Disclosure: This review is based on playing the original Super Nintendo cart shortly after the Virtual Console version was released. Research suggested there are no significant differences between it and the Virtual Console version (accurate emulation is the entire point of the VC service, after all), so I reasonably believe this review covers both releases; they’re the same game.

The Star Wars universe has been an obvious setting for games across a variety of genres. Early PC releases like X-Wing and TIE Fighter were top-notch space combat games, platformers have been a popular choice over the years, and there have even been a few RPGs. Some of these are still very good games today, but that isn’t the case with Super Star Wars. Primarily a side-scrolling platformer, this game offered some very real innovation when it was first released in the early 90s yet suffers from very bad design choices.

As a side-scrolling platformer with a ’run and gun’ style of play, Super Star Wars can be compared to Megaman in many ways, and Metroid to a much lesser extent (it has similar controls, but very little of Metroid’s exploration comes up here). Most stages have you run from left to right, blasting the hordes of enemies that get in your way, until you either reach the exit or the stage’s boss. You can collect various power-ups to improve your weapon, restore health, and even blast the screen with a thermal detonator explosion, so most of the genre’s typical aspects are accounted for. You even get to play as different characters as you go along, with Luke, Han, and Chewbacca all having their own advantages.

Interestingly, not all of this game’s roughly dozen stages are platforming ones. A few of them are vehicle levels, letting you control Luke’s landspeeder early in the game and even an X-Wing for the Death Star attack. This was an interesting choice back then, though these levels play somewhat clumsily by today’s standards. But far more troublesome are some of the platforming stages, as a few of them have instant-death traps where you are given very little warning to deal with them. Death also often means being sent quite far back in the level, and with no weapon upgrades; some stages get very frustrating in light of this. While Super Star Wars isn’t impossible to beat, it definitely holds to the ’old school’ of platformer play, and this just isn’t as fun today as it was back then.

As far as the overall presentation (graphics, music, and other such things) go, Super Star Wars is fairly good and has only minor issues. The graphics were certainly decent for their time, doing a good job showing off the sci-fi setting. Likewise, much of the music and sound effects are pretty good reproductions of the movie’s, at least as good as the Super Nintendo could do. The only real snag is the plot, which takes a few ’creative liberties’ for the sake of gameplay; Luke in the movie would peacefully trade with the Jawas for new droids, but in the game he just storms onto their sandcrawler, shoots dozens or more of them, and just takes R2-D2. This doesn’t hurt my opinion of the game much, but it is still odd. Beyond the modified plot, this game definitely looks and feels like Star Wars.

Ultimately, the 800 Nintendo Point ($8 USD) price is hard to justify. While the game isn’t impossible to beat, it is indeed hard and has more than a few cheap situations that will frustrate some players. There are those who would say this is part of the game’s old school charm, and if you’re in that group then you’ll love this. But to everyone else, I think you’d do much better to look up other platformers on the Virtual Console and WiiWare service, there are some rather good ones in the same basic price range as Super Star Wars and those would be a better way to spend your money.