Star Wars is an arcade game produced by Atari Inc. and released in 1983. The game is a first-person space simulation game featuring the attack on the Death Star from the final act of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. The game consists of 3D color vector graphics.
The player assumes the role of Luke Skywalker ("The Red Five") as he pilots an x-wing fighter in first person. Unlike other arcade games of its kind, the player does not have to destroy all enemies in order to progress through the game; he must simply survive as his fighter flies through the level, which more often than not means he must avoid or destroy shots that fire enemies. Each hit on his ship removes one shield (of the six he started with), and if he runs out of the shields and takes another hit, the game ends.
The player's ultimate goal is to destroy the Death Star through three attack phases.
In the first stage of the game, the player starts in outer space above the death star. He must get involved in a dog fight with Darth Vader and enemy fighters.
In the second stage (occurs starting from the second wave), the player reaches the surface of the death star as the laser turrets on the towers rise to counter the player. If the player manages to destroy all the towers, he gets a significant increase in the score.
In the latter case, the player finds themselves running through the trenches of the death star, avoiding obstacles and blowing up turrets, until finally firing a proton torpedo at the right time to hit the exhaust port directly. How, if the player is successful, is the Death Star exploding in a variety of different colors, plus granting one bonus shield (at factory settings). If the player manages to destroy the Death Star without firing at everything, but at the exhaust port, then he will receive a significant bonus for "by force".
The game then returns to the first phase again. Each subsequent Death Star destroyed greatly increases the difficulty: tie fighters fire more often, there are more laser towers and guns in the second round, and there are many obstacles and laser fire during the attack. Unlike the movie, where units shoot beams that look like lasers, the enemy units in this game shoot projectiles that look like fireballs in order to give the player a chance to destroy the fireballs.