Over the past console generation, Xbox released the majority of its first-party games on PC, giving players the choice of where they want to play. Wanting PlayStation to follow suit is an obvious thing to ask for, but it wouldn’t just be beneficial to players. PlayStation has one of the deepest, most beloved histories in gaming and is home to some of the most prestigious modern developers out there–a first-party PlayStation game launch is always an event. Releasing its games on PC would make each PlayStation launch an even bigger deal, with a whole new audience and section of the internet to pore over every detail. However, if the company plans to go forward with more PC ports, then PlayStation needs to do a better job of introducing PC players to its esteemed worlds.
A strong first-party lineup has reinforced the company’s image as the dominant console platform this generation. Its critically acclaimed releases garner a long-term affection that is rarely seen for single-player games–people are still playing and praising the five-year-old Bloodborne, for example. Even its less favourably received games are successful commercially, with Days Gone topping sales charts in the UK for weeks after its launch. And as of August 2019, it was the sixth highest-selling PS4 exclusive in the US, beating out Uncharted: Lost Legacy, Infamous: Second Son, and every MLB game.
Horizon Zero Dawn is the third highest-selling PS4 exclusive, and when it came to PC in early August, the 3-year-old game proved popular. SteamDB recorded an incredible all-time concurrent player count of 56,557 players, and that’s not counting anyone on the Epic Games Store. That’s a lot of people playing a single-player game at the same time on one platform, and it’s not even a brand-new release. It’s easy to imagine how Horizon Forbidden West or the Demon’s Souls remake would be even more popular, especially with day-and-date releases.
Unfortunately, the players who did purchase Horizon Zero Dawn on PC were met with a myriad of issues, including crashes, poor performance, and bugs as well as graphical and audio issues. These issues can be fixed, as Horizon developer Guerrilla Studios has promised to do, but the PC gaming community is not one to accept a lesser version on a platform capable of so much more. As of this writing, Horizon sits at a “Mixed” user rating with more than 15,000 user reviews, many of the criticisms pointed toward the technical issues. This is a game that received near universal acclaim on its original PS4 release–it deserved better.
PlayStation benefitted from its association with Death Stranding. The Kojima-directed game received an incredible PC port, but it isn’t actually a first-party game–it’s developed by Kojima Productions and published on PC by 505 Games. Unfortunately, whatever goodwill PlayStation gained through osmosis was squandered with its poor PC port for Horizon Zero Dawn.
As PlayStation’s main competitor, Xbox Game Studios has enjoyed a number of great PC launches, thanks to the Play Anywhere program it started in 2016. This allows players to swap between their Xbox One and PC with cross-buy and cross-save, and if you buy the digital version of a game on Xbox One, you get access to it on PC through the Windows 10 Store. It’s also had great success with Xbox Game Pass for PC (included with Game Pass Ultimate), which gets you a huge library of PC games for a monthly cost.
Beating the flying pigs and homesick cows, Xbox has even started to release its games on Steam, something that was unexpected, yet has been met with great praise. Sea of Thieves is thriving on Valve’s platform, with over 30,000 “Very Positive” user reviews. Halo: The Master Chief Collection also boasts a “Very Positive” rating with more than 90,000 user reviews. Xbox has openly accepted Steam’s Early Access program, releasing Obsidian’s kid-shrinking survival game, Grounded, to more than 5,000 user reviews and a “Very Positive” rating. Of course, Xbox has released games that were less favourably received than these, but when the company nails a PC port, players respond in kind.
That’s what makes the Horizon Zero Dawn port so disappointing. While Xbox has embraced a number of different options for PC players, PlayStation has floundered its first, long-awaited attempt. It can easily turn things around, though, and a PC port can be fixed. One of the most infamous PC ports, Batman: Arkham Knight, launched to an incredible amount of backlash due to poor performance and even a lack of certain graphical features that were present on the PS4 and Xbox One–the game was also locked to 30 FPS on PC. Warner Bros. removed it from Steam, fixed the port, and re-listed it later that year, still offering full refunds to anyone who bought the game originally. After all that, it’s now sitting pretty with a “Very Positive” user rating and over 30,000 reviews.
However, PC players still remember that initial port and likely won’t forget it when Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad game nears its release date. Actions speak louder than words, and Rocksteady and Warner Bros. will have to prove themselves to gain that launch-day trust back. PlayStation should remember this and not mistake its high PC player count as a 100% success. PlayStation would be wise to follow Xbox’s suit and publish its games on PC alongside their PS5 release dates. But it still needs to prove that it can create PC ports that are worth players’ time and money. If it wants its games to be as desired and lauded as they are among console players, then it needs to help its impressive stable of developers create great PC ports.
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Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout has taken the gaming world by storm with its deceptively simple and original take on the battle royale formula. You’ll need some luck to outlast the other 59 players vying for each episode’s coveted Crown, but a little know-how can go a long way in helping you achieve victory.
We’ve put together various tips, tricks, and strategies for each round to help you rack up more Crowns and Kudos. The chaotic nature of Fall Guys doesn’t guarantee success, but knowing the ins-and-outs of each round will give you a fighting chance of emerging victorious.
If you’re curious about our thoughts around hilarious battle royale party game, be sure to read our Fall Guys review. Otherwise, read the tips below.
Races are simple: cross the finish line before the cut-off point and you’ll qualify for the next round. There are also bonuses that go towards the season pass if you come in first or finish in the top 20 or 50%. Below are each of the race rounds that can appear in an episode of Fall Guys.
Dizzy Heights
Every episode of Fall Guys begins with a race, so you’ll want to try and push ahead of the crowd to reach the finish line before the elimination cut-off.
Dizzy Heights starts with a set of spinning platforms. The majority of players tend to crowd the middle here, massively increasing the risk that you’ll get knocked down and sent backwards by the yellow obstacles dotted around this part of the race. Immediately heading to either the left or right is the best course of action as you’ll have more room to work with. Obviously, following the arrows on the spinning platforms is the quickest way to get through them, and jumping between each one makes things a lot easier than trying to simply walk from one to the next.
Once you reach the rolling balls you’ll want to try and run down an empty avenue for as long as you can. The rate at which the balls are spit out is seemingly random; sometimes one will come out immediately following another, while other times there will be a lengthy delay, giving you time to run down an avenue unscathed. You can duck to the side to wait for a ball to pass, but getting hit by one is surprisingly negligible when it comes to slowing you down, as long as you get hit on either side rather than straight down the middle.
The second set of spinning platforms is easier than the first, mainly because it’s very unlikely there will be a crowd. Following the arrows again to gain as much speed as possible and simply jump between each one. After this you’ll head up a hill where you’ll want to do a diving jump at the top to reach a set of large spinning platforms. The key here is to keep moving forward while avoiding the yellow balls. Once you reach the slope, it’s best to keep to the sides, so you don’t take a yellow ball directly to the face.
See Saw
See Saw might be the most frustrating round in Fall Guys, mainly because the majority of other players have a very loose concept of how seesaws actually work. It can also be relatively stress-free if you’re able to get ahead of the crowd and control the tilt of each seesaw yourself.
