up the great work.
The first seconds of the opening theme of Super Star Wars and maybe overall sounded better than the other two. The other two had indeed much better graphics and I was impressed by Empire Strikes Back mode 7 where clouds go up and down.
Star wars (dark souls edition).. Finished all these games when I was a young man (boy) on the hardest settings.. Broke a few controllers.. So hard. So frustrating. So satisfying when you finally beat it. lol 😂
I loved all of them
Super Return of the Jedi is fair. well, the last part escaping the death star is kinda BS. gotta use L and R to straighten the screen out, but it's HARD. otherwise very fair. it's the best game in the series to me, easily
My brother and I used to beat these games as kids they were fairly easy we only had problems with the exit the Death Star level in super return of the Jedi. These games were phenomenal thanks for reviewing them! Keep up the good work!
All I wanted as a kid was a PC to play X-Wing an Wing Commander III, but I couldn't afford it, so I replayed the entire Super Star Wars dozens of times (even multiple times on Jedi difficulty) just to play the 2 minute Death Star stage at the end. It was easier with the sequels thanks to the password system.
Yeah Shadows of the Empire blew my mind clean off. I must have replayed the Battle of Hoth and the Skyhook battle a thousand times. What a game.
Return of the Jedi on Super Nintendo was my first exposure to Star Wars as a little child. I Remember Loving that game so much and getting obsessed with Star Wars because of it. Still have the same cartridge too.
I never played these games growing up, but I did play a ton of Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures, also released by Lucasarts and JVC and covered the whole trilogy in one game. Very similar plattformer to the Star Wars games.
With the first game, there is an "Easy" mode option to be fair; its worth mentioning so people aren't put off, its still tough in places and so the challenge is more balanced is all. Also you can use L and R to shift the screen up and down which helps with some of the jumps, though yeah a lot of them are blind. And the mode 7 stages state the number of jawas you have to kill in the top right corner. Hate those levels anyway though.
I remember I learned how to go off screen in the first star wars, by pressing all the buttons on the controller at once, basically mashing buttons until this code showed on the top screen, possibly used by game developers to twerk the game before it got released, and as the character Luke it made me invincible and i could go through walls and to inaccessible sections of the game map etc. I sent the cheat to Nintendo Power and it got published! My first publication in a major magazine at 12 years old! I also was in contact with the very nice lady who was a publicity agent for the games, Tabitha Tosti, wrote her letters about the games. I got free posters related to all the games! It was freaking awesome like the posters were of art quality, made on the same paper as art prints, and I wish I had saved them, cause they could be collectibles today.
I loved these games growing up, even though I had to use the codes for them. The debug codes for these games were my first experience with boundary breaking, which I'm big into now!
How cool would be to see games of this style based in all the other movies of the franchise, can you imagine playing with Jar Jar Binks in Naboo....LOL
I never had any problems with the shooting angle of the first game, you just have to jump and aim, being the jump button like a turbo button you just jump and jump. Plus the first level is super easy because you can finish it pretty fast just jumping the first enemies and using the sweep movement ignoring most of the enemies. The platforms in the sand crawler can by a little pain in the buttocks, but you forgot to mention that with the L and R buttons you can move the camera up or down to watch better the platforms. The boss that I hate the most is the one inside the sandcrawler. My favorite game is The Empire, the use of the force of Luke is much better than in Return of The Jedi, because in the last one they removed the ability to levitate, and changed the way the saber deflects bullets, now is with the A button instead of down and attack, plus the stages of Return of the Jedi sometimes feel endless.
I don't think these games are as hard as everyone say, I owned the first one and played a lot, I get very good at it, then the other two were not as hard. I rented empire and beat it over one weekend, later, the same with Return of the Jedi.
I played them again in my SNES classic, (thanks Hakchi2) I'm not as good as I used to be, but I finished them just like in the old days. I found that the hardest boss of the trilogy is the Rancor playing with Luke, good luck with it. :)
And Leia is super strong in the first level and specially in the Sail Barge....just like Rey in The Force Awakens LOL
For me act raiser 2 or Ghost and Goblins are much more harder, and I can't even beat the first stage of those games.....
now all-star wars video games, based on the movies got LEGO characters
Oh great, now you have me wishing that there were Super Star Wars games for the prequels. Imagine fighting Darth Maul? And how incredible would the final duel between Anakin and Obi-Wan be?
