Happy Star Wars Day everyone! To celebrate, I wanted to talk about one of the oldest Star Wars game ever made– Star Wars: Jedi Arena, which is a a 2D overhead shooter video game published by Parker Brothers in 1983 exclusively for the Atari 2600.
The above picture shows my VGA-graded copy that I managed to snag on eBay for less than $50. I don’t own very many VGA-graded games, aside from the ones that I submitted myself, nor do I plan on expanding my VGA-graded collection much further. But when I saw Star Wars: Jedi Arena, I had to have a VGA-graded copy.
I love the cover for the game. It depicts Luke Skywalker in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope when he was training with his lightsaber with the Seeker, which is the same scene the game is based on.
In the game, two Jedi Knights, one blue and one red, face each other during lightsaber training. Player one is blue, the red Jedi is either another human player or computer controlled opponent. The player controls his lightsaber with the paddle controller, defending himself from the laser blasts coming from the Seeker ball, fired by the opponent.
The Seeker will regularly go wild and fire laser blasts randomly. The objective of the game is to fire laser blasts from the Seeker at the opponent’s shield and finally the opponent himself. The game has four difficulty levels, changing the Seeker’s speed, in the highest level the Seeker is invisible. The game ends when one player has received three direct hits.
The controls take some getting used to. And once you figure them out, the game is monotonous and boring. You probably wouldn’t want to play it for more than ten minutes. If you want to play a better Star Wars game for the Atari 2600, check out Return of the Jedi or The Empire Strikes Back– not incredible games, but much more playable than Jedi Arena.
My all time favorite Star Wars video game is still Star Wars: Battlefront 2 for Playstation 2 and XBOX. And my favorite Star Wars-themed piece in my video game collection is still my R2-D2 XBOX 360 with C3PO controller, which I’ll feature on a later day. So what’s your all-time favorite Star Wars video game or memory? Let me know in the comment section.
For an awesome video analysis of Star Wars: Jedi Arena, check out the Angry Video Game Nerd’s review of many of the earliest Star Wars title: