Experience the next great chapters of the Star Wars universe

The original MMO and trading card game from George Lucas, Star Wars Galaxies, is being shut down at Sony Online in December.

While no one at Lucas will come right out and say it, it’s not difficult to see that the upcoming opening of The Old Republic no doubt had a lot to do with their decision, which both sides say was a mutual one. Galaxies had been waning over the years and recent events have not helped matters. The hacking of Sony’s servers caused all of their networks to be taken down from the internet while they underwent a massive scrub down. They brought the servers back up and offered extensions to the subscriptions, but the damage had already been done.

This and a couple of controversial updates such as the one that opened up the Jedi class to everyone had ruffled feathers in the game world. But at the time, it wasn’t like there was an alternative to go to, and so most players just learned to live with it. The free character transfer, while...

A little baby, whose parents named her after the princess in Star Wars because they were such fans of the films, has had quite a struggle in her first four months on this earth, but fans of the Lucas empire are coming to her aid in a big way.

A month after she was born, after a vaccination, she began to have seizures and involuntary body and eye movements. This got worse and she was admitted into the hospital, but doctors are baffled as to what could be the cause of this medical problem. They’ve given her spinal taps, drug regiments, biopsies, just about everything they can think of, and still they are up in the air about how to help her. Too bad Dr. House isn’t a real guy.

But as you can imagine, for a young couple, the flood of medical bills from all these procedures is much, much higher than they can handle on their own. And they are being buried by the avalanche that has resulted, to the point where it they may be forced into an impossible decision on...

There has actually been a bit of Star Wars news this week. Lego is releasing a new set, Rick McCallum talks about live action TV show and the future of the 3D conversions, among other fun stuff. Let’s get to it.

Lego has recreated many of the Star Wars ships in various sets. There is the Millenium Falcon, the Death Star, The Imperial Shuttle and Palpatine’s personal shuttle, among others. But if you wanted a Super Star Destroyer, you had to try to build your own out of previously created parts or hope that they would come out with a set. And now the wait for a Lego set is over. They are bringing Darth Vader’s Executor ship to life with 3100 bricks, including specialty pieces. The model will be 50 inches long and will be a fairly accurate recreation of the memorable vessel. It will even has a removable area where you can place various Lego characters in like the Dark Lord himself and perhaps a Storm Trooper or two. You can buy the model starting in...

Star Wars and Lego have always had a good relationship with each other and there are many, many sets based on the Star Wars Universe in both the original films, the prequels, and the Clone Wars. The movies are now featured attractions at a couple different Legolands and the company’s video game offerings based on Lucas’ vision have delighted the young and old alike. But now Lego will be venturing into a new media, one we haven’t seen from them before.

Lego, who knows an untapped empire when they see it, has revealed at the latest licensing expo that they have been working with Lucas on creating a TV show based on Lego Star Wars. The one shot special, which is said to be airing sometime this fall, will feature more characters from the new films, than the old. In other words, younger Obi-Wan, Darth Maul, and Yoda, will take the leads in this story.

We think this could be a lot of fun. If you’ve played the games, you’ll know the animation is top notch and we...

We’ve mentioned before the technology that has become reality from the ideas in Star Wars. There are medical enhancements like prosthetic limbs, which Luke got when his hand was cut off by Vader and even portable iron lungs like the Dark Lord uses to breathe. There are things like pseudo light sabers (which are actually lasers that can actually cut metal and other things). But one of the things that we haven’t seen until now is a usable Star Wars hover bike, and perhaps we still haven’t.

While its creator, Australian inventor Chris Mallow calls it a hover bike and it rides like one, it looks more like Luke’s Landspeeder that he used to get around his home world of Tatooine while he was looking for R2-D2. The bike basically floats above the ground with no wheels at all at high altitudes. But that is because it is basically powered by helicopter engines that are capable of spinning the fans fast enough to float the bike and the rider at as much as 10,000...

Razer, who is known for its PC gaming mice, keyboards, and peripherals, announced at E3 that in conjunction with Star Wars: The Old Republic, they will be introducing a new package which will contain everything you need to play the game in style.

First off is the keyboard, which is light grey and has either a red or blue backlight which you can choose based on your alignment (Sith versus Galactic Republic) or whichever you think looks really cool, and the symbols can be changed as well. The chiclet type keyboard, which is not wireless, is generally a standard keyboard, but without the numeric keypad. In its place are ten programmable keys (set up in two rows) and a touch screen. There is also five extra keys on the left. The SW:ToR keyboard will set you back around $199.99, which is pretty steep, but should be out about the same time as the game, which we believe will be in late December.

