Let’s take a look at video games’ favourite scene from the Star Wars series: the battle of Hoth. Developers have been trying for over 30 years to get it right. Which is your favourite?
This post has been updated since it was originally published.
1982: The Atari 2600 presents The Empire Strikes Back with the abstract-painting level of technology gamers were stuck with back then.
1985: Atari’s follow-up to the 1983 Star Wars Arcade Game, The Empire Strikes Back, used vector graphics to recreate the epic battle.
1992: The Empire Strikes Back for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Hoth’s looking good here. Impressive snow-speeder turning radius
1993: What a difference a year makes. Let’s take it to the Super Nintendo for some Super Empire Strikes Back. This is, I believe, the least-authentic Hoth level we’ve seen in a game. Or were there actually floating hearts in the movie and I missed them? (Warning: NSFW language in this clip.)
1993: This year also saw the release of Star Wars: Rebel Assault for the PC, Sega CD, Mac, and 3DO, the first CD-only game published by LucasArts, with one of the best looking on-rails Hoth battles to date.
1996: Here we see Snow Speeders battling AT-ATs in one of the first Nintendo 64 games, Star Wars: Shadow of the Empire. Note the verrry simple radar. But I remember this level blowing my mind. It was like I was playing the movie!
1997: And then there was Star Wars: Masters of Teras Kasi, a fighting game that featured a Hoth stage.
1998: Sega’s Star Wars Trilogy Arcade marks Hoth’s return to the arcade, keeping the action on rails but filling in the wire frames.
1999: Back to the Nintendo 64, three years later. This is Star Wars: Rogue Squadron. The AT-ATs look better. The radar is way better. And we’ve got some voice acting.
2000: Luxoflux of Vigilante 8 fame developed Star Wars: Demolition, a vehicular combat game that featured the Hoth battle as a backdrop to fights between “vehicles” like Boba Fett and the Rancor.
2001: New console. Nintendo GameCube. But same development studio as the previous one, the now-defunct Factor 5. This is video game Hoth and this is a leap up.
2001: And who can forget the real-time strategy take on Hoth from Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds?
2003: Factor 5 does Hoth again, and does it with Luke on foot and on Tauntaun. Madness.
2004: First Star Wars Battlefront. Hoth on foot. On Xbox, PS2, PC.
2006: But what if Hoth was a Lego playland? What if the battle there was just a tad more cheerful? Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy answers those questions.
2006: In the same year, we had Star Wars Battlefront II doing Hoth on foot.
2008: The Battle of Echo Base went massively multiplayer as an instance in Sony Online Entertainment’s Star Wars Galaxies.
2009: The Hoth expansion for Star Wars: Force Unleashed takes the battle to a more personal level.
2015: EA’s Star Wars: Battlefront brings us the most “realistic” version of Hoth yet.
2017: Battlefront 2 featured Hoth once more, although on a slightly larger scale than its predecessor.
Comments
19 responses to “Hoth In Video Games: A Thirty-Year Battle”
Shadows of the Empire will always be the “true” Hoth to me.
Never really liked the Rogue Leader one, even though it’s probably my most favourite of the Star Wars games.
Hells yeah, Shadows was prob my first and most memorable, especially with all those cheats that let you muck in so many ways, like jumping in to any vehicle and character.
Battlefront 2 was pretty awesome too.
You missed one..
(not strictly Star Wars, but the same theme..)
Pretty sure I’ve taken out 1 or 2 Walkers with my harpoon gun…
Yeah, that is the point of Walker Assault, how did Stephen come up with that comment.
In the Mission – Invasion, you do this non stop.
Same. Though to be fair there’s very little focus on using the speeders for harpooning compared to just pummelling the AT-ATs with blaster fire.
Rogue squadron followed by the Atari version. Hunting for the damn flashing dot, good times
Rogue Squadron was always my favourite. You also missed Old Republic! That was definitely a worthy inclusion.
Add another for 2015
Disney Infinity 3.0: Rise of the Empire.
Not the most realistic, but certainly a whole lot of fun.
I have fond memories of Shadow of the Empire and Rogue Squadron but both haven’t really aged well like a lot of the early 3D games on the N64.
Gamecube still holds up pretty well in my books…. and yeah for everyone who whines about battlefront, have a look at it’s compadres and tell me it doesn’t look amazing. It’s a bit of a hollow experience overall, but for a star wars fan it’s still incredible.
Shadows and Battlefront were just too good for their times.
oh man that AoEII clone was simultaneously the lamest and most awesome thing ever
somebody should remaster that haha but I think I still have my CDs somewhere
I haven’t had any luck getting it to work properly on Windows 10, the colours are all screwed up and its pretty unstable.
Its a shame because I would love to give it another go.
oh that’s a shame, i see it on steam, half way tempted to get it since it’s like 5 bucks and see if it works heh
@sielinth @piratepete there’s a community patch that fixes the errors for most people https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=636984276
Most recent star wars movie has already done this…
Rogue squadron was my first and favourite hoth gaming experience. Still own my old GameCube still own the mini CD. There’s still a thill harpooning those AT-ATS that battlefront just didn’t capture despite the better graphics.
Shadows of the Empire and Rogue Squadron did it best IMO.