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Most video game tie-ins for big movies range from terrible to forgettable. They are usually churned out as quickly as possible in the hopes of making a couple of quick bucks by slapping the title of a film on the front. However, Star Wars is one of those rare film franchises that doesn’t just work as a game – it thrives. However, among all the great Star Wars video games, there is one that pushed the series further than any other. I’m talking, of course, about 1992’s Super Star Wars for the Super Nintendo.

This is no shade on some of the great games like Knights of The Old Republic or Jedi: Survivor, which have moved away from the plot of the movies and explored uncharted areas of the Star Wars timeline. However, none of these games feel as ambitious as Super Star Wars, which pushed the new console harder than anyone had at the time. You have to remember that the SNES was released in North America a year before this game was released – it was practically a launch title at that point.

Despite the obvious limitations of the hardware, the developers at LucasArts and Sculpted Software did everything they could to make this the definitive Star Wars game of the time. They managed to turn the 16-bit graphics into some of the most iconic movie characters of all time. There is just enough detail that you can instantly tell who and what you’re looking at. Even on the Death Star assault levels late in the game, where everything is just slightly different shades of grey, they get enough detail out of the sprites to make the game work when it probably shouldn't.

On its surface, it is a run-and-gun shooter, but they threw in elements of platforming and driving games just to keep things interesting before finishing it off with a rail shooter in the trenches of the Death Star. You can play as Luke, Han, and Chewie, all of which have their own unique powers. There is a sense that the developer, who had released Star Wars for the Nintendo Entertainment System a year before, were playing with the capabilities of the new hardware. Rather than be limited by it, it had unlocked their potential and they were going to push it to the limit.

That included the music. You can’t have a Star Wars game without evoking John Williams’ iconic score. Paul Webb, the musician at Sculpted Software, pushed the SNES’ limited sound card to its absolute limit and came as close as anyone could have at replicating the Star Wars soundtrack. Even the sound of the Jawas shouting or Chewie’s iconic growl show up and are instantly recognizable. The sound design in this game required some form of wizardry to pull off.

Look, I’m biased here; Super Star Wars was the first Star Wars game I ever played. It looked and sounded exactly like I expected Star Wars to be. There are more complete games in the franchise, for sure. Some titles push the story further or try to expand on the Star Wars universe in a narrative sense, but no Star Wars video game has done more with less hardware than Super Star Wars and I will always love it for that. They could have just phoned it in and trusted that we would buy the game because it had Star Wars on the box (which we would have), but instead they went for it all the way and that is what makes Super Star Wars special.

You don't need to beat the game to prepare for the next one—here are all the major new and upcoming games coming our way.