Starting on the front row is ideal, but this is entirely dependent on fate so it’s not something you can consistently rely on. You’ll want to jump onto the centre of each seesaw–which is helpfully signposted by a white line–but eventually you’ll be forced to pick a side that’s usually governed by whichever direction the other players are causing the see saw to tip towards.
If you’re behind the pack, you’ll often come across a see saw that’s horribly skewed to one side. Jumping on one like this will probably result in a quick slide to your death, so it’s best to wait for it to even out. Other players are less patient in these moments, opting instead to jump to their deaths over and over again, meaning the seesaw can take an age to start flattening out. You’ll need to pick the right moment and immediately begin running up the slope in the hope other players do the same and you can even it out.
Most of the rounds in Fall Guys are dependent on absolute chaos, and See Saw is a clear example of this. You can be smart and pick the right moments to advance, but if you’re stuck in the middle of the pack, there’s a high chance you’re going to be victim to the whim of other players. At this point, you can only do your best and hope it all works out.
Door Dash
Door Dash will be familiar to anyone who’s ever watched Takeshi’s Castle, pitting you against a gauntlet of identical doors. Some of the doors are breakable, while others are solid as a rock.
Starting on the back row during Door Dash is actually an advantage because the path forward will usually be apparent before you reach the first set of doors. Of course, you can always hang back for a couple of seconds if you start at the front, but being bold can pay off, too. If you jump and crash through one of the breakable doors on your first attempt, you can get a minor head start as a traffic jam begins to form behind you. This gives you a little leeway if you jump into one of the fake doors on the next set, as everyone else will still be catching up.
If there is a blockage of people cramming into a door ahead of you, doing a jumping dive is a more reliable way of making it through without immediately being trampled. Once you reach the final three doors, aim for the middle one if you’re at the front. Only one of these doors is real, so targeting the middle allows you to shift to either side without wasting too much time. You’ll always want to do a jumping dive through the final door, as this will often launch you past the players who are simply falling. As with See Saw, chaos and luck rule the roost in Door Dash, but these techniques can improve your chances of succeeding.
Gate Crash
Gate Crash is similar to Door Dash, albeit with a gauntlet of raising and falling gates instead of doors. You’ll want to target gates that are already raised since they should lower by the time you reach them. Jumping and diving is particularly useful here because not only do you achieve more distance, but if a gate is rising and you dive towards it, it will usually hit you and send you spinning to safety.
Once you reach the slime slope just before the finish line, you’ll want to begin sliding down it as one of the gates at the bottom is at its maximum height. By the time you reach the bottom, it should be lowered, making it easy to do a jumping dive to the finish line. If you’ve timed it wrong, you can start walking backwards on the slope to slow your descent and give you time to pick the right gate.
Hit Parade
You’ll have an easier time crossing the rotating logs at the beginning of Hit Parade if you start at the front, but if it’s crowded and you fall off you can head straight up the slope without losing much time. Following the crowd during the next turnstile section is actually ideal since you’ll have no chance trying to push against them. You’ll want to break off once you reach the gate, though, as there are two openings on the left and right that no one else seems to use. Opting for one of these is much easier than struggling to get through the middle when there’s a congested crowd of players all trying to do the same thing.
Avoiding the swinging obstacles is easy enough as long as no other players knock you into their path. The final slope is also very simple; you just need to stick to the left or right side of the ramp and none of the obstacles are able to hit you.
The Whirlygig
You’ll want to time your jumps to get over the first set of spinning obstacles in The Whirlygig, but it can actually be highly beneficial to let yourself get hit by them. As long as the obstacle is hitting you in the back, you can stand still and take the hit, and it will often launch you forwards and into the lead.
Next up you’ll want to use the yellow conveyor belt to give yourself a running jump towards the next platform. Getting up here can be tricky if there are a lot of people in the way, but you can ignore the yellow platform completely and simply jump towards the highest ledge and use the grab button to pull yourself up. This is usually easier than trying to jump between both platforms amidst a sea of players.
The first large fan you encounter can be avoided by timing your diving jump. The next fan is the easiest of the lot, since you can just run through the small gap between the middle fan and the ones on either side without getting hit. The next one is slightly trickier since you can’t time your jump when a conveyor belt is sending you hurtling towards it. Diving does increase your chances of getting through, however, even if you get hit.
Coming up to the final set of obstacles, the middle path can seem a bit daunting, but it’s definitely worth a try. It’s best to just barrel forward and hope you make it through the spinning fan unscathed, but even if you get hit by it, you’ll usually land on one of the platforms on the right side. From here, you need to keep an eye on the spinning obstacles and jump between each platform. Once you reach the final one, you’ll sometimes have to wait for the slow-moving fan to create a gap you can jump through, so make sure you don’t get hit by the spinning obstacles while waiting.
Fruit Chute
Fruit Chute features one long conveyor belt and a load of giant falling fruit that you’ll obviously want to avoid. The key to this round is avoiding the middle altogether. The majority of the fruit tumbles down this way, and you also need to look out for a log that’s frequently sent down. Stick to either side and try to predict which way the fruit is going to fall. Using the players ahead of you as human shields is also a viable strategy, but it can be risky if they fall into you and knock you over. Once you reach the top of the conveyor belt, you can run and dive to save time.
Tip Toe
Tip Toe usually appears in the latter rounds of a Fall Guys episode, which makes it tricky because only a few people can qualify. Your aim is to try and find the true path between the start and finish lines without stepping on the fake tiles.
You can hang back and wait for other players to reveal the path forward, but this can backfire if you’re too far behind when the final few tiles are revealed. The best course of action is to charge ahead at the very start of the round and hope you step on a correct tile. You can afford to try and chart a path forward because there’s a little leeway near the start where you don’t have to worry about falling behind. Once you approach the end, however, everyone tends to bunch up and begin pushing and shoving each other to try and test the next set of tiles without falling themselves. You’ll want to try and get in the middle of the crowd so you’re not easily pushed off, then it’s a matter of waiting until the final path is revealed before running and jumping to safety. You can also perform a diving jump over a single tile, which is useful for cutting ahead of people.
Slime Climb
Slime Climb is the hardest race in Fall Guys, regularly knocking out the majority of the field in one fell swoop. This is mainly because it differs from other races by featuring a timer of sorts, and immediate death if you fall into the slime. Because of this, outpacing the other players isn’t as important as outpacing the slime. As long as you can stay ahead of it, you should be able to qualify.
At the start of the race, you can jump up the yellow bumpers and use them as a shortcut to reach the next platform. This is common knowledge at this point, though, so it can be a risky move when a bunch of other players are doing the same thing. You don’t want to get knocked off before the race has even really begun.
Avoiding the balls is simple enough, as you can pass by them on either side, but other players are your biggest threat when jumping between the next set of platforms. You need to time your jump between the moving blocks, which means a lot of players often end up bunched together here. The timing of the moving blocks also changes at random, so ideally you’ll want to jump between them when they’re alternating instead of synchronised. Sticking to the right side also gives you more room to make the final jump if the block is heading your way.
