That One Level / Star Wars

The Force will not be with you in these difficult levels in these Star Wars licensed games:

• The Famicom Star Wars game:
  • The Death Star is The Maze, which practically requires you to draw a map because it is huge and there are a lot of electric barriers that will disintegrate Luke if he touches them. You will need to farm Force Crystals to get through certain parts of the map.
  • Yavin IV is not only problematic due to the game's notoriously bad Ratchet Scrolling, there's also dangerous enemies that are on that level. You'll need Chewbacca to open a door that you wouldn't know he would open, and to top it all off, it's where That One Boss resides.
  • The Death Star Trench is frustratingly difficult: you need to get through narrow spaces and multiple sectors, all while TIE Fighters and Interceptors harass you. It's also a Timed Mission, which results in a Non-Standard Game Over if it expires. If you didn't get enough Force Crystals on Yavin IV to do the continue code, then you have to restart from the very beginning of the game.
• The Star Wars game on the Game Boy and Nintendo Entertainment System, which is based on A New Hope:
  • Two options - Check EVERY cave in Tatooine, following every side of EVERY rock, or you WILL miss it. Miss what? The weapon that you need to finish one specific, very short level with one enemy in it that is immune to everything else. Miss it, and you will slowly drown, after playing three quarters of the game not knowing there was even a problem. The game doesn't tell you where Obi-Wan is hiding, making this also a Guide Dang It! problem.
  • The Death Star in this version is unrelentingly difficult. Demonic Spiders in some segments that are also invincible? Check. Spiked corridors that require precision platforming to avoid? Check. Is it a maze? Check. Rescuing Princess Leia also requires quite a bit of knowledge and memory on which elevators go where.
  • The Death Star Trench: You not only have to avoid walls and barriers in a high-speed area, TIE Fighters that will collide into your X-Wing are also a huge problem. If you position yourself incorrectly, it's possible to die as soon as you hit a missile at the Death Star's weak point in the trench.
• The Empire Strikes Back, also on the Game Boy and NES:
  • The Snowspeeder level shouldn't be that hard, but due to the game's lack of Mercy Invincibility, you're bound to get Zerg Rushed by Snowtroopers while you're on the ground trying to find a new Snowspeeder.
  • You'll learn to dread the Echo Base level very easily. Not only are there One-Hit Kill electric hazards in some spots, most enemies will put a hurt on you quickly. It's also a huge mess of a map, meaning a missed jump will have you retracing your steps. There are no checkpoints in these levels, so if you die, you'll have to redo the level again.
  • The first trip in Cloud City is utter hell to go through. There are lava pits and electric barriers that will kill you immediately on contact, along with other enemies that are dangerous. There's a lot of mini-bosses to go through, usually various bounty hunters, before the boss battle with Boba Fett himself.
  • The second trip in Cloud City: More bounty hunters are everywhere, but this time in tighter corridors. You have to also conserve force power for getting through the level and to take out the many mini-bosses that appear.
  • The second snowspeeder level in Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back: [1]. The Echo Base levels with Han Solo also count. First of all, you have to play as Han Solo who lacks force powers, a lightsaber, a special spin... Yeah, anything but a good ol' blaster and some incredibly rare and useless grenades. But that's far from the main issue - These levels are two of the longest in the game and simply CRAMMED with nastiness; Fire traps that activate when you pass over them, turrets in the ceiling that are hard to hit, randomly spawning troops that shoot you, troops with shields that block you, spiders that block AND shoot at you and scatter shrapnel that damage you when defeated. The worst are the flying enemies that appear out of nowhere and take away 30% of your life with each hit. The level itself is a maze with several dead ends, and even if you take the correct way its longer than most other! All this is already enough to make these levels the most annoying in the entire game, but there's more! At the end of the first level you encounter a mini-boss that is tough, fast and kills you in three hits at full health. Still, the absolutely worst part are the bosses... Both of them are insanely hard and can easily kill you at full health with lots of powerups after you've learned their patterns... None of which you'll have after the horror that is known as Han Solo's Echo Base levels. But it can't all be bad, right? There are a lot of item boxes scattered throughout the level... Just that breaking them open is easier said than done, actually getting an item is extremely rare and debris scatter from them when they're destroyed which hurt you. That's right, your only hope of beating this level is more likely to kill you than anything else!
