Warp Factor 4 Commander Ivanova, Starburst

Hello everyone,

I have to report a little bit of getting caught in Deus Ex Mankind Divided tonight, so this one is coming out a bit later than intended ! Oops. Bit hungry now too (dinner's just gone in).

It's one of those days today that's kind of been appropriated ...

Star Wars has been around for pretty much all my life and it's a kind of up and down thing with it too. Some Star Wars is amazing. Some is utterly rubbish. It's at its best when it's either being silly, or if it's ignoring the wider Star Wars universe and letting the characters have their head. Sadly, that doesn't happen too much in the movies but about half of the old Expanded Universe books were amazing for it. In particular, the writing of Timothy Zahn who is continuing to write in the universe, Michael Stackpole who started the excellent XWing series and Aaron Allston who continued the XWing books with Wraith Squadron.

This one's going to be a bit of a journey back through some old pictures ... And a new one or two maybe.

After the books and the movies, the first Star Wars game that I was around was a board game ...

Old one too. I have the fond memories of this being played when I was really young. Very nebulous memories now though cos it was like, last century. I was entranced with the various arcade games too and there were a couple on the BBC B too, recreating that famous Trench Run sequence. We of course hacked them (they were written in BASIC) to make it possible to win. Good times. There was also one for the Battle Of Hoth which I didn't have much chance to play with until later. Must actually install Rogue Squadron at some point because I think that has it in. I was a better pilot back then too.

One of the more modern ones is Knights of the Old Republic, which melded a variation of D&D's 3rd edition rules with lightsabers and blasters and a pretty decent story to produce a groundbreaking game back in 2004.

Great graphics there too. Actually pretty decent for the characters, although there's very little customisation there and flattened textures.

There's Deus Ex Mankind Divided from today, a game that came out 12 years later. Back to Star Wars !

Always a good one for a meme.

Wonder what that one did ...

I do like a bit of cantina band music.

Thankfully I have, after having an increasing headache yesterday evening, I've been free of that today. Not sure why though, I seemed to be having trouble nodding off again last night.

There's been the models too. I quite enjoyed this one.

 Definitely enjoyed creating that. I even have an extra Snowspeeder now ...

There we go. Not sure if I posted those build pics before ... It's felt a little like I've had to hold back some of the Lego build stuff for me and not necessarily post them.

Some of the humour is great.

I've always been a fan of the spaceships. TIE Fighter was another great game, although I think I'd struggle to stay with it for long if I went back to it. It was the successor to XWing and saw you flying for the Empire. There was an intriguing storyline running through the game, tying the missions together and it was a pleasure to play through it. Even if it did share the tendency of games around that time (1995ish) where they would increase the gameplay length by just making the missions have insane difficulty.

I did enjoy setting up those Battle of Hoth snow scenes outside the front door.

And I am soooo close to trying to install the old Star Wars Pod Racer game too. That was another one that got the best out of the limited capabilities of the machines at the time but that didn't matter because the racing in the game was fantastic.

And there we have BB-8. Some of the best characters in the movies are the droids (and some of the worst too!) The people writing BB-8's antics got it spot on with this little one.

I had a suggestion to go see Legoland and when I eventually found my way there, it wasn't too long before texts along the lines of "THIS IS AMAZING" were being sent to people :-D. I'd like to go again sometime when the current crisis calms down.

Something I've massively enjoyed over the years has been the Advent Calendars. I wasn't sure if I'd do it again this year (after burning out on the books the other year) but it was good combining it with Marshmallows, Elitecember and the Mass Effect pictures.

Whew ! That's a lot of pictures. Let's see how to finish :
Best film : Rogue One, by a long way. Very few of the movies get me close to a tear or two but this one definitely does.
Best book : The XWing books. Because they're fun and choosing all of them lets me cheat outrageously.
Best game : Pod Racer, after TIE Fighter. The sad thing with a lot of the Star Wars games is that they don't really do justice with the universe and miss the mark when it comes to Fun. But these two managed it.
Best TV series : Clone Wars. Haven't seen The Mandalorian.
Best theme ? Star Wars has always had amazing music and there's no mistaking The Imperial March or some of the battle music. It's always been perfectly complementary to what's happening on screen.
Best character : BB-8 and Rey. Although I did like Poe Dameron too in the end. What am I thinking - it's Rose, always Rose, only Rose.

Anything more ?

I'll have to find a time to watch The Mandalorian at some point.

Star Wars isn't the best space fantasy out there, not by a long way. But it caught the mood at just the right time, it grabbed that interest and held it through a fantastic original trilogy and it's brought out a lot more great stories too.

Stay safe be well everyone !