The mouse is the part that really shines. The design looks like...

Bioware is putting the finishing touches on the most anticipated game of the holiday season, but calling it a game is probably not doing it justice. Star Wars: The Old Republic, which we’ve talked about here, was on display at the E3 convention, which is the gaming industry’s biggest week. The show, which is where all the companies show off their latest games, is being held in Los Angeles and EA was one of the big players eager to show off their expansive world, which is set in the Lucas universe thousands of years before the film.

Story, one would argue, is the most important part of the Lucas film, even though some would criticize that the new ones excelled in this regard, but that sense of story above all else is what Bioware was very dedicated to in bringing this to life. Even in the limited play that we saw at EA’s booth, it was quite obvious that the narrative would guide the player’s actions even if they weren’t aware of it. But instead of making you...

At the largest game industry convention, E3, where all the entertainment companies are showing off their latest, Microsoft used part of their press conference this morning, to show off Kinect Star Wars. It was presented with a wide range of other games for Kinect and not for Kinect, but all for the Xbox 360. I know that it would have interrupted the proceedings, but part of the fan in me, really wanted to see at least one Star Wars character hit the stage during this portion. Oh well.

What did we find out? Not much that we didn’t know already. What they did show is one actual working scene which has a Jedi Knight fighting his way through the Cloud City from Empire Strikes Back. One thing that Star Wars fans will really like is the amount of realism in the scenery and characters. They looked just like in the movies, including the Carbonite freezing room where Leia admits that she loves him. We’ve seen a lot of scenery in various Lucas games, but these...

Hornby PLC, which is a leading provider of model kits for builders, just scored a major contract as big as the empire itself. When the movies are rereleased in 3D, they will have the exclusive rights to make the models that will go along with the film. We assume this means things like the Death Star, Millennium Falcon, X-Wing and Tie Fighters, etc. In the past Hornby has had major problems with their suppliers in China and severe weather at their London manufacturing plant had caused a demand issue, which frightened their stockholders. But upon hearing the news of the acquisition of the worldwide rights to the Scaletrix Star Wars models, their stock has climbed back up. They also received the rights to Cars 2 and the London Olympics. It probably will be a bit before we actually see these on the shelf, no doubt they will wait until the first film is out in theatres which is in 2012...

Star Wars: Celebration V was a big fan convention that was held last year in Orlando, FL and featured everything you’d expect from such an event, including celebrity guests and panels, costumes, screenings and more. The four day gathering was attended by tens of thousands of fans, so popular that organizers are planning on holding the event again at the same location, the Orange County Convention Center. Tickets are now available for Celebration VI, even though the event is not until August 23-26 of next year (2012). Daily passes will run from $55 (Thursday, Friday, and Sunday) and $65 (Saturday) for adults or $27 for children for each and all days, but the best value is the $135 for a four day adult pass, or $54 for child. You can go here to purchase tickets. There is not much information yet about anything that is scheduled, but we will say that Celebration...

A couple of updates for news we posted about previously...

It seems that those kids at Westfield High School who simulated a Star Wars light saber duel in the cafeteria that ended in a standing ovation and everyone’s arms still attached to their bodies, will not be banned from their graduation after all. Principal Raymond K. Broderick not only agreed to let them walk down the aisle, but let them out of their suspensions as well. He also let two other boys that had put Vaseline on office doors off the hook too, saying that they are good kids and deserve a chance to graduate and have a future, despite a moment of bad judgment. Even though he took the wrath of the online community, the principal did have support from his higher ups like the Superintendant of Schools and the Mayor, and could have easily kept the ban active. We applaud his good sense to see the humor and not the bad in this one.

The Star Wars fan base was on fire as George Lucas said something...

When you are in high school and you are graduating, you may be looking for something exciting to end the year on a high note. Of course, the ceremony is supposed to do that, but that’s more for the parents than the students. And if you are these two guys from Westfield High School, their idea was a tribute to their favorite film, Star Wars.

And to do so, they made up a whole battle routine with light sabers to be performed in the school cafeteria in an unannounced impromptu show for their fellow students. The setup was simple. They would walk in, challenge the other, ignite their sabers and go at it for a bit. Sounds innocent enough, right? Especially with toy sabers that even if someone got hit, would only sting a little, not beat them silly. And they did just as they had practiced a few days before the end of the year.

You would think that school officials would recognize this bit of jovial theater for what it was and smile along with the rest of the...