Star Wars Articles

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Today we are looking at some cool new Star Wars R2-D2 toys that will be coming out this fall. Our first item is an old favorite that has been converted to the world of George Lucas. Yes, it’s Operation. You remember that game as a kid. You took a pair of tweezers and tried to remove things like the funny bone and heart from the patient without touching the sides. Otherwise his nose lit up and a sharp annoying buzzing sound would indicate to you that the patient had suffered. I always thought after ten of those he would have been flatlined, but that might have been too much for kids. Well now instead of Cavity Sam (which apparently was the unfortunately unhealthy man’s name), Star Wars Operation features R2-D2 under the tweezers...

As you can imagine, there is nothing like a game player scorned. The surprise announcement that Star Wars Galaxies is shutting down in December has rocked the gaming world and message boards across the internet. The game’s Facebook page has been aflame with new postings referring to the petition to keep the game going, as well as their discontent at the plan. At last count, around 2100 had signed the petition to Sony Online to request that the game stays open, but rather than business as usual, their request is for Sony to go to a free to play model making their revenue by selling virtual goods and reducing the number of servers. This move is not unprecedented. Other companies have kept their MMO’s based on popular franchises such...

In the continuing saga of the Star Wars Galaxies shutdown that we spoke of yesterday, it seems that some players have turned to the Supreme Council, known in some circles as the US legal system, to file a class action suit against Sony Online Entertainment to block the closing. The suit mentions the tactics that the company has taken in response to the petition that was being circulated in an effort to keep the service from shutting down. They have blocked access to forums, singled out a ring leader who they threatened to sue as well as ban permanently and other practices that while designed to silence the opposition to their plan, is doing them more harm than good. The suit is not very likely to succeed due to the fine print in the...

George Lucas, who usually is pretty good about fan based events and such, actually put a stop to a Star Wars Movie Marathon at a bar in Brooklyn that was to feature specialty drinks and costume contests during the showings. The Wicked Monk had planned to present all six movies for a night of fun and frolic, but the head Jedi was having none of it. He sent his squadron of lawyers descending down on the place like Darth on Leia’s ship and in the end, the establishment was forced to cancel. Actually he just sent a cease and desist letter. According to the communication, it was because they were charging, even though it was clear that entry was free and only the drinks would be charged for. Our guess it was probably because he wasn’t...

San Diego Comic-Con International is one of the biggest comic book, and now pop culture events in the country. It’s where movie companies, comic book publishers, authors, artists, game developers, and even toy manufacturers, not to mention fans come together, 130,000 in all for the four day event. And Star Wars is right in the middle of it, with actually a lot of different events going on despite not having much in the way of new content except for Clone Wars’ new season coming soon. Thursday: 10:00am – 11:00am Star Wars Kinect The title that has been much awaited for the Xbox 360 and Kinect controller will have a panel in which participants will get to hear from lead producer Craig Derrick from LucasArts and studio head Jorg...

In our continuing series to tell you what’s going to be at Comic-Con for those attending in relation to Star Wars, we present Friday’s (July 21st) schedule for all things Lucas related… 10am – 11am Lego Star Wars Ever wanted to find out what it takes to bring Star Wars and Lego together? Well now you can with the team from the game company, where you will be able to ask questions and hear the answers from some of the coolest developers around. The panel will also feature Emmy award winning writer Michael Price. There will also be the revealing of a new Lego Star Wars event. 11am – 12n Hasbro Star Wars Of course, everyone knows that Hasbro makes a ton of Star Wars toys, fun props and action figures. In this panel, guests from the...

Today we look at Saturday and Sunday at Comic-Con in panels and events that relate to Star Wars. There is not as much on these days as they were for Thursday and Friday. Saturday, June 23rd 3:00pm - 4:00pm The Write Stuff III: Writing for Genre Television and Beyond In this non-universe specific panel, the top TV writers will discuss the nature of writing for the medium and particularly genres and how potential talents can get into the business. On the panel will be Steve Melching, who is the writer for Star Wars: The Clone Wars 4:00pm – 5:00pm Dark Horse and Bioware: A Comic and Video Game Partnership Dark Horse has been instrumental in providing Bioware with an outlet to extend its games into the comic book media with two series...

One of the most interesting, but perhaps the least known of the original Star Wars trilogy cast is Boba Fett. For someone who barely talked in the original movies, but had a cool jet pack, and grew up in the prequels, he was a character that gained a lot of notoriety from his mysterious nature. Expanded universe novels have tried to fill in the gap on how he became a bounty hunter and most portrayed him not as evil, but someone trying to survive and do his job for the money, just as Dog the Bounty Hunter does on TV each week. Of course, Boba Fett’s clients are questionable, but they pay well. But for those who haven’t read the novels and only seen the movies, there is a huge space in time which a lot of stories could come from and...