You’ll want to keep running to the right on the conveyor belt to avoid falling off the side, then avoiding the obstacles is as simple as timing your dash between them. The rotating yellow logs can be tough to navigate when other players are in the way, so it can be worth waiting till it’s free before making your way across. At least then you have some control over each log’s rotation.
Heading up the slimy slope is fairly easy, but sticking to the right side is safer since the spinning mallet’s have less chance of knocking you off the platform. You can play the next set of moving blocks safe by stopping between each one if you have the time. For the final slime-covered area, you’ll want to stay in the middle and within the yellow lines on the floor. From here, it’s relatively easy to move between each obstacle one at a time; just avoid the edges so you don’t slip off. Then you just need to time your dashes between each of the swinging balls to make it to the finish line.
Survival Rounds
Some Survival rounds have timers that will automatically qualify you for the next round if you’re still alive when it hits zero. You can also qualify by avoiding elimination and outlasting a set number of players. Below are the survival rounds that can appear in an episode of Fall Guys.
Roll Out
Roll Out places you on a massive rolling log where the goal is to simply survive before enough people have fallen off and been eliminated. The log is split into five sections defined by different colours. Each section rotates in the opposite direction to the one next to it, so you constantly need to alternate between them to avoid rolling off the side.
Camera control is key because it’s easy to lose track of how far you’ve rotated unless the camera is level. Walking between two sections keeps things simple, but you may have to abandon this strategy just to find small pockets of space. Other players don’t like to adhere to proper Fall Guys etiquette, especially in elimination rounds, so they will grab onto you in an attempt to make you fall. You’ll mainly want to look out for gaps in each section that are easy to fall into. You can jump and dive over these to keep your position on a single section, but this is a risky strategy if you mistime your jump or collide with another player while doing so.
Block Party
Block Party takes place on a single platform as you dart back and forth to avoid an array of obstacles trying to push you off. The round will end after a set number of players have been eliminated, but there’s also a timer, so you can simply wait out the clock.
You’ll want to stand somewhat close to the front, so you can get a view of what’s coming and you’re further away from the impending doom at the back of the platform. From here, you need to dash from side to side to squeeze through the gaps between each obstacle. Eventually, there are low blocks connecting the obstacles that you’ll need to jump over. Don’t worry if you fall down because you can usually get back to your feet before the next one arrives. Mashing the jump button also helps. There’s no concrete proof that this actually does anything, but it will make you feel better.
As you reach the end of a timer, everyone will be funneled between obstacles in the middle of the platform. This part can get tricky if there’s a lot of people left and you end up bunched together. Chaos reigns supreme here once more, but if you can keep an eye on what’s ahead and stay somewhat close to the front, you should be able to survive the last few seconds of the round.
Perfect Match
Perfect Match is a little different to anything else in Fall Guys, requiring you to memorise the location of fruit on a variety of platforms. The first round is easy enough as you only need to remember two types of fruit. The best strategy is to stand somewhere where both types of fruit are right next to each other, that way you can either stay put or move to one side depending on which fruit appears on the screen.
Things get a little harder after this, as you’re asked to memorise the location of multiple types of fruit. You’ll want to try and position yourself between a cross-section of different fruit panels, so you never have too far to travel. This is easier if you’re playing in a four-person party since you can each stand on a specific fruit and make note of the others in their immediate vicinity. If you’re not playing in a group and you’re not very good at remembering where things are, you can always just follow other players that look confident enough and hope they’re right. This actually works most of the time, and there aren’t that many eliminations in Perfect Match as a result.
Jump Club
Jump Club tasks you with hopping over a spinning log that gets increasingly faster as the round progresses. You need to jump over a smaller log positioned at feet height while also being aware of the larger second log that spins around at head height. The key is to make sure you’re able to jump over the smaller log without getting hit by the larger one.
Other players are a hazard in this round, as they often are. If you can, you’ll want to try and find some space, so you’re free to jump without colliding with other players or being grabbed by them. You’ll also want to stand towards the middle of the platform, so if you do get hit, there’s a chance you’re not immediately flung off the side. You can sometimes survive being dragged around the platform by the smaller log, and this might give you the time you need to outlast the other players.
Tail Tag
You need to be in possession of a tail at the end of the round to qualify from Tail Tag. It doesn’t matter how long you hold a tail for, only that you have one when the timer hits zero. It does make it slightly easier, however, if you’re one of the lucky people to begin the round with a tail already. By making a beeline straight for the middle of the arena, you can move into the centre of the spinning mallet. This gives you some degree of protection since people will often rush in and get hit by the mallet instead of being patient and timing their run.
Executing a diving jump between the ramps leading up to the mallet is also a viable strategy. You can stand still and wait for any tailless opponents to start heading towards you before diving between the ramps to avoid them. If you don’t have a tail, just remember that everyone runs at the same speed. You’re going to need to cut other players off by taking shorter routes. Holding down the grab button also slows you down, so only do it when you know you’re in range and can grab onto someone.
Team Rounds
Team rounds but you together with other players in random teams. The number of teams varies from round to round, but the losing team will always be eliminated, whether there are two teams, three teams, or four teams, so you don’t necessarily need to win to qualify. Although the best way to progress is probably by not being yellow team. Below you’ll find the team rounds that appear in a Fall Guys’ episode.
Team Tail Tag
Team Tail Tag is an obvious variant of Tail Tag, so many of the same strategies apply. The arenas are different, but there are still mallets you can hide in the centre of, and the only thing that matters is how many tails your team has at the end of the round.
Being in possession of a tail is the best way of helping your team win, but there are also other ways to help out. If, for instance, you see a teammate chasing a member of the opposition, you can grab onto them if you have a tail yourself and let your teammate catch up and nab it for themselves.
Fall Ball
Fall Ball is essentially football with two balls or Rocket League with no cars. Score more goals than your opponents and you win. Simple.
Teams vary in size between one Fall Ball match and another, so you might find yourself in a 10v10 while the next time you encounter the round it might be 4v4. No matter how big or small your team is, you always need a goalkeeper (or two). If you’re not playing with friends, this isn’t something you can work out, so just look between the goalposts and make sure you’re there if no one else is.
Jumping or diving at the ball can give it a substantial boost, but this doesn’t really help if an opposition player is directly behind the ball. You’ll want to make sure you’re only propelling in forward when there’s space for the ball to travel. One of the easiest ways to score is by positioning yourself on the halfway line after a team has scored. A new ball will drop out of the sky, so if you can position yourself near its shadow, you can time your jump right and connect with it like a Steven Gerrard volley, sending it hurtling into the top corner.
Rock ‘N’ Roll
Rock ‘N’ Roll is another team game centered around a giant ball. It tasks your team with rolling your ball through a series of obstacles to reach the end of the arena before both of the other teams can.
It’s very rare that one or two people won’t immediately dash to the final stretch in a bid to intercept the other team’s balls. As long as you still have enough people pushing it, you’ll be able to roll the ball through the obstacle course without too much trouble. You can get past the first obstacle by moving the ball left or right, depending on which side you initially take. From here, you can avoid the rest by pushing it to the left or right wall and then moving forward.
