Starhawk was the first arcade game ever released to be based on the film Star Wars. This game literally came out right after the movie. This was an unlicensed translation, but the Tie Fighters and the Death Star inspired background are obvious. This was only the second or third game in history to use an X-Y monitor, and it had graphics that were above and beyond anything else that was available in 1977. This game was programmed by Tim Skelly, and he did the entire game on paper using opcodes, as the development tools for the platform had not been written yet. Supposedly his code worked the first time too!
Starhawk is a timed game where you are in a spaceship blasting Tie Fighters, um, I mean enemy spacecraft. Below you is an ever moving landscape that looks like the surface of a mechanical planet, just imagine the Death Star with a big trench in it. All you have to do is move your crosshairs around the screen and shoot everything in sight. You can change the speed of your crosshairs by pressing one of three speed buttons on the control panel. The game is time based, and if you zap enough enemies than the game continues. A really good player can pretty much play this game until her arm falls off. There is one target of note though, there is a ship that appears from time to time that looks different than the rest of them. If you miss this ship then you will lose 800 points, or if you hit it you will gain 800 points. So don't miss that one.
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