At San Diego Comic-Con that officially starts tomorrow, there will be a panel for Star Wars: The Old Republic, the much anticipated MMO from Bioware and EA. And during that panel, there was to be a huge announcement about the game. But a polish game store website named Empik placed in their store a TOR collectors set that it was taking pre-orders. Could this be what they were going to reveal? The shop talked about the details of this set, giving the added features you will get over the lowly droids that just buy the regular game, such as a CD of the TOR soundtrack, of course a fancy box for which it all comes in, a map of the Old Republic galaxy, the game discs in metal cases, a Darth Malgus statue, a custom Security...

As you all know, Lucas is releasing all six Star Wars movies on Blu-Ray in various packs on September 16th, but one thing that they have in common is around 40 hours of extra bonus features such as the making of, etc. But for those who can’t wait and have an iPad or iPad 2, you can now download a free app from the iTunes app store that will let you get a sneak peek at the bonus footage that will be included. iPod Touch and iPhone users will have to wait a bit longer for the peek as the app won’t be ready until next month. But that is still long before the release date. So what is in the app? Basically a very spiffy well intentioned interface that is touch driven, giving access to each of the films and their related content. That...

Well as we mentioned in earlier articles, there were several panels surrounding Star Wars and the revelations were interesting to say the least about the Lucas empire. We’ll touch on a few of them right here. Of course, the big news for gaming fans was Kinect Star Wars, which was finally given a release timeframe of Christmas 2011 although there was no specific date. They showed off a new portion of the game that included pod racing where gamers could race as any of the characters and over 20 pods on a variety of courses. In this one, you’ll even be able to play the Sebulba trick of actually throwing things at your opponent to wreck their racer. You can do all of this, as well as yielding a light saber, driving a flying car, and...

Unless you live on the furthest reaches of the Empire, you’ve no doubt heard that the Star Wars Saga, all 6 movies, will be released on Blu-Ray on September 16th. There is a new trailer to whet your appetite while you wait until next month to pick these up. This new look at the set as a whole delves a bit more into the 40 hours of bonus content that will be featured, which will no doubt be of more interest to the fans than seeing the movies once again. There are scenes showing the younger Obi-Wan in front of a green screen as he strikes down the droids, Harrison Ford kissing a woman that doesn’t look like Carrie Fisher in a candid on set moment, 3D models of the ships, demonstrations on compositing scenes together such as putting the...

A new trailer is out for Season 4 of Cartoon Network’s popular show Star Wars: The Clone Wars and it looks to be a pretty exciting season indeed… One of the big events of the new season appears to be the undersea battle for Admiral Akbar’s home Mon Calamari. Count Dooku apparently orders his army of separatists to take over the submerged city, but the Calamari are not going without a fight and get the help of the Jedi and the clones. The story, which will play out over three episodes, is a continuation from the online MMO Clone Wars Adventures that debuted earlier. The game is not only fun to play, but because of the dedication in keeping the stories consistent from one to the other, will serve as a very good introduction to the new...

Imagine if you took American Gladiators, Wipeout and a whole lot of dangerous materials, and put it into one arena, you may start to get the idea of the new game Huttball. Devised by the Hutts in their twisted version of extreme sports, the idea is to take the ball and put it into your opponent’s base while avoiding the dangers of the game field. What dangers? Well there’s fire, acid, and all sorts of things that can kill you instantly, while the audience laughs and chuckles at your demise. But someone crafty could certainly avoid these pitfalls you say. After all, isn’t there a lot of games that require such avoidance? [video=youtube;ODJkZnypNFw] Okay, fair enough, but it’s not just the field itself you have to worry about...

Today's news features Star Wars: The Old Republic opening with a limited run of copies, an R2-D2 Planetarium, and Star Wars meets Mexico's Day of the Dead. Fans who are eagerly awaiting Star Wars: The Old Republic may find themselves waiting a bit longer when the game does ship, which is expected to be around Christmas of this year. The reason is that Bioware is now saying that they will only be allowing so many copies to be sold at first to ease the servers into the traffic. This is actually not a bad idea. With the demand as high as it’s been, having millions of people suddenly flooding the system may not be the best idea in a live format. So instead, they want to make sure that the launch goes as smoothly as possible, learning...