DAY 60 / GAME 60
Star Wars: Rebel Assault
I'm not sure I've ever so eagerly awaited a game as much as this one. I can't remember where I first saw it. It may have been my uncle's copy on the Sega CD, but either way I had seen so much as the Beggar's Canyon run and my mind was blown. I remember as a present from my now late grandmother I got some money to purchase a cd-rom for my PC. This was super exciting, but I really only wanted one for a single purpose; Rebel Assault.
Rebel Assault was a unique game, using a variety of still and video captures from the Star Wars movies as well as a ton of new pre-rendered video. It was essentially an on-rails shooter where you navigated pre-rendered paths. The levels pulled some of the best sequences from A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back, including levels on Tatooine, Hoth and the Death Star. I remember as a kid, being stuck as summer camp after having just bought this game. Every crevice and crack in the ground I pictured as Beggar's Canyon and imagined myself in a T-16 flying through over and over.
It's unfortunate that unlike most games I've talked about so far this one does not age well. The full motion video was highly compressed and although some of the sequences seemed innovative at the time they seem somewhat silly now. There's a cutscene or two where an Imperial Officer is talking to Darth Vader; the whole thing is just a still with video for just the lips. And if you're playing on PC, the video plays back based on clock speed. So when I went pack to play this after a few upgrades the game played back so fast you died almost immediately.
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It was great at the time though. This was one of the first games where I felt like I was flying some of the great ships of Star Wars and taking part in the fantastic battles of the films. It had a ton of music from the movies and all the sound effects of course. I remember I needed to upgrade my computer to play it. More than just the cd-rom, I need to go from 512k to 4mb of ram or else it wouldn't play with sound. A whole 4mb!
Star Wars: Rebel Assault
I'm not sure I've ever so eagerly awaited a game as much as this one. I can't remember where I first saw it. It may have been my uncle's copy on the Sega CD, but either way I had seen so much as the Beggar's Canyon run and my mind was blown. I remember as a present from my now late grandmother I got some money to purchase a cd-rom for my PC. This was super exciting, but I really only wanted one for a single purpose; Rebel Assault.Rebel Assault was a unique game, using a variety of still and video captures from the Star Wars movies as well as a ton of new pre-rendered video. It was essentially an on-rails shooter where you navigated pre-rendered paths. The levels pulled some of the best sequences from A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back, including levels on Tatooine, Hoth and the Death Star. I remember as a kid, being stuck as summer camp after having just bought this game. Every crevice and crack in the ground I pictured as Beggar's Canyon and imagined myself in a T-16 flying through over and over.
Great old game, I loved flying the snow speeder and shooting the walkers,
ReplyDeleteDid you ever play part 2?
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