Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire

In the spirit of the season, with the release of the now-annual Star Wars film upon us, it is high time we think about some of the superlative video games from the movie franchise that marks the greatest marketing force in the history of commercialism. Perhaps the most acerbically underrated of the Star Wars games is Shadows of the Empire for the N64, long dismissed by critics as mediocre or even one of the worst Star Wars games when it is actually one of the best.

Dash Rendar

Shadows of the Empire puts the gamer in the boots of Dash Rendar, a rugged, stubble-chinned Star Wars version of Roland of Gilead (of Dark Tower fame), something of an interplanetary Clint Eastwood. His mission is to rescue Princess Leia from Prince Xizor, the overlord of what is basically an alien mafia. Rendar's quest begins at the battle of Hoth, in which he takes control of a Snowspeeder and helps fell AT-ATs with his skillful deployment of tow cables. The opening level's overall umwelt is nothing short of marvelous, particularly in terms of sound: from the squalling joints of the pachyderm-esque AT-STs to the mechanized chittering of the imperial drones (which has always sounded to this reviewer like they're muttering "Marilyn seems demure" over and over), the audio is spot-on. This is Hoth; you are in The Empire Strikes Back. The game is by no means just a spacecraft simulator; rather, it is a bounteous grab-bag of game types. For the subsequent stages of the Hoth mission, Shadows of the Empire becomes a third-person shooter—though the player has the option to go first-person, which your correspondent finds far more eminently playable and immersive compared to its over-the-shoulder alternative. After that, Rendar gets behind his ship’s gun turret to take out some TIE Fighters, turning the game into a space shooter—and an absorbing one at that. Then the game becomes an outright platformer when Rendar traverses speeding railcars on Ord Mantell, a level that is the apotheosis of the George Lucas experience, all narrowing paths and hair's breadth escapes. Shadows of the Empire even has racing elements, as the unwieldy, breakneck swoop-bike pursuit on Mos Eisley is essentially a chase to the finish.

All of these vastly diverse gameplay components are handled very competently. Some are almost too competent, and in this way, Shadows of the Empire is a victim of its own outstanding features. So good is the Hoth level, in fact, that some have complained the rest of the game pales in comparison. This had repercussions, as later Star Wars games for Nintendo systems, namely the stellar Rogue Squadron series, focused exclusively on this spacecraft-simulator aspect. Ultimately, Shadows of the Empire leans fairly heavily on the third/first-person running and gunning, and this is, admittedly, not quite as captivating as what happens in the air over Hoth. This is precisely the criticism levied by Allgame's Scott Alan Marriott. In a quote this reviewer admits was lifted directly from Wikipedia, Marriott calls the on-foot levels “rather boring, probably due to the less involving third-person perspective.” In response to Mr. Marriot and anyone else with this particular critique, I would suggest they’re playing Shadows of the Empire the wrong way. Switch to first-person. It is real dread you’ll feel when you swing around to run from the angered Wampas’ ponderous pursuit.

This sort of immersion is the principal strength of Shadows of the Empire. The sound-effects, in concert with John Williams' score, make for a thoroughly cinematic feel, as do the graphics which, while somewhat blocky, still benefit from stirring shading effects and gritty, textured backdrops. When seen and heard in first-person, this all contributes to a far more convincing experience of the Star Wars umwelt than comparable games of the time, such as the PlayStation FPS offering Star Wars: Dark Forces, which feels more like the original Doom or Powerslave than it does a true Star Wars game. And that, your correspondent submits to you, dear reader, is what Star Wars is: a series of familiar sounds and images and feelings that are all at once compelling and comforting. Shadows of the Empire has all these crucial evocations, and not only lets you participate within them, but it lets you do so in so many different ways (shooting, flying, racing, and so forth). How, then, can we deny Shadows of the Empire is one of the best Star Wars video games? There are far too many kinds of quality within it to write it off.

NHL Hockey

The 1977 film Slap Shot is, without the hyperbole often mistaken for wit by millennial writers, a period piece of extraordinary genius. Over the course of the late sixties and seventies, with the NHL's expansion from six to twenty-one teams alongside the formation of the rival World Hockey Association, the employment opportunities for minor league hockey players substantially burgeoned. The corollary, however, was that the talent level of "major league" hockey dropped considerably. Skill and finesse were no longer the definitive capacities of an effective hockey player. By the mid-seventies players could participate in the bigs by virtue of sheer physical presence alone. The Philadelphia Flyers are a case in point. Their lineup consisted almost entirely of goons, and they became the first of the expansion teams to win the Stanley Cup, doing so largely on the grounds of intimidation, which earned them their "Broad Street Bullies" nickname with good cause. Faced with so many new and unusual hockey markets, the increase in fighting, stick-swinging and bench-clearing brawls served another crucial purpose: it kept people from places like Birmingham, Alabama and Oakland, California coming to the rinks, even if rudimentary skills like skating and passing were lacking. Slap Shot, then, impeccably captured hockey of its time—a brutally violent roller-derby on ice, its characters as fit for a professional wrestling ring as they were for a rink.

Few if any video games have accurately simulated hockey’s Crimson Age, and perhaps never will (though the 2K series has come close). That said, if you'd like to partake in something comparable to the perfect entertainment that is Slap Shot, then the original NHL Hockey by Electronic Arts is your ticket. To be certain, NHL Hockey’s sequel NHL 94 is the best game in the decades-old series due to its breezy gameplay and full license, but it lacks one crucial element that its predecessor has in spades: full-bore fistic fracases. While NHL 94 took the moral high ground and eliminated fighting entirely (by diktat of the NHL itself), the primordial game in the series was not nearly as virtuous, placing no limit upon fisticuffs. Occasionally, these fights break out during the course of gameplay, but the real goonery happens after the whistle. Body-check a few members of the opposition when play is stopped, and eventually one of them will drop the gloves. In due time, the penalty boxes will look like player's benches. NHL Hockey is, unfortunately, not up to the standard of NHL 94 in terms of pace, nor does it contain the all-important one-time shot, but again, like a hockey fan in Birmingham, Alabama, you're not at the rink for the ice capades. You're there to go to war.

Though the endless stream of fights may temporarily stave our bloodlust, NHL Hockey still leaves us wanting more. With all these post-whistle cheap shots, why aren't other players skating in to save their fallen line-mates? Why aren't the designated fighters spilling off the bench? What your correspondent really wants to know is: where are line-brawls? Where are the bench-clearing brouhahas? The 16-bit NHL Hockey obviously lacked the technology to simulate such multi-man free-for-alls, and certainly the National Hockey League would never approve of such gratuitous violence—at least not involving more than two players. But nowadays, we have systems capable of putting 12 or even 40 players on the ice. Why can't an intrepid little developer make a game that is one part non-licensed 70's hockey simulation, another part real-time strategy? When brawls break out, the controlling player could then set match-ups between various forwards, defensemen and goalies, methodically taking out the other team's marquee players en route to gooning their way to victory. And it doesn't even have to be unlicensed: get the Slap Shot rights from Universal Pictures and let the Charlestown Chiefs and Syracuse Bulldogs settle things once and for all, without (spoiler alert!) having to rely on a male striptease as the deciding factor.