Once you reach the final ramp, there’s going to be a bunch of rival team members trying to get in front of your ball and stop it. If you have enough people behind the ball, you can usually force it past them, but it’s also beneficial to have some team members go and grab them to shove them out of the way. You only need to beat one team to qualify, so focus on pushing your ball onto the slope where there’s nothing anyone else can do to stop it.
Hoarders
Hoarders continues the giant ball theme, except this time you need to keep as many of the balls inside your team’s zone as you can to qualify. The only thing that matters is how many balls you have when the timer runs out, but things can change very quickly, so don’t ever think you’re safe.
If your team has a few balls inside its zone, the best thing you can do is push them to the very back where there’s a shallow pit in the floor. It’s harder to steal a ball from this area because you have much farther to travel, and the shallow pit acts as another obstacle in your path since you need to push each ball out over the lip. If you have a few balls in the pit, you just need to focus on defence and stop anyone trying to take them.
If you’re losing, head to whichever team has the most balls and try to push one or more out. Pushing a ball into the other team’s zone can work, too, since you only need to not come last in order to qualify. As long as you have more than one of the three teams, you’ll go through.
Egg Scramble
Egg Scramble is similar to Hoarders, except you’re dealing with a plethora of small eggs. Like Hoarders, you just need to avoid coming last to qualify, so ensuring one of the teams has next to no eggs can sometimes be more beneficial than having a bunch yourselves.
The best way to win, however, is by grabbing the special gold eggs. These are worth five points each, so you can normally qualify just by holding a few of them in your coop. If your team does have a couple of gold eggs, you can pick them and stand at the back of your coop to stop anyone else from stealing them. They’re going to need to grab you to wrestle the egg free, but this just means they’ll usually fall back into the coop, allowing you to grab it again. Having a few people positioned at the top of your coop is also beneficial since they can stop anyone trying to leave with a stolen egg in hand.
Stealing eggs can be difficult if there are a lot of people in the way, but it is possible to leap and then let go of the grab button to launch an egg into the air. Lobbing one out of another’s team’s base is a lot easier than escaping with one in your arms.
Hoopsie Daisy
Hoopsie Daisy is all about jumping and diving through more hoops than your opposition. You’ll want to avoid big crowds during this round, lest you end up chasing after hoops that you have no hope of reaching. Your best bet is to seek out areas with few players and position yourself in areas where you know a few hoops can drop. You’ll also want to keep a look out for the special golden hoops since they dish out more points and can alter the course of a round.
Jinxed
Jinxed is essentially zombie tag. Avoid the infected for as long as you can and then grab members of the opposite team once you’ve become one. The round ends when an entire team has been infected.
Only one person per team starts as an infected, so try to locate them and avoid their area at the start of the round. There are spinning platforms on either side of the arena that you can stand in the middle of and get a good view of any infected players heading your way. If you do get infected, remember to try and cut off players instead of following behind them. You can also try to protect teammates that haven’t been infected by grabbing enemy team members to slow them down.
Final Rounds
If you’re lucky enough to reach the Final of a Fall Guys’ episode, you’ll have to beat everyone else in one of the following rounds.
Royal Fumble
Royal Fumble is another variant of Tail Tag that takes place on a different map with a much smaller pool of players and only one tail.
Again, it doesn’t matter how long you hold the tail for, only that you have it when the timer runs out. Once you have the tail you just need to keep running and never stop. Everyone else will try to cut you off, so you’ll need to make use of the higher platforms to outmanoeuvre them and hope they get knocked down by the spinning balls. You’ll also want to avoid jumping from a higher platform onto the floor since this will make your character fall over and leave you wide open to having your tail snatched away.
Hex-A-Gone
Hex-A-Gone is all about outlasting your opponents on tiers of disappearing tiles. Your chances of survival depend on how many players make it to the final round. You might end up competing with five other players or have to face as many as 17.
Either way, you’ll want to try and avoid other players since they’ll cut in front of you to try and make you fall or collide with you outright. Keeping to the edges is a useful strategy since you can cut back into the middle if you’re on a collision course with another player. One technique that has become popular revolves around slowly jumping between tiles to try and use as much time as possible and remain on the higher tiers.
Keeping the lower tiers in your vision is paramount because you don’t want to fall through multiple tiers when you could’ve landed on the one immediately below you. You’ll also want to try and avoid jumping or diving onto the lower tiers, as this causes you to stumble when landing. If you can, try and simply fall to the next tier.
Jumping and diving to distant tiles is possible, but you’ll want to start mashing the jump button as soon as you land to avoid falling once the tile disappears. If you make it to the final two, and especially if you’re both on the final tier, try and take things slow by jumping at the last moment. Maximising your time is possible because even if you fall the other person might hit the slime a second before you, granting you the victory.
Fall Mountain
Fall Mountain is the ultimate race to the finish line. It’s a short course, so you’ll be punished for your mistakes more hardly unless the rest of the players also suffer similar fates.
At the start of the race, you need to decide whether you’re going to head up the left or right path. Whichever way you choose, you’ll want to pass through the turnstile on the opposite side to the giant balls that are flying down the slope. Once past the turnstiles, keep alternating between the different paths to avoid the balls hurtling towards you. Now you just need to pass through the spinning mallets unscathed and jump up the stairs. Aim for one of the mallets that’s spinning in such a way that it will hit you in the back if your timing is off. At least this way, there’s a chance you’ll be hit forwards instead of backwards.
At the top of the mountain, you need to jump and grab onto the giant crown to win. The crown moves up and down so don’t jump too early and miss it completely. Even if you’re lagging behind, it’s possible the player’s in front of you will do this, so don’t give up even if things look bleak.
In the most recent bout of tech giant drama, Epic filed a lawsuit against Apple and Google after these two removed the Fortnite app from their storefronts, citing violations of their in-app purchasing policies. Not to be outdone, Facebook has now joined the fray as well.
As reported by Bloomberg, Facebook took umbrage with the fact that Apple refused to waive their usual 30% take on in-app purchases when the social media site rolled out a new paid events feature in 20 countries. This feature would make it so that businesses can charge users for access to livestreamed activities, like fitness classes or lectures. According to the Facebook executive running the main app, Fidji Simo, the company will not be taking any cuts from the revenue this feature generates.
While Google also refused to waive their 30% fee, they are allowing Facebook to process payments through their own channels to avoid the fee, something Apple is decidedly against on their own platform. This has led to Facebook accusing Apple of hurting small businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Helping small businesses recover from Covid is a critical thing that all tech companies should help with,” Simo said in an interview. “The reason we’re calling them out here is we hope they join us and end up waving their fees, so that’s really the goal here.”
This isn’t the first time Facebook and Apple have come to blows over policy, especially with Apple now working to limit the amount of data Facebook can gather from iOS users. Whether this latest clash will result in any change remains to be seen.
A new report by DFC Intelligence has revealed that, as of mid-2020, there are nearly 3.1 billion global video game consumers.
With nearly 8 billion people around the world, this means that about 40% of of our population plays video games of some form. The fastest growing segment of these consumers are those who only play games on their smartphones. This accounts for almost half of all video game consumers.
Of those nearly 3.1 billion players, only about 8% are dedicated console consumers, but this group has the highest per-user spending.
