Star Wars Conundrum

Just finished watching the Star Wars movies again :-)

The blu-ray player "upgrade" (ok, it is an upgrade cos it'll play 3d but I'm not convinced about the engineering) gave me an excuse to acquire the newly released Star Wars blurays. They're definitely an improvement on the dvds :-) George Lucas has played with the content again though, introducing some questionable changes. The sad thing about the tweaks is that the tweaks coming in recently are wholly lacking in any value or meaning. Changing the krayt dragon noise that Kenobi makes ? Why - there's no point. It doesn't add any value and arguably takes value away.

That aside, the blu-ray movies look stellar, showing off the quality of the original prints (probably enhanced a little along the way). It's the best you'll ever see Star Wars, although if they bring out a £d special edition (meant 3d but my finger slipped freudian-like over the shift key) then I'll be avoiding it.

What's the conundrum ? You see there's a long series of Star Wars books out there that pick up the story and run with it. I've not read them all, partly because the New Jedi Order series soured the books for me and I don't buy the books any more due to that. However ... the conundrum comes because 3 authors in particular write Star Wars better than the movies.

That's :

Timothy Zahn with the original Post Movie Trilogy, where the Rebellion has become the Republic. It's not smooth sailing though as the last Grand Admiral of the Empire, Thrawn, has returned from out of shadows wanting to resurrect the Empire in his name.

Michael A. Stackpole comes in with the outstanding X Wing Rogue Squadron series. These slot in before the Thrawn trilogy focusing on "how the Republic was won". You see, the events in Return of the Jedi are just one battle in a much bigger war. The Rogue Squadron series follows lesser known characters under the leadership of Wedge Antilles, who was Red 2 from A New Hope and also appeared in Empire and Jedi. In these books, all bets are off as far as the characters are concerned. Body count is high ... which keeps the reader guessing as to what's going to happen.

Aaron Allston brings in the follow up to Rogue Squadron, with Antilles starting up a squadron of misfits. Call it The Dirty Dozen in space. They're not criminals, they're just pilots on their last chances. These are an excellent successor to the Rogue Squadron books, grittier and funnier at the same time.

The thing about Stackpole and Allston is that they keep the humour running through their books. Which really ups the interest level in the reader. They also treat the reader like an adult. It's not adult as in 18 cert, it's adult as in don't insult your reader by treating them like a child.

There are many other Star Wars books than the ones by the authors I mention above. They vary wildly in quality. The Timothy Zahn books are the highlights but some of the others are very poor. The New Jedi Order series in particular is one long epic of depression which I gave up on halfway through.

The conundrum is whether to dig those old books out again to give them another read :-) It actually fits in somewhat with my A to Z, with a few of the books being candidates to fill those empty letters.

Another conundrum is in gaming. In the era of the 486 PC (16 years ago), a lot of PCs were sold by one game, XWing. It was a space combat sim which if you got through the insane difficulty, would let you take on the Death Star trench run. I missed that one but cut my PC gaming teeth on the epic Tie Fighter. Really old games couldn't rely on visuals like the modern ones do, they needed gameplay and cunning level design. Tie Fighter made you feel a part of the Star Wars world.

I don't think I'll dig XWing and Tie Fighter out of the attic though, they need a flightstick to play and getting that to work on a modern PC (through emulators make it playable) would be a major headache. We don't see many space combat flight sims these days, which is a real shame. The X universe is the only contender but I couldn't get into that. Eve doesn't count because you A) are crippled by lag, B) don't have direct control of your ship and C) get lumped with half assed attempts to implement features the gamer base doesn't want.

Ok - that's enough about old games and poor games, time to get back to taking over the galaxy as my all conquering Krogan (I recycled the Mass Effect name for my Moo2 master race)

PS If any of the Bristol readers want to have a look at the T.Zahn, M.A.Stackpole or A.Allston books, lemme know and I'll be happy to lend them out.