Star Wars platformer gaming at its finest.
Story: You've heard it before, right? Luke Skywalker lives on Tatooine with his Uncle Owen Lars and Aunt Beru Lars, and longs to go the Imperial Academy to train as a pilot. One day his uncle buys two droids, except that, well, he didn't. In this version, Luke finds the droid C-3PO, who tells him that he crashed into the planet surface and that R2-D2 was captured by Jawas. So you head off to rescue him (Having the Sarlaac Pit Monster already under your belt a Sandcrawler shouldn't be too hard) from the Jawas, enter the Sandcrawler, investigate to see just what Jawas do in them, rescue Artoo, invade the Sandpeople land, FINALLY meet Obi-Wan Kenobi and receive your lightsaber (Sword type weapon to fry enemies with), and learn you must bring the droids to Alderaan. All of that is in the first five levels, or 1/3 of the game.
Characters: Luke Skywalker is your first character, his blaster starts out the weakest (A laser pistol), but he fights weak enemies at first, and by the time they're harder he has a powerful lightsaber too. Chewbacca is gained in Mos Eisley, he automatically starts with a Flame Gun (More powerful, doesn't bounce off of walls) and is a little more awkward then Luke jumping-wise and movement-wise, Wookie acrobatics without Wookie brute strength. Han Solo (Found in the Mos Eisley Cantina) is the most agile, with the highest jump, fastest slide, and the same gun as Chewbacca. Unfortunately, they come rather late in the game (About halfway through) so you don't get much of a chance to use them.
Once you unlock each one you can choose any for each level you play, except for ship levels. R2-D2, C-3PO, Obi-Wan, Princess Leia, and a few more appear as friends you meet at the end of a level, or more often in cutscenes. But enemies are more common, from Womp Rats to Sandtroopers to Stormtroopers to Imperial Droids to big boss type monsters.
Gameplay: You run around the level and shoot everything in sight, or do extremely difficult jumping challenges that take a ton of skill. Enemies are everywhere and then some, whether you're on foot or in one of the ship levels in the game. The on-foot levels are maze-like, almost like a Metroid game. You run around, blast the enemy that gets too close and hope his friends don't kill you, destroy various objects that you find to try and grabs power-ups/health refill (Found in enemies too), and complete acrobatic challenges like jumping from ledge to ledge over a bottomless cliff or jumping over moving obstacles on the floor with great timing. It requires a lot of skill, especially when the game combines enemies and jumping challenges.
The ship levels are rather different. There are four total. The first three feature the Landspeeder and the X-Wing in third-person view. They play rather the same, attack the required amount of enemies without dying. Ship levels look sort of 3-D, but not too much, and the enemies don't have a lot of variety like in the foot levels, just two enemy kinds per level. The final ship level is first-person view with you being attacked by every Tie Fighter the Empire has, they can't hurt you but their shots can so you have to pick off every shot they fire at you, there's no way to really dodge the shots and you've got 10 health. With how many enemies you have to dodge and the really hard challenge at the end it's a level far more frustrating then any other level.
Boss fights are in the on-foot levels, they take place at the end of most levels and feature a big, ugly boss, from Mutant Womp Rat to Lava Beast Jawenko. The bosses are huge and have a lot of health and dangerous attacks, but have predictable patterns.
Items: Gun power-ups, health recovery, total health increase, score multipliers, invincibility, thermal detonators (Destroy everything on screen) and extra lives. Score multipliers, thermal detonators, and invincibility last only a short while the other items (Except for extra lives and health recovery) only last until you die, then they reset to normal.
Difficulty: Medium-hard. Except for two levels with really hard gimmicks the game isn't too hard, you get assigned checkpoints at various times so you don't have to restart entire levels and the enemies, while abundant, are rarely too hard. The main danger comes from the platforming sections where messing up usually results in death, that'll kill you more then the enemies will. The bosses are tricky until you figure out their pattern/weakness, then they're much simpler. There are three difficulty levels, but I've only played on the easiest, the harder ones are supposed to be more abundant with enemies.
Levels: As stated, there are 15 (The instruction manual lists only 14, but one is technically two levels), of which four are ship levels and 11 are on foot. The first ten take place on Tatooine, the desert planet, where everything starts out solid desert yellow in level 1, then moves on through mechanical, mountainous, and city landscape. The next three are in the Death Star, which is really mechanical, and the last two are outside of it in spaceships. Not too much variety, but too much would stray even more from the movie.
Unlockables: Three. You can upgrade weapons and such, but the only permanent unlockables are Luke's lightsaber and the two new characters Han Solo and Chewbacca.
Technical Details: Graphics are pretty good for the foot levels but nothing spectacular, the ship levels are a little better but still look 2-D, and the cutscenes barely move, though they look pretty good. Music is Star Wars score on a 16-bit system, and really good at that. Sound effects are also Star Wars material.
Multiplayer: None.
Replay Value: Every time you play the game you must restart it, there's no save feature. As the game is it's a great experience that lasts just long enough not to get boring and provides plenty of gameplay variety, if little in scenery. No multiplayer, but there really isn't anything you could do for multiplayer. The game is great fun though, and filled with plenty of Star Wars stuff even if it's loose with the story.
Final score breakdown:
Gameplay: 9/10
Graphics: 6/10
Sounds and Music: 10/10
Fun: 10/10
Replay Value: 7/10
Pros
Great gameplay
Plenty to do
Rarely stays the same
Ship levels are a good change of pace
Characters are just different enough to provide variety
Classic Star Wars theme
Cons
Graphics are average at best
New characters come rather late in the game
Overall: 8.4/10 It isn't the best looking game out there, but that's the only real complaint against this game. It's got plenty of Star Wars goodness, the music score is great, and it's actually fun. Not much else to say, (No, I won't say may the force be with you).