1.5 billion, or 48% of global video game consumers, are PC game consumers. It’s important to note, however, that “this includes some overlap with gamers that also use console systems and mobile devices.”
DFC’s report also breaks down where these video game consumers live. Asia is the leading region and has 1.42 billion paying game consumers.
Europe is second with 668 million paying game consumers, then Latin America with 383 million, and then North America with 261 million.
Of those users, the following graph shows the breakdown of mobile only users. Asia consists of 53%, followed by Europe’s 17%, Latin America’s 11%, and MENA’s 7%, and North America’s 4%.
As for what these 3.1 billion people are playing, we know that Ghost of Tsushima was the best-selling game of July 2020, followed by Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Paper Mario: The Origami King. These lists from NPD don’t include mobile games, however, or free-to-play games like the mega-hit Fortnite.
I was supposed to compete in the 2020 Pokemon World Championships today.
Originally scheduled to kick off on August 14 and run through the weekend, the event would have brought together hundreds of pro Pokemon players to see who was the very best like no one ever was. It was meant to be held in London as a thematic tie-in to the new Galar region from Pokemon Sword and Shield inspired by Great Britain.
But as we all know, the coronavirus pandemic has caused the cancellation of not only gaming events around the globe but sports, movies, and pretty much everything else. It goes without saying that during these troubling times there are much, much worse things to worry about than having your Pokemon tournament canceled.
Still, as I sit isolated in my tiny Los Angeles studio apartment instead of a convention center on the other side of the world filled with fellow Pokemaniacs, I can’t help but reflect on the strange turn my Pokemon journey has taken.
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A few years ago, I decided to pick up a Pokemon starter deck at Target and play some games with a friend. I hadn’t touched a Pokemon card since I was a kid, but as I shuffled up to battle, a wave of nostalgia hit me.
My mind was flooded with old memories: filling my red plastic binder with gleaming Base Set holos; successfully pulling off a secret card trade during recess in defiance of the school-wide ban on Pokemon cards; throwing down all of my allowance at Toys“R”Us for booster packs as I continued my fiendish, desperate search for a Charizard. And just like that, I was hooked all over again.
A 2019 study showed that people who played Pokemon in their youth developed a Pokemon area of the brain, and like a switch being flipped, mine was lit up like a Christmas tree. Next thing I knew, I was researching the top Pokemon decks, building a collection of all the latest cards, and attending tournaments. I wasn’t addicted. Why would you think I was addicted? You can’t be addicted to a media franchise populated by colorful pocket monsters. Anyway, then and there I decided I’d never rest until I’d become the world’s best Pokemon Trainer no matter the cost.
Playing in local Pokemon tournaments against a dozen players was one thing, but competing in the larger regional tournaments was something else altogether. These bigger events with anywhere from 400 to over 1000 players were key to qualifying for the Pokemon World Championships, the most prestigious and competitive event of the year. A high finish at a regional earns you a bunch of Championship Points—referred to as CP in player lingo—and earning a grand total of 500 CP during the 2019-20 competitive season was how to obtain an invitation to Worlds. There, you have a chance to take first place and win $25,000, eternal glory, and a trophy of a Pikachu holding a smaller trophy, so basically two trophies.
Photo by Joshua Yehl.
When I first started playing the game, I told myself I was only doing it purely to have fun because the process of trying to qualify for Worlds was too troublesome. And it wasn’t lost on me that I was an adult playing a “kids game.” Although, kids competed in their own Junior and Senior divisions, so that left us Masters division players to duke it out on a level playing field. The game proved easy to learn yet hard to master, and the more I played the more I became enamored with its unexpected layers of depth and strategy. It reminded me of what it was like competing on my college chess team, and if being an absolute nerd didn’t stop me then, it sure as heck wasn’t going to stop me now that I, Adult Joshua, had disposable income to buy all the best cards that were never available to me as a kid.
The catch was that in order to make it to Worlds, it required time and dedication to travel to all of the major tournaments in order to obtain that precious CP. The CP grind was often spoken about by veteran players as exhausting and unforgiving because missing a single regional could mean missing out on your Worlds invite, so going for it meant you had to be all-in.
I analyzed the metagame like a mad scientist trying to discover time travel. I drove to so many tournaments that I was forced to replace my tires. And I shuffled so many cards that I developed tendonitis in my right hand. “Could you play less?” the physical therapist asked me. As if! I wasn’t going to let the limitations of my 32 year-old flesh bag stop me. I stuck it out, and after the better part of a year, at the Collinsville regional tournament in February 2020, I not only achieved a career best finish—10th place out of 640 players, thankyouverymuch—but I earned the last remaining CP I needed to land a Worlds invite.
So proud of himself. Shame what’s about to happen. (Photo by Joshua Yehl)
At that point, health experts had raised concerns about COVID-19 but things had yet to take a turn for the worse, so I was nothing but happy and excited knowing I had finally reached my goal… completely oblivious that by the end of March, the 2020 Pokemon World Championship would be canceled.
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Los Angeles has been in various states of lockdown for four months now. Next to my desk is a shelf fully dedicated to storing all of my Pokemon TCG stuff. It’s filled with boxes of organized (okay, loosely organized) cards, a binder of holos, stacks of sleeves and deck boxes, and numerous playmats accumulated from attending tournaments. With all in-person Pokemon events canceled for the foreseeable future, this once heavily-utilized Pokemon deck lab has been doing nothing but collecting dust.
There’s been a lot to get used to since the pandemic forced everything to shut down. For me, a big part of that was figuring out how to build a new life amid the strict rules of quarantine.
Playing Pokemon cards wasn’t only a hobby to enjoy on nights and weekends, it was my way into a community, one that I was now cut off from. I missed competing, I missed traveling, and I even missed the CP grind. But most of all, I missed the friends I had made. Not seeing my Pokemon pals really sucked.
Last year when my birthday came around, I was feeling pretty crummy about myself and decided not to celebrate with a party. But when I showed up at my local game shop for the weekly Pokemon tournament, my playgroup surprised me with a birthday pie (because they know I don’t like cake) and singing me the Happy Birthday song in the middle of the store. I had never felt more embarrassed or more loved in my life.
I hate to say something as cliche as I don’t need to go to the Pokemon World Championships because the real treasure was the friends I made along the way, but there’s a lot of truth to that statement. The Pokemon community is full of some of the kindest, most passionate people I’ve ever met. They are what gives me faith that despite not being able to come together for in-person events, the game and the people who play it will continue to thrive.
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Already, The Pokemon Company has attempted to reignite the competitive scene online. Qualifiers for the newly minted Players Cup took place in June and we’re still in the process of whittling down to a winner as new rounds are played over the passing weeks. It’s an international contest, so there’s a semblance of this being a replacement for Worlds, but Worlds is far more than just a competition.
It’s a massive gathering of thousands of Pokemon fans from all over the globe. Competitors, spectators and fans from nearly 50 countries attended in 2019. The opening ceremony typically includes announcements for new Pokemon games, movies and products. Rare, event-exclusive merch goes on sale and is instantly snatched up by collectors. One year the director and lead actors of Pokemon: Detective Pikachu showed up to do a smile and wave to the cheering crowd. The World Championship is essentially Pokemon’s San Diego Comic-Con, complete with big lines, cosplay, and overpriced nachos. That’s something that can’t be replicated online.
