{"id":6106,"date":"2017-11-14T11:22:37","date_gmt":"2017-11-14T16:22:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/armchairarcade.com\/perspectives\/?p=6106"},"modified":"2017-11-14T11:22:37","modified_gmt":"2017-11-14T16:22:37","slug":"first-commercial-star-wars-videogame-not-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/armchairarcade.com\/perspectives\/2017\/11\/14\/first-commercial-star-wars-videogame-not-think\/","title":{"rendered":"The first commercial Star Wars videogame is not what you think"},"content":{"rendered":"

In early 1977, the RCA Studio II<\/a> became only the second programmable videogame console released, just after the late 1976 release of the Fairchild Video Entertainment System<\/a>\u00a0(VES\/Channel F) and several months before the mid-1977 release of the Atari Video Computer System<\/a> (VCS\/2600). To put it simply, the RCA Studio II was obsolete before it was released, with onboard keyboard controls and crude black and white graphics. Needless to say, the RCA Studio II was one of the first true console failures, discontinued just a year after its release and with only 10 games to its credit (not counting the 5 games and apps that were built-in).<\/p>\n

Interestingly, the technology did live on a bit longer outside the US, with several clone systems making their appearance. These systems sometimes featured color and became outlets for some of the Studio II’s in-development, previously unreleased titles. I highly recommend you check out the full AtariAge thread<\/a> on this class of systems, but one of the more interesting analyses was on a Star Wars<\/em> title, literally called Star Wars<\/em>, which you can see some extra info on here<\/a>\u00a0(and yes, there was no pretending it wasn’t based on the movie!).<\/p>\n