Here we see a few storyboard panels created by project lead Mike Hally, presented to Lucasfilm to demonstrate the concepts for Atari’s eventual 1983 coin-op video game adaptation of Star Wars. Hally’s Star Wars game was itself an adaptation, of a first-person space game tech demo dating back to 1980, made at the company to develop 3-D gaming technology, called Warp Speed.

Star Wars game project lead Mike Hally, shown here working on Atari laserdisc game Firefox, 1983

Lucasfilm (now owned by Disney) had always been, understandably so, possessive of the Star Wars canon, and Hally and his team had to run everything to do with the game by them first to make sure the content from the movies was preserved correctly. Missing from these concepts is the middle laser towers sequence found in the released product, as this part was added later at the suggestion of Steven Spielberg after he previewed the game in progress.

Movie director Steven Spielberg with prized game in his personal arcade game collection: Atari’s Missile Command

Lucasfilm had little to worry about in terms of quality with Atari’s Star Wars coin-op game…. it is an achievement nearly as impressive as the movies themselves, and is widely considered as one of the finest video games ever created.

The formation of Atari and the video game industry is quite a tale. You can read, watch, listen and even play it here at The Dot Eaters.