Photo by Joshua Yehl.
Speaking of moving things online, The Pokemon Company had to essentially reinvent the whole competitive tournament structure to make it an online-only experience. While fans are used to watching Pokemon instantly evolve into a new form in a dazzle of glowing light, the Pokemon competitive scene hasn’t transformed quite so gracefully in its move to online.
Unlike similar digital card games such as Hearthstone and Magic: The Gathering Arena, Pokemon had never used its (rather dated) online client, Pokemon Trading Card Game Online for an official tournament, nor does it have a competitive ranked mode. Many players decried the qualification system for the Players Cup as being unfair for requiring an in-game currency, while others were confused by the rankings page that didn’t accurately display points earned.
Despite the rough qualification process, I managed to qualify to play in the Players Cup, but when one of my cards bugged out and caused me to lose a game I otherwise would have won, I felt dispirited and decided to not play the rest of the tournament. Much like having a card glitch in the middle of a match, The Pokemon Company is now being forced to deal with many issues that would have never occurred in real life.
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Despite a bumpy start, The Pokemon Company has made it clear they’ve heard the feedback and are dedicated to getting on the right path. The recent update to PTCGO includes a new way to enter tournaments and an adjusted ranking points system. There’s even a brand new Play! Pokemon podcast to engage the community despite everyone being stuck at home. Even Ash’s Charmander went through its testy Charmeleon phase, but now it feels like The Pokemon Company’s online competitive scene is well on its way to becoming a glorious Charizard.
I did spend the better part of a year competing to qualify for the 2020 Pokemon World Championships only for it to be canceled, but thankfully The Pokemon Company ensured players that all invites will rollover to 2021 Worlds. So I will eventually get the chance to compete for the top prize against a field of players from across the globe, and then go eat some of those overpriced nachos after I get knocked out on the first day. In the meantime, I’ve got a lot, a lot, a lot of time to practice. And when the world eventually does open up again, I truly can’t wait to head to my local card shop and get to see all my favorite Trainers again.
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Joshua is Senior Editor and Producer of Features at IGN. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaYehl and IGN.
Welcome to Star Wars Week, where we’re celebrating all things from that galaxy far, far away. From retrospectives on old favorites to explainers on timely topics to Face-Offs between beloved characters and beyond, Star Wars Week features articles, videos, slideshows and more on the beloved franchise.
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Star Wars fans have never been more spoiled by new content. Since purchasing Lucasfilm in 2012, Disney has so far released five new theatrical movies, with more in development. And that’s to say nothing of the numerous TV series, video games, comics and novels in the works. There’s more Star Wars than you can shake a gaffi stick at.
But as older Star Wars fans remember, it wasn’t always like this. There was a fallow period in the late ’80s and early ’90s where there was very little new Star Wars content of any sort. In these dark times, it fell on a small group of intrepid creators like novelist Timothy Zahn and comic book writer Tom Veitch to keep the spark of Star Wars alive. Thus, the Expanded Universe was born.
Read on to learn how books like Heir to the Empire and comics like Dark Empire helped keep the flame of Star Wars burning in an era when no new movies were on the horizon. We’ve even turned to Zahn and Veitch themselves to learn more about their personal experiences in exploring a galaxy far, far away.
Books like Dark Empire helped keep the Star Wars flame burning after Return of the Jedi.
The Dark Times for Star Wars
Strictly in terms of the level of new content being produced, the latter half of the 1980s easily ranks as the lowest point for the Star Wars franchise. With Return of the Jedi having come and gone and creator George Lucas only offering cryptic clues as to his plans for a potential prequel trilogy, fans were faced with the likelihood that there would never be another Star Wars movie. Even the Special Editions were still a decade down the road.
Marvel’s monthly Star Wars comic also wrapped up in 1986. While former Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter famously credited Star Wars with saving the company following an industry-wide crash, it was clear by this point Star Wars simply didn’t carry the brand cache it once did.
It is worth remembering this is a period when the franchise made some of its earliest forays into the TV realm with the made-for-TV Ewoks movies and animated series Ewoks and Droids. However, neither those projects nor their corresponding toy lines did much to appeal to an aging fanbase who had largely moved on in the years following Return of the Jedi.
“Probably if I was thinking about it at all, I was thinking that way or maybe hoping George would make more movies, but everything seemed quiet,” Zahn told IGN. “The soundtracks were in my regular rotation… for music I played as I wrote. It was not like Star Wars was gone. Probably I just assumed, ‘OK if that’s all, but maybe they’ll be back.'”
Zahn’s relationship with Star Wars at that point seems typical of so many fans of his generation, but as fate would have it, he would play a key role in helping revive a series many assumed was dead and buried.
The Origin of the Expanded Universe
The idea of relying on comics and novels to expand upon the mythology of the Star Wars movies was hardly new, even in the 1980s. Acclaimed sci-fi writer Alan Dean Foster (who ghost-wrote Lucas’ novelization of A New Hope) penned the very first Star Wars spinoff novel in 1978, the Luke and Leia-focused Star Wars: Splinter of the Mind’s Eye. There’s also the aforementioned Marvel series, which spanned 107 issues and assorted specials between 1977 and 1986, as well as two trilogies of novels focused on the early years of Han Solo and Lando Calrissian, respectively.
However, even at the time those projects had a dubious connection to the continuity of the films. As Foster once explained to Syfy Wire, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye only exists because he was contracted to pen a second Star Wars book that could serve as the basis for a low-budget, Harrison Ford-less movie sequel should A New Hope flounder at the box office.
Veitch and artist Cam Kennedy’s Dark Empire, along with Zahn’s Heir to the Empire, were the first in a new wave of Star Wars tie-ins that aimed to be more tonally and stylistically in line with the movies.
Veitch traces the genesis of what would eventually become Dark Empire to November 1988. He and Kennedy had recently completed work on The Light and Darkness War for Marvel’s now-defunct Epic Comics imprint. On a whim, and bolstered by the 1987 debut of West End Games’ Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game, Veitch wrote a letter to Lucas pitching him on the idea of a new series of Star Wars comics. Surprisingly, it worked.
[Note: Veitch was gracious enough to share a lengthy excerpt of his forthcoming book about the Star Wars Expanded Universe, and many of his quotes in this piece are taken from that excerpt and Veitch’s transcriptions of various Q&A sessions with fans.]
Veitch writes, “Three days later I got a phone call from a woman named Lucy Wilson [Lucasfilm’s Director of Publishing], who had worked for George since 1974, saying George wanted to see our work. I sent him the first three issues of L&D War and within a week we were offered the Star Wars comics franchise — not just the writing and art, you see, but the actual business itself of publishing new Star Wars comics!”
