This interactive timeline of Star Wars gaming is impressive, most impressive
Star Wars video games have a rich history that dates back to 1982. Thanks to the work of Josh Bush (who goes by the name of “Cheese”) we can now visualize that history via an interactive timeline.
The timeline covers basically every Star Wars game released, from the Empire Strike Back title published for the Atari 2600 in 1982 to Force Arena, which arrived to mobile platforms just this year. The timeline even incorporates the various web-based Star Wars games—an impressive feat in my mind.
Each entry on the timeline includes the game’s developer, publisher, how it relates to Star Wars canon, where the game’s characters come from, if there are playable Jedi in the game, number of players the game supports and what Star Wars period the game is set in. Numerous entries also include links to screenshots of the game.
Screenshot of the timeline.
According to Bush, this project took several months to complete, from November 2016 to February 2017. He incorporated data from a variety of sources, including MobyGames, Giant Bomb and Wookiepedia. The inspiration came from a PAX Australia 2016 panel that discussed the history of bad Star Wars games, but, in Bush’s mind, “didn’t dive as deeply into the chronology of Star Wars titles as [he] had hoped.”
I really quite enjoy data and love seeing historical collection of information (an old passion project of mine was compiling historical statistics for my sport of fencing), so I very much appreciate this project. It’s quite comprehensive and clearly required a lot of research and passion.
There’s also an interesting Star Wars games retrospective by Bush that’s well worth the read. It covers his take on numerous Star Wars titles that released throughout the franchise’s history. Note, however, that it clocks in at approximately 26,700 words, so you’ll want to set aside some time or read it in chunks.
Overall, the timeline is a very cool resource and an excellent way to visualize the history of Star Wars gaming. Head on over to cheesetalks.net to check it out!
