The Making Of: Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

http://media.edge-online.com/wp-cont...rt-610x343.jpgThere’s only one way to start this story. A long time ago, in a videogame universe far, far away, there was a videogame console called the Atari VCS. Upon its release, thirdparty licensing deals did not exist, meaning that there was just one company that initially programmed games for Atari’s console: Atari.It was a monopoly that couldn’t last. First came breakaway group Activision. Then Parker Brothers, the creator of Monopoly – as well as Cluedo and Risk – threw its hat into the ring too. The story of how the venerable toy company beat Atari at its own game and created the first ever Star Wars outing is a tale of pluck, courage and what a small band of rebels can do when they sneak in under the radar.“Parker Brothers was just a typical Yankee board game manufacturer,” remembers The Empire Strikes Back’s programmer, Rex Bradford, who joined the company in the summer of 1981. “Making videogames was a new kind of thing for them.” Originally hired to work on Parker Brothers’ lucrative handheld electronic toys – a booming business after the company’s smash-hit Merlin in 1978 – the young University of Massachusetts graduate quickly learned that his new bosses had their eyes on the VCS market.“It was like David and Goliath,” says Bill Bracy, then marketing manager at Parker Brothers. “Atari was a behemoth in the industry and totally controlled an enormous volume. But they were vulnerable in the software aspect because, unlike Nintendo, they hadn’t been able to secure a monopoly on the hardware and software.” Making a leap from what Bracy calls its history of “tortured cardboard”, Parker Brothers agreed with Lucasfilm to license games based on Star Wars across all platforms.Unwilling to tie itself to only licensing games for Atari’s console, Lucasfilm took the bait and Parker Brothers quickly set up its videogame development team, a secret ‘skunk works’ group comprised of Bradford, Bracy, programmer Mark Lesser, designer Sam Kjellman and project manager Richard Stearns, taking up residence on the top floor of the company’s corporate headquarters in Beverly, Massachusetts.

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