At the time, Marvel still held the comic publishing rights to the franchise, so Veitch began working with editor Archie Goodwin to craft a story pitch. As he recalls, they originally pitched two prequel stories – one dubbed “The Jedi Chronicles” set in the glory days of the Old Republic, and the other set in the aftermath of the Clone Wars, as the surviving Jedi were hunted down and slaughtered by Darth Vader. Bear in mind this was a full decade before Lucas began to flesh out the prequel era in The Phantom Menace.
Through Wilson, Lucas shot down both ideas, telling Veitch and Goodwin they had “carte blanche,” but only in the era set after Return of the Jedi. That seems to have been one of Lucas’ only firm rules at this nascent stage of the Expanded Universe. Eventually Veitch would get the chance to realize his Jedi Chronicles pitch in the form of Dark Horse’s Tales of the Jedi comics, a major source of inspiration for Bioware’s Knights of the Old Republic games. But in 1988, the focus was all on the post-Return of the Jedi era.
Despite this auspicious start, however, it would be several years before Veitch’s first Star Wars project actually saw the light of day. As he explains, Goodwin left Marvel for DC in 1989, and with him left any desire at Marvel to rekindle the Star Wars line. It was only after Veitch introduced Wilson to Dark Horse Comics editor Mike Richardson that the wheels truly began moving again. The Star Wars franchise would soon shift to Dark Horse and remain there until finally returning to Marvel in 2015.
Veitch writes, “[Mike is] a masterful businessman, a powerful negotiator. In no time at all Lucasfilm had decided to pull the project from Marvel and give it to Dark Horse.”
Zahn’s entry point into the Expanded Universe during this period was much more straightforward. As he explains, he was simply approached by book publisher Bantam, which was stepping up its own efforts to capitalize on the mostly dormant Star Wars franchise.
“Some of the Star Wars writers say at panels how this was a dream come true,” said Zahn. “It was not a dream come true, because I never would have thought to dream it. It was not something I ever would have thought was even possible. When it was offered to me, it was, ‘Oh man, absolutely.’ Exciting, but also very scary, because I knew that if I didn’t get it right, you didn’t get the characters and the field of the universe right, the fans were not going to be happy with me.”
The Rise of Grand Admiral Thrawn
With Lucasfilm making it clear creators should stick to fleshing out the largely unexplored era after the events of the original trilogy, both Zahn and Veitch/Kennedy set about trying to determine what the Star Wars universe would look like a few years after the death of Emperor Palpatine. As Zahn reflects, his primary goal was “not wanting to do what George had already done.”
“I wanted to get something that felt like Star Wars, but wasn’t another Death Star, wasn’t another Admiral Ackbar, wasn’t another Vader or the Emperor, something new, something different,” said Zahn. “We hadn’t seen much in the way of Imperials who were certainly brilliant, aside from Vader and Palpatine.”
Zahn continued, “But [I was] looking at where we were left at the end [of] Return of the Jedi and extrapolating, what the politics are going to be like, what the military situations are going to be like, and then adding in characters who would fit the universe and feel like they were just maybe a little off camera during the movies.”
That was the catalyst behind the creation of Grand Admiral Thrawn, arguably Zahn’s most popular and enduring contribution to the franchise. Zahn told IGN he was loosely inspired by Julian Glover’s character General Veers, one of the few highly competent Imperial characters glimpsed in the original movies. Thrawn’s military efficiency was mixed with a heavy dose of Sherlock Holmes-esque brilliance and deductive reasoning. He’s also notable for being far more sympathetic than most of his colleagues, in part because of his unique status as an alien outsider in an otherwise xenophobic Empire. The result was an instant fan-favorite new villain.
Grand Admiral Thrawn first appeared in Heir to the Empire.
Heir to the Empire introduced several other characters who would go on to play a recurring role in the Expanded Universe, including smuggler Talon Karrde, Imperial Admiral Gilad Pellaeon and Emperor Palpatine’s former assassin, Mara Jade. Mara in particular struck a chord with readers, and she would go on to become one of the most pivotal EU characters as she abandoned her vendetta against Luke, joined his New Jedi Order and eventually married her ex-rival.
Zahn said, “Mara was originally my thought of how Palpatine would have reacted to Vader offering Luke an alliance at the end of The Empire Strikes Back, that he might want to get rid of Luke and send an agent to deal with him when he showed up to rescue Han at Jabba’s. That was the nub of an idea that eventually became Mara.”
Classic Villains Return
Similarly, Veitch writes, “The main point I made to George, at the time, was that I wanted to do something really mind-blowing. We wanted to include familiar characters, machines and environments, so the readers would feel right at home. But we also wanted to convey the feeling of continually unfolding imagination — just as the films did.”
While both Heir to the Empire and Dark Empire revolve around a mastermind villain rallying the divided Empire to attack the fledgling New Republic, Veitch opted to resurrect Emperor Palpatine himself rather than create a new villain a la Thrawn. According to Veitch, that plot twist had its origins in conversations with Goodwin, as the two bounced around the idea of a copycat villain wearing Darth Vader’s armor to boost the morale of the dwindling Imperial forces. But Lucas was adamant that Vader himself not be allowed to return, except via dream sequences or holographic recordings.
Eventually Veitch settled on bringing back Palpatine via cloning, similar to how the character would eventually make his in-canon return in The Rise of Skywalker. As he explains in his book, Veitch’s primary goal in bringing back Palpatine was to test Luke’s relationship with the Force and explore themes central to the works of Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung.
In his original Dark Empire pitch, Veitch wrote, “Sagaciously, Luke agrees to become the Emperor’s apprentice. He’s taking a great risk, but his strategy is to penetrate the Dark Side by learning some of its secrets. Our theory is that any significant conquest of the Dark Side of the Force would involve heroic assimilation of whole areas of the Emperor’s consciousness.”
Palpatine’s return has always been a divisive plot point within the Star Wars fan community, with some (including Zahn himself) arguing it diminishes Vader’s sacrifice and redemption in Return of the Jedi.
“I sympathize,” writes Veitch. “But these folks were probably unfamiliar with the history of movie serials and comics, where great villains never completely die — they always return. Star Wars, as you know, was partly based on Flash Gordon, a movie serial and comic strip in which the principal villain, the evil emperor Ming the Merciless, is never completely killed off.”
Dark Empire also resurrected another iconic villain in the form of Boba Fett, who resurfaces during the course of the story to seek revenge against Han Solo.
“Of course Fett had to come back,” Veitch writes. “That’s a no-brainer, imho. Fett was a fan-favorite — and a bounty hunter that ornery is not going to be defeated (or digested) by some giant sand-squid. We got zero resistance from LFL.”
A New Generation of Jedi
Both Zahn and Veitch arrived separately at the idea of a married Han and Leia becoming parents to Force-sensitive children – the first in a brand new generation of Jedi Knights. Zahn created twins Jacen and Jaina in his Thrawn trilogy, while Dark Empire introduced their younger brother Anakin. Anakin would play an even bigger role in Dark Empire’s sequels, as readers learned Palpatine hoped to claim the youngest Solo’s body as a permanent host after his own clone bodies began to fail him.
