Off the back of some of my youthful pie-in-the-sky posts on the Spectrum Computing forum, I got talking with Will Brooker (professor of film and cultural studies at Kingston University and an author of several books of cultural studies) about the general concept of videogames as movie adaptations. He challenged me to create a pitch for a new game based upon The Empire Strikes Back, as it might/could have been made for the Spectrum, circa 1988, to accompany an article he was planning to write about movie adaptations on the ZX Spectrum - "A Limit Case In Adaptation: 1980s Video Games and Contemporary Movies".
Obviously, there are official Star Wars games - DoMark's conversions of the Atari arcade games for the Spectrum, not to mention those on the consoles as well - that can't be completely ignored. Also, by 1988, Lucasfilm were taking charge of their properties and either creating games in-house, or at least publishing themselves, having outsourced development. Additionally, there's the fact that Ocean Software Ltd produced some amazing movie adaptations - possibly the most consistent in terms of overall quality and (attempted) fidelity to the source material, Batman (1989) and RoboCop being prime examples - and I wanted to aim for that sort of feel.
Ultimately, I felt that the design should:
- Be as original as possible (in the sense of using as little as possible from existing Star Wars games), within the limits of what was possible on the ZX Spectrum back in 1988.
- Present as something that would be possible for both 48K and 128K machines.
- Have a discernible ‘Star Wars’ feel in its presentation.
- Follow at least part of the ESB story, preferably more than one scene, and without deviating too far from the established story.
- Take advantage of the hypothetical ‘licence’ as far as possible (scenery, music, etc.).
- Give the player access to as many vehicles and weapons from ESB as possible.
- Offer at least one lightsaber battle.
- Use more than one character throughout, maybe those who don’t often appear as player characters in games.
I figured that a fairly simplistic, horizontally-scrolling format would be within the capabilities of the Speccy - it's a common enough style, and plenty of excellent examples exist. As a result, some sections of my design ended up similar to existing games (one or two of the Hoth sections, in particular, are quite like the Atari 2600 game, more recently adapted to the C64). On the upside, that ended up making it a little easier to develop some screenshot mockups, which Brooker had requested to accompany the text description.
Now, until about 2018, I hadn't done much pixel art - even for my own purposes - in at least two decades, so starting work on The Lower Caverns reminded me how much I enjoyed it. Even so, as long as it had been since I did any significant pixel art for the SAM Coupé, it had been even longer since I'd done anything for the Spectrum, so I was expecting to find myself pretty rusty. I don't have easy access to a Spectrum and my copy of The Artist II anymore, so I knew I'd have to do the work either on the SAM, using Flash! (not my preferred option, these days), or find a Windows-based pixel art package that could emulate the Spectrum's resolution and 8x8 pixel, 2-colour attribute blocks. To this end, I downloaded Multipaint.
To start things off, I began with the idea of having the game window as large as possible, while still allowing space for things like the score, lives counter, health bar, etc. and, of course, the all-important Star Wars branding. I roughed out two initial options - one tailored to horizontal scrolling, the other potentially accommodating multi-directional scrolling, and possibly an overhead perspective. Normally, I hate designing UI elements like this, but I'm certainly quite happy with the vertical arrangement... and the later version of the horizontal arrangement, featured in the 'finished' screenshots further down, turned out quite well.
Of course, while I don't much like UI design, I am a complete font nerd, so I spent a good long while looking for a font that would work within the Spectrum's 8x8 pixel character blocks, ending up with an approximation of AnakinMono by opipik. On a whim, I decided to put together an alternative set of numerals, based upon the targeting display on an X-Wing, and ended up preferring these to the adapted AnakinMono numerals, so they became the default.
Now, unencumbered as I am with any understanding of the coding side, there's always the risk that I'll come up with something completely unfeasible, so I sought advice from experienced ZX Spectrum coders via the Spectrum For Everyone Facebook group, to better ensure the appearance of authenticity and the feasibility of the design. I was advised by coder Allan Turvey to limit the play area to a maximum of two strips of 256x64 pixels (so, preferably a single area of 256x128 pixels) and then, ideally, leave some blank space on one side of the play area to accommodate a buffer for scrolling. He recommended 16 pixels, but I ended up going with 16 pixels on both sides, reducing the play area to 224x128 pixels.
