It looks like the stars are aligning for a few more wars in a galaxy far, far away. Maybe.
About a week ago, Star Wars creator George Lucas’s LucasFilm Entertainment Company filed a trademark application for the unknown property Star Wars: First Assault. Starwarsfirstassault.com, which someone registered on August 22, forwards to the official StarWars.com homepage, though anyone could buy that domain and send it to the official Star Wars website.
And now, a user on the popular gaming message board NeoGAF found this Xbox Live Arcade box art for the mysterious game.
Not much else is known about the game or if it’s even real. We’ve sent a request to Lucas’s gaming division LucasArts for comment, but if you care to indulge me, I’d like to use my many years of Star Wars geekery to break this down while we wait for LucasArts to respond to my request.
- This new game’s title shares the word “assault” with early CD-ROM game Star Wars: Rebel Assault and its sequel, Rebel Assault II: The Hidden Empire.
- Those are Stormtroopers in the box art. Not prequel-era clone troopers, but classic-trilogy Stormtroopers.
- The Stormtroopers are firing at Rebel Alliance fighters. The Rebels are wearing the same sort of fatigues that the Alliance wore on the forest moon of Endor in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.
- This is a little shaky, but the architecture of the buildings on the cover is reminiscent of Padmé Amidala’s home world of Naboo.
- LucasArts is the only developer listed on the box art.
So we could be looking at a spiritual successor to Star Wars: Rebel Assault, developed by LucasArts, that takes place during the classic trilogy and is set, at least partially, on Naboo. Or I could just be a huge nerd.