@@redsoxu571 I know right? I like to think about it, I wish some fan with video game programming knowledge could make that dream come true, I just love the Super SW games. There are a lot of characters to choose from in the prequels, can you imagine playing levels not only with Obi Wan - Anakin, but also with Qui-Gon, Yoda, Mace Windu, Padme, even Jar Jar in the Naboo would be funny.A space level chase with Jango and Obi Wan. A lot of ideas to choose from.
I've wished there was a Super Star Wars Prequel trilogy ever since Episode I came out. If someone made them into three games just like these I would be so excited to play them. Brutal difficulty and all.
i remember sweeting it out and seeing all the endings of each game, great games for the snes!!!
Absolutely worth playing. My brother and I spent hours on these games as kids and mastered them all. I recently picked it back up for the first time in almost 20 years and was blown away by how punishing it was. I can't believe I beat these games as a kid, but they were some of my favorites.
Thank you for mentioning the difficulty level of these games... it seems like how people always talk about how great these titles are, but to me, due to the crazy difficulty level, they're just unplayable. But after seeing this review I might just have to give them another shot.
I beat empire strikes back too.
If you're gonna try, I suggest looking for the codes to open the debug menu, it has invincibility..
I played through and finished every one back in the day, I was hardcore back then. They are too hard for me today, but I found there are secrets you can look up to get an easy 99 lives or such that can let people access the enjoyment without *too* much frustration nowadays.
@@DemonChildCC Eww.
As others have said, I had no problem beating all three of these amazing games. And oh, how I loved the opening crawls and music. At the time, on my old CRT (with the VHF/UHF switch AND no remote) the games' openings felt like I was in the movies.
The Speederbike stages should have been a clone of 3D Death Race from the Spectrum (with a main menu option to play it for high score. That would have been awesome)
The Star Wars games were my favorite as a kid. After you beat them a couple of times you can do it rather easy on the harder difficulty settings as well. I never found them to be so hard. You just need to learn were the enemies might show up.
Personally, I always liked Super Return of the Jedi the least. I didn't really care for the level design because a lot of them were more open, but everything looks the same. I was playing it a couple months ago and got lost in the Rancor Pit. Eventually I reached a dead end and was like, "Am I back at the beginning of the level?" I gave up after that. Empire had some levels like that, too, but it wasn't as bad over all (except that Echo Base level with the elevators). Loved the Wicket levels because of the arrow jumping.
Super Empire Strikes Back comes in second. I love the addition of the force powers, but I found the game to be the most difficult of the bunch by a long shot (though I probably haven't gone through this one in decades). I was also disappointed with the lack of a character selection. Sure it makes sense story-wise, but I still missed it. I now know there is a code to make it available, but I didn't know it as a kid.
Super Star Wars is my favorite. Sure it lacks some of the improvements of the later games like the double jump and the password save, but I just know this game so well. I haven't thought of it as a difficult game in a long time. ... a long time. To be fair, that's probably because I would always load up on lives in that secret cave before you get the light saber, so I might have broke the intended difficulty. Plus I always played these games on Easy. I think the only difference between difficulties in all these games is how much health you start with. I was never Brave enough to go up to the next difficulty.
I never really thought of these games as Run 'n Guns, and it's always weird to me when people call them that. Heck, to get semanitcal, you can't even run and shoot in the same time in the first game. If anything, I would place them somewhere between a Run 'n Gun and a Mega Man because of a fair amount of platforming, but there are still lot of enemies.
cool!
Peter Dacey. Totally agree. It's a shame that Slave Leia was only available for one level. Sure it makes sense for the story, but she was a lot of fun to play as. It probably didn't help that her Rebel form in the shield generator stage is so generic and didn't have anything unique about it.
Peter Dacey I used to use the debug code all the time for the first game and had a lot of fun with that, but I never found the equivalent code for the later games back during the SNES generation. But yeah, I should look playing those games again with cheats. I might skip the Rancor Pit level, though.
Your thoughts echo mine. I played/rented each one as they came out, and always had a blast, but Empire and Jedi were brutal. Super Star Wars was the easiest to me (at least after Mos Eisley), and I distinctly recall beating it on Easy without too much difficulty. You might just need to put in a solid few days or a week of grinding.
Nice review! Vader really isn't that bad, though. I just fired up the game recently and beat him on Brave difficulty on my first try. He's not very aggressive, so when your health gets low you can just stay away from him and destroy debris until you get the force power-ups to heal. Even my freakin' non-gamer dad beat Vader back in the day!
