Star Wars Jedi Arena (Atari 2600, 1983)

Based on Luke Skywalker's training sequence in the original Star Wars film, Parker Brothers' Star Wars: Jedi Arena places you in the role of a Jedi Knight as you battle against either the computer or another human in a test of skill.

You play as the red Jedi and your opponent, whether human or computer, plays as the blue one. The view is a top-down one with a seeker ball placed between the two combatants. A force field protects both of them.

As you rotate the knob on your paddle, your lightsaber moves back and forth. Use the fire button to shoot laser bolts from the seeker at your opponent, who uses his lightsaber to deflect the blasts and in turn shoot bolts from the seeker at you. Every time a blast hits your force field, a piece of it disappears. If a shot gets through and hits one of the knights, the round is over and the winner scores one point. The first player to three points can claim victory.

Every so often, the seeker will build up an overload of energy and go wild, flying around the arena shooting random blasts at both players. During this time you can only defend yourself and must wait for the ball to calm down before you can use it offensively again.

There are eight variants to the game, four for one player and four for two players. The seeker will move slow, medium or fast depending on the game selected, and a final version makes the seeker invisible. Setting the difficulty switch to A will give you three lines of protection in your force field while B will give you four lines.