  • The final level in Super Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. First, instead of the platforming that game is mostly about, it becomes a first person flight simulator as you ride the Millennium Falcon through the Death Star. In the final level, you have to escape before the fire from the explosion catches up with you, so you have to be constantly accelerating. The problem is that since you are going so fast, you have little time to react as the course changes angles and throws obstacles at you. Crashing into a wall reduces your speed and damages your shields (or the ship's health if the shields are completely gone) and every time you slow down, the fire catches up and damages you as long as you stay in it. The deeper in the fire you are, the faster your shields and health deplete. The memorization and fast reflexes required is bound to make many players shout "THE FORCE IS NOT WITH ME!"
• The level in every other Star Wars game that forces you to play the "Snowspeeder wrapping up the legs of the AT-AT" level.
  • Notable Features of this Level: You must defeat all AT-ATs to complete the level. You must use the speeder on this stage (and/or AT-ATs can ONLY be defeated by snowspeeders). You cannot just shoot them. There are lots of other enemies you can accidentally run into (and die from) while looping. A time limit of some type, while not mandatory, is encouraged.
    • Various examples: Rogue Squadron 1 through 3 (N64/GC/PC), it depends on the exact game/level, but it hits practically ALL of the above.
    • Rogue Squadron 1 took the cake with its Corellia Mission. You only had to take down one AT-AT, but it was at night, with the target walking along a cliff face, leaving you with a much reduced safe lane on one side. And since the mission is dark, it's hard to see the cliff. Have fun.
    • The Empire Strikes Back (NES/Gameboy), while the speeder part wasn't too bad, if you crashed you had to continue very slowly on foot.
    • Shadows of the Empire (N64), you can shoot them to death in this one, but it takes forever.
    • Lego Star Wars II (various), in Freeplay mode you could fly a different craft, but the only one that could defeat an AT-AT was the speeder. One of the less annoying examples the looping was fairly quick and easy to control (the infinite lives nature of the Lego-(something) games also helps).
    • The Battlefront games are at least nice enough to let you kill AT-ATs with sustained rocket/turret fire (especially to the "neck", which deals more damage in BFII), as opposed to the speeder trick, but it also opens the door for savvy human players on the Empire's side to drive the AT-AT and knock out the turrets before Rebel players can use them. And may the Force help you if the Empire decides to rush in and capture the Echo Base hangar right away, depriving you of snowspeeders.
    • Star Wars Trilogy Arcade's Battle of Hoth stage skips the cables and has you shooting the AT-ATs' heads off by the neck.
  • Adding Fridge Logic is the fact that the Rebels have canonically taken out AT-ATs without cables, Insert Grenade Here, or ramming^note Hobbie Klivian did this in the novelization of The Empire Strikes Back. In Isard's Revenge four of the Rogues take out four walkers in about five minutes. Of course the difference is, that time they were using dedicated combat vehicles (X-Wings) instead of glorified pickup trucks with popguns. And it's not just the EU: in the actual movie, after tripping the one walker a snowspeeder finishes it off with a laser shot to the joint between the neck and the body.
• Play a Star Wars space simulator. You will hate the Gallofree Yards Medium Transport. And to think, the Battle of Hoth had that just after the AT-ATs.
• Star Wars Rogue Leader has the Razor Rendezvous level, where you have to take down an entire Star Destroyer by yourself. With dozens of very accurate laser cannons ripping you to shreds the whole time. It's telling that most walkthroughs for the game suggest eschewing playing the level "normally" in favor of just kamikazeing the bridge.
  • Razor Rendezvous is usurped by the game's other That One Level: the Battle of Endor. In this level you have to destroy two Star Destroyers at the same time... with a strict and very short time limit!
    • Both aren't nearly as bad as the final Story mission: Strike at the Core. You have to protect Lando (or Wedge, if you're playing as the Millennium Falcon) from being shot down by TIE Fighters, and it is no exaggeration that you can get an instant Game Over in under ten seconds.
    • Prisons of the Maw is also one of the top contestants with you navigating through the asteroid belt to rescue some rebel prisoners. As if trying to sail through a rock pile isn't hard enough, you have TIE fighters and three shuttles securing the area, then you have to disable three shield generators (in the middle of a mine field mind you) with your ion canon while the fighters keep chasing you (doing it quick or the rebel ships you're supposed to escort will be blown apart by the imperial ships), then you have to protect the rebel prisoners in their train by shooting at guard towers and destroying communication relays while TIE fighters chase you again. Finally, you have to protect the prisoners as they escape in an imperial shuttle.

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