SNES review 108 Super Empire Strikes Back

 I have tried as much as possible to review games in order when it comes to parts of a franchise/sequels for example I made sure I didn't review Donkey Kong Country 3 until I had reviewed the first and then the second entries in the series but I also said that I would not review a game I did not own. So when it came to the Super Star Wars games I reviewed Super Star Wars and then jumped to Super Return of The Jedi for a simple reason I didn't own Super Empire Strikes back. The truth is I had never owned Super Empire Strikes back not even as a kid, sure a friend had owned it and I had played it before but I had never owned and had a chance to really give it a proper go. I reviewed Return of the Jedi because I simply didn't think I would ever get Super Empire Strikes back, every time I saw it which wasn't often it was a lot of money, and to be honest it was more than I wanted to pay, to cut a long story short a few months ago I finally managed to get an American Cartridge only copy for what I considered to be a good price, I have sat on it since then knowing that at some stage I would play it and review it, so when did I play it? I started playing it after I heard the sad news that Carrie Fisher had passed away I guess this piece of sad news served as areminder that I had this game waiting for me, and I have decided that I have finally played enough of it to give a fair opinion on it.

So why didn't I get it as a kid? Well I guess in part because unlike a lot of other people of the original Star Wars films Empire was my least favourite, sure I like the snow speeder parts at the beginning a lot and its still a great film but I was always a Return of the Jedi fan the other reason was that I constantly heard about how much harder than StarWars it was and in truth as a child I had found StarWars hard, hard enough to be frustrating but still fun and overall just about manageable, I kind of thought that if it was tougher than this then it would simply be so hard that I wouldn't enjoy it. Plus lets remember as a kid you are very limited in how many games you can manage to get and if you spend all of your money on a game you then quickly get stuck on you might be stuck without a new game your actually managing to progress through for quiet a long time.

Well as you will probably know either from reading my review or another review or even from playing it Super Star Wars game was primarily a run and gun platformer with some Mode 7 levels thrown in to keep things fresh, well if you liked that then your in for more of the same here. The graphics are more or less the same there is not a massive jump in quality but they do feel slightly more polished especially when it comes to the Mode 7 focused ones. To the untrained eye you might look and go well its basically the same but with sand swapped out for snow, but its when you take a look at the enemy vehicles they are a lot clearer in Empire. The best new thing about Empire is that there is a password system. The length of Super Empire Strikes Back is roughly the same as that of Super Star Wars. However, with the added password system this not only means that you don't have to try to do the whole game in one it also means that if you keep a record of your passwords you can play the bits you like again and again without having to keep playing through the game until you get to them. This is great as there's a part later on in the game where you get to fly the Millennium Falcon and fight Tie Fighters in space. This looks and feels rather like a SNES version of the X-Wing and Tie Fighter games that were big on PC at the time of this games release. I can not tell you how many times I have returned to this part via password to play it again and again, there are entire flight based games on the SNES which are not as good as this little part of this game yes The Rocketeer I am looking right at you (as well as another title I have yet to review so wont name).

The difficulty is defiantly turned up from the first game which yes might be an issue if this is the first of these games that you grab but to be honest its not as hard as some people have made out if you have already played and finished the first game Super StarWars then most of the skills you learned will see you through the start of this game. This is where I will make a strange suggestion, nearly everyone knows the StarWars story, you will have seen the films probably countless times, if your my age then Christmas and New Years always seemed to be StarWars time with all of the films being shown during your Christmas holiday therefore I would say if you are going to grab one of these dont worry about the story order worry about the difficulty order. If you want to play them easiest first and work up to the hardest then in my opinion you should play Super Return of the Jedi, followed by Super StarWars and finally end with this game Super Empire Strikes back.

I have to say I really liked this game if you have played and liked any of the Super StarWars games then you will like this, it has the same high level of presentation with both graphics and sound effects that just scream StarWars. So if I was to give this game a score then what would I personally give it? Well I need to give it 7 out of 10, I really like it but I did enjoy both Super StarWars and Super Return of the Jedi just that little bit more. I spent around £15 on my American loose cart of Super Empire Strikes back but looking online at the moment your looking at something closer to £30 with boxed versions being more in the £60 to £70 price range. So is it worth it? Well that comes down to the individuals desire to own and play this game, I would certainly start with Super Star Wars or Super Return of the Jedi first, It might interest some people to know that Super StarWars can be got on the Playstation 4's download service for around £7 Yes this is the SNES version).