Brooker's schedule for his article wasn't particularly tight but, since I wasn't going to be paid for any of this, and images were only needed as 'proof of concept' rather than assets to be used in development of an actual game, I wanted to take as many shortcuts as possible. This meant everything from using assets from existing games as reference, to using Photoshop to downgrade photographic assets.
Character sprites (and some scenery) were mostly based on the SNES Super Star Wars series, while the Tauntaun and Snowspeeder are based upon the NES game. Elements like the AT-ST and AT-AT were based on prop photos, reduced to a Spectrum-friendly size, then traced over in Photoshop. Smaller elements, like the Snowtrooper, the Millennium Falcon and TIE Fighters were created from scratch, while larger elements, like the Star Destroyer and the Exogorth were converted to 1-bit in Photoshop. I also used a desert background from one of the Metal Slug games as the basis for Hoth's snowscapes, but converted it manually in Photoshop. Complete screen mockups were assembled using Multipaint, to ensure fidelity to the graphical limits of the ZX Spectrum.
I won't go into detail on my game design here, since the full design document is available on my website. Essentially, though, the movie is broken down into six levels of game, across four main locations, and (hopefully) covering the main story beats, as follows:
Hoth:
Level 1: The Empire tracks the Rebels
Plot-central sequence establishing how/where the story begins, in which the tide is shown to have turned against the Rebellion, despite the destruction of the Death Star, as described in the movie’s opening text crawl.
Phase 1 - Luke investigating probes
Phase 2 - Han rescuing Luke
Level 2: Assault on the Rebel base
First major battle sequence. Arranged much like the Atari 2600/C64 Empire game, but set over just two waves rather than repeating endlessly with increasing difficulty/enemy numbers.
Phase 1 - vs AT-STs and ground troops, possibly split into a couple of waves of increasing difficulty.
Phase 2 - vs AT-STs and AT-ATs moving toward the Rebels’ power station, possibly split into a couple of waves of increasing difficulty.
Dagobah:
Level 3: Luke’s training with Yoda
Deep Space:
Level 4: Millennium Falcon escape/asteroid field
Phase 1: Navigate the asteroid belt, find a safe place for repairs.
Phase 2: Escape ‘collapsing’ asteroid, shoot more TIE Fighters, etc. before knocking out the Star Destroyer and Hyperspacing away.
Bespin/Cloud City:
Level 5: Cloud City
Phase 1: Lando rescuing Leia and Chewbacca, rendezvous with Luke to use R2 D2.
Phase 2: Leia chasing Boba Fett/trying to rescue Han.
Phase 3: Cloud City escape: get Lando, Leia, Chewbacca and R2 back to the Millennium Falcon.
Finale: Luke’s duel with Vader
Phase 1: In the cryogenics room
Phase 2: In the ventilation shaft
(Didn't do a screenshot for this!)
And then, if the player completed they game, they see a recreation of the final scene of the movie - Luke and Leia, with 3PO and R2, watching the Millennium Falcon fly off from a window on the Rebels’ medical barge. This was converted from a screen capture found online, via BMP2SCR EXP, created by Leszek Chmielewski, then tweaked in Multipaint to add a bit more colour.
As well as including them with the final document I sent to Will Brooker, I posted these screenshots to the Design/Ideas thread on the Spectrum Computing forum, uploaded them to my DeviantArt account and my (at the time, newly-created) ZXArt account, and shared them with other members of the Greenford Computer Club. Posting to the forum led to a couple of the coders developing 'Star Wars Text Crawl' routines - one for the Spectrum (by Joefish) , the other repurposed for MODE 3 on the SAM Coupé (by FlatDuckRecords) - for a slideshow demo I put together.
I even had a musician offer to create an AY arrangement of the Star Wars main theme... and the sample he sent me was so good, it led me to hold off publishing the finished slideshow demo in SAM Coupé .dsk form till he's finished it.
Quite a few people have said they'd love to see this game happen, including one very insistent member of the GCC... I'd just need to find a coder with enough spare time, willing to give it a try...
...And then knuckle down and create full animations for all the sprites, complete backgrounds (or the tiles to build them) for each and every level... and probably countless other things I haven't yet considered.
...And then brace myself for the inevitable Cease & Desist letter from Disney.
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