Friday, November 11, 2011

Games: Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire (N64) Part 13

Well, although I didn't plan it that way, this seems to be my week for things ending.  I had the last of Stanley G. Weinbaum's van Maderpootz stories for Free Fiction last Saturday, and the last chapter of Undersea Kingdom on Tuesday (plus the last re-post of the edited version on Monday).  And now, more than 21 months after posting the first level of Shadows of the Empire, we finally come to the climactic Skyhook Battle, the concluding cutscenes, and the end credits.

I'm not sure where to go from here.  I taped a playthrough of Goldeneye for the N64 back in 2002.  For a while, I discounted the notion of posting it here, on the basis that it's not science fiction.  Then the other day, it occurred to me, Of course it's science fiction, you nincompoop.  It's about a plot to destroy London with a satellite weapon.  But it may be too early to start another long playthrough on the same system as Shadows of the Empire.  So I dunno.  I may do a few features on games for other systems, and then do Goldeneye.  Or not.

At any rate, I need to get going on replacing the few parts of the playthrough that I deleted when I (mistakenly) thought that my problems uploading new videos had to do with the fact that they were banned in some countries.

Thank you, all 22 or so of you out there who have watched this whole thing.



1:23 On this level, you get a free life with every fifteen fighters destroyed.

4:41 So what's the most lives it's possible to get?  Other times, playing this level, I've reached 60 kills.  I don't know if it's even possible to get to 75.

4:55 The control scheme changes for this last part of the level for some reason.  I frequently forget, and up firing a few missiles when I mean to fire blasters, as here.

5:05 Here, I'm just firing the rest to get a full supply again for when I go into the Skyhook.

6:38 I know some people can just fly around the reactor core, pounding it with more missiles when they reload.  For me, it's easier, if more time-consuming, to go out the next arm of the Skyhook, fly out a ways, turn around, and come back in again to fire on a new side of the core.

6:43 Again, shooting the last missile to get a new supply.

9:29 To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure what happened here: neither what sent me out of control, nor how I managed to damage the last side of the core with two wild shots.

10:00 I didn't run out of time; this is supposed to happen when you reach the end of the last arm.  (I'm not sure there even is a time limit.)

10:32 The timeframe of Shadows of the Empire stretches from the beginning of Empire to just before the beginning of Jedi.  Note that Leia is in the bounty hunter suit she wears into Jabba's palace.

10:57 So what does happen when you finish the game in Medium?  I did it back in the day, but it would take quite a while for me to repeat the feat now.  Fortunately, someone else has recorded it.  It's at the end of this post.

12:01 I never watched Freakazoid! so I needed Wikipedia to tell me that this is a gag credit which frequently appeared on that show, although it was most often spelled "Weena Mercator."

12:29 By this point in the credits, I always start thinking about the Atari 2600 days, when individual programmers created games all by themselves: design, music, graphics, everything.  (And sometimes it showed, as with Adventure's ducklike dragons.  But I digress.)

14:48 Then the credits just repeat.  I just put black over it in editing until the next music fade-out.

And here it is, the Medium-and-up ending. It starts at 1:55 of this video.

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