Rented Super Star Wars in 1992 and played it for about a week and it was a tough game.I got through the first two levels maybe to the third but gave up after that. Picked up a copy of SSW about three years ago and giving the game another go. Ive played Star Wars Return of the Jedi on ZNES emulator on my PC eight years ago and enjoyed it. I might pick up the second and third SW game on SNES some day soon. Great insightful video!
I actually loved the first one of these. It was amazing. It was, out of all my cartridges, one of the ones that spent the most time in my system because it was that compelling and fun.
The Sandcrawler boss is maybe my favorite boss battle ever.
Great video! It's the third of yours I've watched today, and I'm _totally_ getting snesdrunk on them. But that might be my anxiety medication 😄
Thanks for taking the time to watch
I grew up with super return of the Jedi it was one of my favorites and I think the reason I got good was how awesome we thought Star wars was!
I remember watching this game being run by gamers on YTV during Saturday morning cartoons.... As a SEGA guy through and through these 3 games made me want to get a SNES
I have a pretty soft spot for these games in my heart~
Super Star Wars was my first Star Wars game, later I got the other two, and since I was a pretty die-hard Star Wars fan when I was little, I put in the effort to beat these games like I had never done for any game this difficult before...
It was on the lowest difficulty setting for each though...
Very enjoyable video on the series. Your mileage may vary with these games. I know many still love these, which is fine. I got a SNES in 1994, partly for the Star Wars games. I picked up Super Empire Strikes Back with my system. I "enjoyed" all three of those games at the time. After getting back into the old 8-bit and 16-bit games a number of years ago, I revisited all three. While I really wanted to like them, I just didn't anymore. I believe they got by on their presentation back when they were new. The level design and game balance are not good, in my opinion. In Empire, it's far too easy to slide around or get pushed into spikes in the opening stage. In Jedi, which I could beat back in the day, the first platforming stage has tons of blind jumps. The last time I played it, I did a blind jump and, when I landed, was immediately trapped and juggled in a corner by a standard enemy which depleted my entire life bar. Not good. And those boss fights are far too tedious to be fun to me. Again, I'm not knocking anyone who feels differently, or trying to change any minds. This is just how I feel about these games now. There are some who take issue when top-games lists for SNES omit these games, but I think it's that these games are quite polarizing, and with good reason.
I agree about that kind of jumping often being weird. However, in Sunsoft's Batman on the NES the jumping feels really good for some reason despite being similar.
ravagingwolverine
Your so WRONG!
These games are EXTREMELY fun and they will stand the test of time!
3 ICONIC titles!
my favorite is Super Return of the Jedi. it's by far the easiest of the 3. very fair difficulty. i don't think the others are unfair, just really hard. i have beat Super Star Wars on easy, no deaths. harder than ROTJ for sure, but beatable and worth the effort (i'm far from an expert). haven't tried empire strikes back a good serious attempt yet. usually play through it with game genie just for fun. seems like the hardest for sure. hopefully one day i'll beat it too, and will be able to say i've beat them all. great games
Fun fact: The pixel art for these games (and probably many others, though not often documented) was a fantastic drawing program Deluxe Paint 2. It was very good at this sort of creation and supported pretty much every platform at the time, not to mention a bevy of support for graphics extensions that we take for granted today but were ahead of their time way back then.
Sauce: Avid DXP2 user back in the 90s, and an EGM magazine that had shots of their sprite charts clearly open in DXP2.
I watched your video because when I rented this game as a kid. I couldn't get as far as the you. Most of my childhood was playing snes games. Glad I get to go back in nostagia and watch your videos. Have you done one on Earth worm Jim yet? That was another classic. Oh, the 90's and early 2000's lol.
Yes, here's EJ th-cam.com/video/FRxMtBz8O8A/w-d-xo.html
As a big Star Wars nerd back then, I got each one of these as they released and played them to death. Both then and now, I have to say that ESB is by far the most difficult. On anything above easy, a few of the early Hoth stages can be very punishing but where the game truly dials up the frustration is Cloud City. Particularly the first Han stage. The enemies are respawning damage-sponges with unavoidable attack patterns, the stage goes on forever and the boss has a ridiculous health bar.
RotJ might be the best of the trilogy overall. If you only play one of them, play that one. But honestly, I think the entire series is worth playing, even if you never beat them. Great graphics and music. Plenty of stage and enemy variety. Huge bosses. Every one of them blew me away back then and they are still worthy of your enjoyment.
