Atari’s humble 2600 played host to many ground-breaking games, as well as marking numerous milestones that paved the way for the future of the video games industry.

You may not know this, but the Parker Brothers-published Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back was the very first officially licensed video game based on the Star Wars saga.

The more iconic, much more recognisable Atari Star Wars arcade game still a year away when The Empire Strikes Back was released, so this title hitting store shelves, a few years after the movie, but a year before Return of the Jedi concluded the original trilogy, was a huge deal.

Despite the incredibly simplistic visuals, the screenshots of which really don’t do the experience any favours, The Empire Strikes Back is a surprisingly addictive game.

It takes a lot of cues from the Williams arcade shoot ’em up classic, Defender; however, as you’ll likely expect, it casts players in the role of Luke Skywalker, piloting a Snowspeeder into battle against fearsome AT-ATs, each of which is slowly approaching the Rebel Base on the ice planet Hoth.

It’s blisteringly, (and impressively) fast, smooth and responsive; despite this, it’s incredibly challenging, with it taking nearly 50 shots to take down a single imperial walker, when they just need to hit your fragile Snowspeeder a few times to get rid of you.

Sometimes, a flashing pixel appears on a walker, denoting a vulnerable spot; these are near impossible to hit, however, but if you manage it you’ll take a walker down immediately.

You can repair a few times per life by landing in a valley, but even this is fraught with danger and can see you getting hit by the scenery on the way down, or by the laser fire the walkers spit, always accurately, in your direction.

If you do somehow manage to stay alive for two minutes, you’ll earn a brief period of invulnerability, so if or when you do, go crazy with your lasers!

The more you successfully hit a walker, the more its colour changes to denote its damage; though this isn’t particularly thematic, it does give the player an immediate sense of how they’re doing, against the near impossible threat of five walkers on their way to the base.

If the walkers reach the base or you lose five Snowspeeders, you lose.

The speed and scanner really do make this game feel like Defender, albeit in the snow rather than in the void of a dark planetary surface.

Though of course, as you can see, The Empire Strikes Back looks very primitive indeed, it’s actually a genuinely addictive experience.

It’s not particularly deep and its difficulty is turned up to 11, as was the style at the time, but it does still provide solid, playable and straightforward fun.

Though several other Star Wars video games came to the Atari 2600 over the next few years,  The Empire Strikes Back remained, arguably, the strongest of them all.

To this day, it’s still a fast, fun experience, if a little frustrating at times. It works beautifully on the Atari 2600+ too, if that’s something you need to know!

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