“My idea was to call him ‘Anakin’ because he would embody both the light and dark aspects of the Skywalker lineage and suffer great inner conflict in his life,” writes Veitch. “As it turned out, this was how [Lawrence] Kasdan and [J.J.] Abrams came to visualize Han and Leia’s son Ben aka Kylo Ren in The Force Awakens. In their story, the Dark Side takes over the personality of Ben Solo.”
Veitch continues, “My idea was to explore the Light Side of the Force as far as we could go. And if you know your Joseph Campbell, awakening the Light is what he is all about. The ‘Dark Side’ is secondary to him. The hero’s journey is into the Light.”
Veitch seems to have a certain amount of regret over how Anakin’s arc was handled in later EU projects, as the character never truly grappled with his inner darkness in the way his brother Jacen would in the Legacy of the Force series. By that point Anakin had already been killed off, with the character repaying a debt to his dead uncle Chewbacca and making a heroic sacrifice in the climax of 2001’s The New Jedi Order: Star by Star.
“My plan was that the Light Side would win out in Anakin after inner battles between the two sides of his being,” writes Veitch. “As I understand it, subsequent writers chose to make the Light Side consistently strong in Anakin, and that he died a hero. I have no problem with that, but a lot of stories about Anakin’s inner conflict didn’t get told!”
The Expanded Universe’s Growing Pains
Given the similarities between the Thrawn Trilogy and the Dark Empire series, fans might assume Zahn and Veitch collaborated closely to help flesh out the post-Return of the Jedi timeline. However, that wasn’t necessarily the case. Both writers describe that period as a sort of lawless frontier for the franchise, where individual creators were largely allowed to blaze their own trails so long as they adhered to the handful of firm restrictions laid out by Lucasfilm. Naturally, that free-form approach had its downsides… downsides which became increasingly apparent as the success of Heir to the Empire and Dark Empire resulted in many more novels and comics being greenlit.
“There was not a lot of continuity control or keeping track of everything everybody was doing,” said Zahn. “Part of the reason for that, I think, is that I’m not sure anybody really expected the Thrawn trilogy to take off… And the fact that the fans were out there and anxious to get into anything they could that was Star Wars, I think caught people a bit by surprise. They didn’t have a system in place to monitor all the writers that were now being contracted to write new books and stories and games. And they had to feel their way along with that.”
Veitch recalls his story outline for Dark Empire was completed several months before Bantam recruited Zahn to write Heir to the Empire, and only later were there attempts by Bantam and Dark Horse to coordinate the two projects. According to Veitch, some even floated the idea of canceling Dark Empire in favor of a direct adaptation of Zahn’s Thrawn novels, a prospect he found less than appealing (Dark Horse would later greenlight comic book adaptations of the Thrawn Trilogy from other creative teams).
A portion of Veitch’s book is dedicated to exploring the creative conflicts between he and Zahn in 1990, as the two offered notes on each other’s projects and it became clear their respective visions for Star Wars didn’t necessarily align. While the duo integrated their ideas to arrive at a relatively unified take on the post-Return of the Jedi setting, they disagreed over concepts like the aforementioned resurrection of Palpatine, Dark Empire’s depiction of a “Force Storm” and the physics behind a Star Destroyer entering a planet’s atmosphere. Though as Veitch notes, the Star Destroyer debate was finally settled decades later when Rogue One showed one of the massive ships hovering above Jedha City. After these early, sometimes heated conversations, both writers were largely left to their own devices.
Veitch writes, “They sent me the manuscripts, so that I’d make sure our stories were coordinated. But I wasn’t asked to give any more notes — nor was he. The one good thing from our spirited exchange in 1990 was that everybody backed off and let Cam and I finish Dark Empire.”
Instead, it fell on various editors at Dark Horse, Bantam (and later Del Rey) and Lucasfilm itself to attempt to coordinate the ever-growing lineup of Star Wars projects and build a cohesive universe. This resulted in a fair amount of continuity hiccups, especially as the Star Wars prequels began to arrive and contradicted elements of the Expanded Universe. For example, the Thrawn books reference the Clone Wars, portraying that conflict as something wholly different from what’s depicted in the movies. The 2008 Clone Wars animated series was also especially problematic in this regard. It effectively rendered all of Dark Horse and Del Rey’s Clone Wars-era stories non-canon in one fell swoop, thanks to major changes like the introduction of Anakin Skywalker’s Padawan Ahsoka Tano and the reveal that Darth Maul survived his battle with Obi-Wan Kenobi.
With Lucas himself taking a hands-off approach to the EU, creators were forced to course-correct and adapt to new revelations in the movies and the TV series as they unfolded. In response, hardcore Star Wars fans coined terms like “G-canon” (stories created directly by Lucas) and “C-canon” (stories set within the wider Expanded Universe) to indicate how closely a particular EU project aligned with the movies.
The End of the Expanded Universe
Following Disney’s purchase of Lucasfilm Ltd. in 2012, the new owner of Star Wars set about streamlining and overhauling a franchise that had grown leaps and bounds beyond what it was at the start of the Expanded Universe. One of Disney’s first acts was to bring the Expanded Universe to a close in 2014, using the debut of the animated series Star Wars Rebels and its prequel novel Star Wars: A New Dawn as the starting point for a new, unified Star Wars timeline. Existing EU stories were re-branded as “Star Wars Legends,” indicating they no longer take place in official continuity. The Lucasfilm Story Group was then established as a new authority to help establish and maintain a strict continuity linking new movies, TV series, comics, novels and video games.
Despite having so many of his own novels rendered non-canon by Disney, Zahn actually seems very happy with the new way of doing things under Disney. Zahn has maintained a consistent presence in the rebooted Star Wars line, penning an entirely new trilogy of Thrawn novels set before A New Hope. A second trilogy will begin with the release of Thrawn Ascendancy: Chaos Rising in September 2020.
Zahn said, “It’s really not a lot different, except that we now have more eyes on the project because we have – along with the Del Rey editor and the Lucasfilm editor – we also have the Story Group people to check the manuscripts for continuity, internal logic problems, things of that sort. And in general, the more competent eyes you’ve got in the project, the better it becomes. It adds to the time we have to assume it will take the Story Group to get to the project, because they’re dealing with everything else as well. But for me, it’s well worth it. I like having more people looking at the book before it gets out to the general public and finding all the stuff that I may have missed or the other editors missed. Just all of us have blind spots and the more people seeing it, the better chance those blind spots won’t slip through.”
Veitch, on the other hand, had left the Expanded Universe long before Disney wiped the slate clean. He makes it clear he has little desire to return.
“For several years it was sheer bliss. And that’s reflected in the work, I think,” he writes. “At some point, I think in 1995, it stopped being fun. But we had six great years. Maybe I will talk about all of that later.”
But while Zahn and Veitch’s respective Star Wars careers wound up having very different trajectories, both played instrumental roles in growing and revitalizing the franchise at its lowest point. Without stories like Heir to the Empire and Dark Empire, there may never have been the Star Wars boom in the mid-’90s that paved the way for Kenner’s Power of the Force toy line, the Shadows of the Empire multimedia event, the Special Edition re-releases and eventually a whole new era of movies and TV series. In true Joseph Campbell fashion, Star Wars journeyed through the dark and emerged in the light once more.
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Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.