I remember as a kid having no idea idea what I was supposed to do in speeder lever. I feel like I have memories of just flying along in every direction possible trying to figure out what the he'll was going on. I know I stopped playing at that level more than once before figuring it out.
To be fair the turricans also tend to make you take it slow, but there you also have the roll move to fall back on at times.
Out of these the third one is the only one I'd recommend today. I also liked the GG version of it. I have to disagree about Empire, while it does some things better than the first and the powers are cool it was the most frustrating one for me.
In a way they were all a step back from the first 8-bit one (SMS ver. is the best) in that they are just straightforward action games instead of action adventure but they do control better (well, 2 and 3) and have pretty nice presentation.
I hired SSW when it first came out from Blockbuster. I had to keep it a week and pay late fees as it was so damn hard to finish the game.
I beat all 3 games and I was really pleased with them! Not perfect, but fun!
I bought this for my Vita and I finally completed A New Hope on easy! By constantly saving it! lol. I never got past the sandcrawler as a kid at my cousins.
Perhaps the only chance we'll ever get to see Harrison Ford doing a front flip.
0:26 Wait, what? A PURPLE Lightsaber, a long time ago before Mace Windu?
I loved that you had an invincibility code on half the time. Not knocking at all... Just shows that these games are as tough as everyone says and you needed to use it to get decent footage! :)
Great coverage. Love these games.
5:58 they fly now
They fly now
1:29 You can crouch-fire. You have to hold down on the D-pad first and then start to fire. You can let go of the 'down D-pad' after that and shoot where ever. It's kind weird at first, but has a deliberate design that fits into how the game wants you to play and starts to become second nature.
You forgot to mention that the second two games got rid of the timer. I think it is helpful even though they gave you enough time to complete the level.
arbitrary timers like in mario are annoying
I'm glad someone said something about the timer! I knew I remembered it from one of them, I thought I was going crazy.
There is enough time -- except for the Sandcrawler exterior level, where a bad jump late in the level can set you back quite a way, as I recall.
With the Sandcrawler levels the game expects you to have gotten through Dune Sea without dying and getting the Flame blaster. Then it gives you an upgrade outside the Sandcrawler which gives you the homing seekers. Inside the crawler you get another upgrade to get the Rapid Ion, which can ricochet off surfaces. This is important to help you take out the turrets while mitigating damage by shooting at the floor to make the shots ricochet up at a 45 degree angle into the turrets' sponson. With the lightsaber don't waste your time doing Luke's up slash when his normal slash is a lot faster with less delay between swings.
These games look like they put a TON of effort into these titles. Nice reviews!
I’ve been waiting an eternity for a Super Star Wars Trilogy video. I love Super Star Wars and Super ROTJ. Some of my favorites. Haven’t played Empire because I hear it’s brutal. Thanks for the vid!
I remember renting these from Blockbuster back in the day…..and having some pretty miserable weekends.
I love these games. They are one of the few games I mastered. But it came with the price of hours of trial and error. Like every difficult game there are tricks to everything. Infamously the final stage of Return of the Jedi _ escaping the Death Star, here is the trick, don't use the directional pad to dodge walls that are zooming at you. Use the L and R buttons to strafe. It becomes much easier. Love you videos.
The first one and Jedi were the only games I had during the recession. Got to where I could wreck the first one. Keep up the great work SnesDrunk! Really enjoy your channel mate!
I remember that I found all three of these games in a used videogame store for like 5 bucks each. That was back when N64 first came out so they weren't too outdated yet. I had a lot of fun with them honestly.
Just bagged myself a SNES and deffo buying these three as well. I remember shows like Gamesmaster having contestants beat them for prizes. So cool
I remember how psyched I was to play this game when I saw it at blockbuster. Rented it and spent a weekend of frustration only making it inside the jawa crawler level, I think. All my platform intuition was useless! Super Empire Strikes back was better once I found it, also the Yoda continue screen was cool.
I haven't played this series yet but Hagane, Cybernator and Contra 3 seem better than these titles. But I look forward to giving this series a try at least. I love a good action challenge as long as the game is fair. Some parts seem iffy but if I can get pass those parts, than I could enjoy these games overall.
Once again, you've given one of the most fair and thorough yet concise reviews on a somewhat under-acknowledged game/series like this. I can agree with your thoughts completely -- essentially, they're all good games (with fantastic soundtracks! the SNES soundchip is a beast at recreating the orchestral John Williams sound!) but you have to kind of 'master' them to truly enjoy them, similar to many NES games like Ninja Gaiden. And yes, each is a bit more manageable and enjoyable than the last, though even the first is worth checking out if you're willing to work with it a bit more.
