Based on the 1983 film of the same name, Atari‘s Return of the Jedi was first released into arcades in 1984, and the game uses 2D, rasterized graphics, instead of vector-based graphics, like the Star Wars arcade game does.

The Return of the Jedi arcade game is mostly depicted from an isometric viewpoint, and takes a few key scenes from the film and turns them into action sequences. The cabinet has analogue controls, shaped like futuristic handlebars, with three fire buttons.

The speeder bikes in Endor forest obviously feature, and in those levels you have to avoid Imperial speeders, Ewok traps, and other hazards, and get Princess Leia to the Ewok village. You also get to pilot the Millennium Falcon through the narrow recesses of the Death Star, and in space – depending on the difficulty level selected. And – on higher levels – there’s also a section where you (as Chewbacca) also get to commandeer an Imperial Scout Walker and take it through Endor’s forests.

I remember seeing this game in arcades when it first came out, and not being very impressed by it. Looking at it now, it looks like it was thrown together in a rush, and it doesn’t have much detail or imagination put into it. The gameplay is bare bones and the graphics are simple, sparse and even poor in places (the Star Destroyers in particular I think are pretty bad), which is surprising for a game as high profile as this.

What Return of the Jedi does have, though, is lots of digitised speech, which would have been impressive back in 1984, but sampled speech alone does not make for a good video game… And Return of the Jedi is not a good video game…

It’s worth noting too that The Empire Strikes Back arcade game actually came out after Return of the Jedi – in 1985 – which might seem strange to some, but I guess it took Atari some time to work out the licensing deals with Lucasfilm and therefore the releases got mixed-up.

More: Star Wars: Return of the Jedi on Wikipedia