This weekend marked the thirtieth anniversary of both The Empire Strikes Back, and Pac-Man. I don’t know if there’s any significance to a thirtieth anniversary, but it does give me a quick opportunity to talk about two things that impacted my life.
I, along with millions of other kids across the world, became enamored with Star Wars at an early age. I was only four-years-old when the original Star Wars debuted, but it took me no time at all to collect all the action figures, playsets, pillow cases and sheets. We have a video tape from Christmas morning, 1978, where I dump out my stocking to find a complete collection of every available Star Wars figure at that time. I also got an X-Wing Fighter, a TIE Fighter, and a Land Speeder.
The Empire Strikes Back raised the bar. It turned a great movie into a great series. As a kid I know many of us were disappointed with the ending of Empire, but looking back, it’s one of my favorite Star Wars films. It’s where you get to see the Empire wipe the egg off its face (after having its Death Star blown up by a farm boy) and finally kick some ass. The Empire Strikes Back was responsible for so many cool toys … from the gigantic AT-AT and the sleek Snowspeeder to the Taun-Taun (with a slice-able belly to stick Luke in) and of course Boba Fett’s ship, the Slave One. And speaking of Fett, TESB introduced a slew of new characters, which translated to a slew of new action figures to collect. Along with major characters such as Yoda, Lando and Boba Fett, we got all those cool bounty hunters, denizens of Cloud City (Ugnaughts, Bespin City Guards, Cloud City Pilots), and all those cool Hoth figures. There were of course multiple Hoth playsets as well, although my friends and I had just as much fun crumpling up white bedsheets and creating our own ice planets.
One of my favorite toys from The Empire Strikes Back has to be the gigantic AT-AT, or “snow walker” as we called them back then. On one snowy morning back in 1982, a friend of mine and I drug out our AT-ATs and set up our own scenes from Hoth. My dad took the picture below.
Even though The Empire Strikes Back came out in 1980, it wouldn’t get its own game on the Atari 2600 until 1982. No, the video game world did not belong to Star Wars in 1980 — instead, the country’s attention was focused on a little yellow guy that ate dots and sometimes ghosts.
I have to say that, for as big as Pac-Man was in 1980, I don’t remember playing it much. None of my local haunts (the gas station and the bowling alley) had Pac-Man back then. I’m almost sure my introduction to Pac-Man came through playing Pac-Clones on our computers at the time. As I was telling a friend earlier, I remember getting Pac-Man for the Atari 2600 and, for all the bad press it has received throughout the years, I don’t personally remember thinking it was all that bad. Sure, it didn’t look exactly like the arcade version, but to a kid who lived just outside the city limits, it was better than playing nothing at all.
Pac-Man (the game) eventually gave life to Pac-Man cereal, Pac-Man the cartoon, millions of Pac-Man collectibles, and of course, Pac-Man Fever, the hit single by Buckner and Garcia.
You know what would make this post perfect? A picture of C-3P0 holding a copy of Pac-Man Fever.
Oh my God. I win.
Sheesh, we’re getting old, eh? I remember plunking endless quarters into the new Pac-Man machine at the neighborhood Too-n-Totem and Circle K stores as though it were yesterday.
I too, was enamored with “Empire” and still think of it as the best Star Wars movie. It was epic and plot-filled, yet still had visuals that continue to set the bar. It was a time, apparently, when Lucas was still young & pliable enough to be nudged by others to, um, stay on target.
I actually had a good time with Pac-Man for the 2600 as well. By the time it came out, I was burned out on the arcade version and was glad it was different. The convenience store near my junior high had a nice little arcade corner with Pac-Man (along with Asteroids and Phoenix), so I played it a lot.
ESB is, IMHO, the best Star Wars movie of them all. Too bad Leigh Brackett didn’t write the screenplay for “Return of the Jedi” and make that film awesome instead of the so-so movie it was (Leigh died in 1978, dammit!).
What is C3P0 holding the Pac-Man Fever album cover with? Not his hands, since they are both free. Oh, wait…never mind.