Me and my friends played threw them all, it's an epic trilogy all of its own.
God I remember being so jealous that sega didn’t have these. I would stare at the back of my Adventure magazine ad inserts for hours
super return of the Jedi is great, loved how stages were built to cater to a specific character. for example I found that stage 1 lends itself best to laya, stage 2 to Luke, the rancour stage to Han etc...
Thanks Drunk. Me and my brother played the first one a ton back in the '90s and could somehow make it to the Death Star but never beat it. I had all three of these put on my SNES Classic and your video has made me want to go back and try them. Great video
Thanks for taking the time to watch
Neat video, man. I totally agree with your ranking. But a few things.
The collision detection can be a little wonky, specially with the lightsaber & some of the blaster bolts. Like, you'll see the sprites overlap, but no collision is detected. The input detection can be a little off, and your character can & will jump or slide even after you release the jump button. And the random behavior of some of the floating enemies border on unfair.
On the flip side, most of the awkward shooting can be dealt with by squatting & shooting. (Press down, hold down the fire button, release down.) And the blind jumps can be avoided by looking down & up with the shoulder buttons.
Last but not least, in Super ESB, if you cancel out of a slide by firing a weapon, and continue to fire the weapon without moving, you're character is invincible until something moves him.
I was 20 when SSW came out, but it was a year or so later, once all three were available that I finally took the plunge and spent a small fortune buying all of them at once. Took me soooooooooo long to beat them all, and as I'd spent a lot of money on them (either £150 or £180, I forget now) in total (I live in the UK, and I picked these up on US import... 60hz) I didn't even think about buying another game until I was done. Great games, and a tremendous sense of satisfaction when completed.
Playing as these characters is badass and then there's Wicket the Ewok, haha
These games were difficult, but I have to thank my constant practice at the classic Contra series on Nes to take on these games. Easily the best part of my middle school days.
Perhaps my favorite bit of video game pride is that the SNES was the first console I owned and the first games I got with it were Mega Man X...and Super Star Wars. Loving the presentation of each and being really excited to own my own games for once, I had no concept that I had landed two of the most famous tougher games on the console...but at least that set my bar higher and made other games feel easy by comparison! As a bonus, for a number of years we only had a black-and-white TV to play on, and the lack of color was an extra handicap for an increased challenge. Whoo!
P.S. My siblings and I took turns playing when we first got started (we put SSW in first, of course) and would trade off after any death. Needless to say, none of us lasted in the playing chair for long that day - I was the first one who managed to simply get over the first tall hill with the first big scorpion in the opening level, and that took a while!
The key to that X--Wing level in Super Star Wars is to fly as low as possible.
Skim the surface of the Death Star and you'll fly faster so you can avoid enemy fire easier, and you'll also clip the TIE Fighter spawns so they won't appear as much. If you gain too much altitude in that level you'll end up flying more slowly and you'll leave yourself wide open to both tower and fighter attack.
Also, with regard to the jumping, use Right on the D-pad + B for most of your jumps; you get the same lateral distance as the Diagonal Up+Right/Left flipping jump, but it's way more manageable than the flip.
Oh - and in that first game (and for the majority of the other two) just forget about the lightsaber in straight combat - stick with the Plasma blaster, save for when you have to use it (ie: Vader).
Empire is easily the toughest game in the series, though, with Jedi being the easiest.
as a huge star wars fan i played all three of them a thousand times as a kid and never had any big problems beating them. i just knew them in and out, knew where all the secret blaster power-ups and health pick-ups were and the best strategies to beat the bosses. just completed them again on medium difficulty and at least the first and third really aren’t that hard if you know what you are doing. empire strikes back is a completely different beast though. that game is indeed very hard, but it is doable. the final boss fight against darth vader is one of the easiest boss fights of the trilogy though, if you know the right strategy. overall some of the best snes games ever made.
Thank you for this video, I think the best way to describe these games is they got better with each one. Adding and removing things like time limit (why), better controls, more music (why only a few songs in the first and second game?), more special weapons, more people to play as, and moving while shooting. For me the force powers didn't make a lot of sense. There are so many in the 2nd game that I'm not sure what all of them do but in the third the cut them down but didn't bring back the one I wanted which is levitate, why not? Also why did we have to find the force power ups in the game that were hidden? Still, love these games and went back not long ago and played them again.
