First released: PC (1993)
Now Available On: N/A
The gaming industry was rocked this week by the news that Disney is shuttering LucasArts, a studio synonymous with vintage point-and-click adventures and fan-pleasing Star Wars games.
LucasArts made a name for itself in the early 1990s with titles such as The Secret of Monkey and Day of the Tentacle, but its focus in recent years has been firmly on its Star Wars license.
The studio began developing games based on George Lucas's magnum opus in-house in the early 1990s, the first of such projects being space combat simulator Star Wars: X-Wing, and this was soon followed by the landmark release Star Wars: Rebel Assault.
Although X-Wing was a critical and commercial success for LucasArts, Rebel Assault is of greater historic significance. Not only was it the first of the studio's offerings released exclusively on CD-ROM, the game's developers used the storage medium to create ground-breaking, pre-rendered 3D visuals.
Rebel Assault took place within and around the events of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope and followed a Rebel Alliance pilot known only as Rookie One, who could be either male or female depending on the player's preference. The supporting cast were all original creations, some of whom were reminiscent of characters from the epic cinematic trilogy.
Gameplay consisted of four mission types - three space flights and one on foot. The vehicular stages took place from first-person, third-person or overhead viewpoints, making Rebel Assault more varied than most linear shooters.
Stages included a training course on Tatooine, a battle on the ice-covered planet of Hoth, and that climactic run along the Death Star trench. There was an authentic Star Wars feel to each of these levels, thanks in no small part to the use of video footage from the movies and the inclusion of John Williams's iconic score.
The biggest draw of Rebel Assault was its use of 3D graphics and video footage. Although the clips and cut scenes look grainy and crude by today's standards, they were the pinnacle of CD-ROM technology at the time.
Some original footage was even filmed for the game and a Star Destroyer model was used to recreate some of the effects seen in the movie trilogy. Full voice acting heightened the sense of immersion and capped off this cinematic experience.
Rebel Assault may have been cinematically impressive, but the controls were a little on the ropey side, at least with the joysticks we owned. There was optional support for mouse, though this was even worse.
There was nothing original or rich about Rebel Assault from a gameplay perspective, yet the technology it was built on and its faithfulness to its source material struck all the right chords with both PC gamers and Star Wars fans.
The game was later ported to the CD-ROM-equipped consoles of the early 1990s, namely the 3DO and the Sega CD. The latter edition was considered inferior to the others due to its lower-resolution graphics and the omission of the game's most technologically demanding level.
LucasArts went on to develop far superior Star Wars titles, but Rebel Assault was an important release for the studio as the first of many hit CD-ROM offers that were instrumental in shaping the PC gaming landscape of the 1990s.
Do you have any fond memories of Star Wars: Rebel Assault? Post a comment below!