Absolutely love Star wars growing up, these games were incredible! They were really hard though, I believe it used to game genie to actually play through the whole thing. Empire strikes back was probably my favorite with the horsepowers as well as return of the Jedi, but I like the first one too.
Excellent reviews - very fair. Had these for 20 years or so now - I had a lot of patience for Super Star Wars as a kid (played that sandcrawler soo many times) and I did learn how to beat it. I remember how satisfying that was. Just take your time and they are all doable - I'm not that great a player or anything. I can't beat Mario 3...
I remember playing and beating the first game, didn't play the others. I never thought it was overly hard, but then again back then I was lucky to get a game.
I am actually kind of proud that I managed to beat that game in a single sitting as a kid (no cheating)
True, that sitting took an entire day and several restart attempts but at the end of the day, the death star was blown to pieces.
But man this game was hard. One of the bosses I struggled most with was the one from the mos eisley cantina fight.
I beat it today in one sitting. Agree that the cantina fight was really tough. If you aggro him and push him back while stearing back in the middle of the jump using seeking you cann cheese him.
Thankyou for reviewing all three super Star Wars games as someone who has never played it and just got an original retro snes I may just get super Star Wars return of Jedi but at least you have done a good job of explaining the challenges and differences with each one great job 😎👍🏻
i still play this series to this day... i enjoyed the difficulty and made beating the game all the more satisfying.
This video reminded me of Gun Valkyrie on xbox. It was such a misunderstood game that people tried to play like Halo or other 3rd person shooter games. It got so-so reviews and basically dropped off the earth. But the game is actually intended to be played almost completely in the air using various maneuvers and is a blast to play like that. It's a completely different style which to be fair may not be for everyone but totally worth checking out.
My friend and I beat ROTJ on snes back in the 90s - love all three!
Not enough micro-transactions 😂😂
If EA headquarters were subjected to a terrorist attack I really wouldn’t give a toss
@Sadist Fake Bootleg Tiki wdym
These games are the most loaded games on SNES IMO, The characters, abilities, there are hundreds of sprites, crazy amounts of enemies, levels, gameplay modes. Theres so much going on its amazing
Had many a temper tantrum at these games as a kid. To my shame, I'd probably have one as an adult
H.D Beird lol. Yea. I use games tompurposely direct my everyday anger now. So now I'm not JUST mad about the game. I'm mad cause.....reasons......lol
I second your notion. Only was able to beat Empire with my brother.
There's no shame in a temper tantrum.
I had to cheat to win.. there's a code to open a debug menu for invincibility and other things..
Rated R Sports Cards & Games Oh I know. You best believe I sought them out in magazines for all three. Then they became the best games ever! 🤣
As a kid, I could never get over Luke's Wiffle Bat-sized lightsaber. I know they were going for motion blur, but no. Luke looks like Fred Flintstone wielding a comically oversized piece of Brontosaurus meat.
These were some of my favorite SNES games. They are difficult, but not impossible. Good thing about tough games is they last longer, they make you a better gamer, and when you do beat a level there is such a sense of accomplishment that isn't felt when you beat an easy videogame. I remember the first time my brother beat Return of the Jedi and I was so impressed because we had been playing that game for like 4 or 5 years at that point.
Halie Symmons with games like that, it's practice, practice, practice. I don't always like games that hold my hand for me. And you're right, the games do last longer and they become more fun once you're used to its system.
These 3 star wars games on the SNES are some of the best on the system, I absolutely love them!
Loved these games as a kid and managed to beat them. It's even more fun watching my kids play them today.
When I was about 9 or 10, I rented Super Return of the Jedi from Video Depot every few weeks to try to beat it (I love SW and it was the only SW game they carried for SNES). The Bib Fortuna boss fight was my biggest roadblock, but when I beat him and then the whole game, it felt like a massive accomplishment.
I forgot how hard these games are. Played these as a kid and loved them. I best Empire and Jedi once each, but I beat Star Wars three times. I'm wanting to play them again, but seeing this video I remember how difficult they were, and that was on a system I was familiar with. I'm not familiar with the SNES anymore, so I'd have to relearn it as I go. It'd probably be a bigger challenge than the first time lol
My first contact with these games was with Super RotJ. Played the other two (which I found even more difficult) but, for their time, they were some of the best Star Wars games available. At least I had my SW gaming at its best with later games on PC (Dark Forces, Shadows of the Empire, Jedi Knight, Battlefront, etc).