Shout Out!

Props to Baron Karza for making the awesome thumbnail. Check out his Youtube channel for more cool vs battle stuff!

So, What’s The Theme Here?

I know this one seems weird, but I promise you there is a good theme here.

Shapeshifting nightmares. They’re both nightmares. The Darth Vader in the 1987 Namco version of Star Wars is not the Darth Vader you think he is. He is, according to the instruction manual, an illusion created by Luke Skywalker’s fear and inspired by that one scene with the cave in Empire Strikes Back. But just like Freddy Krueger is a nightmare and yet much more than a mere insubstantial figment, so to is “Nightmare Vader” far more than an illusion. He can physically harm Luke. He is seen by other characters and even kidnaps them.

But when shapeshifting fear monster meets shapeshifting fear monster, who’s final nightmare will it be?

…You know, like Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare…

Nightmare Vader

I think most people are familiar with the 1991 Lucasarts NES Star Wars. It was a decent adaptation of A New Hope. It can feel sort of uneven with how much time you spend on Tatooine and it’s various substages compared to the gigantic exhausting maze that is the Death Star, but it was a faithful adaptation of the film and hit the highlights–the droids getting abducted by jawas, Luke meeting Ben Kenobi in the desert, Han Solo meeting the group in the Mos Eisley cantina, rescuing Leia on the Death Star, and of course ending with a trench run on the Death Star and blowing it up in wonderful 8-bit graphics. But that was not the first Star Wars game, and previous games took some liberties.

In the case of Namco’s 1987 version of Star Wars, quite a few liberties.

The game is a mash up of all three original trilogy films–and even has a little of the Marvel comics thrown in. You play as Luke Skywalker. “Darth Vader.” note the quotes, has kidnapped your friends and stuck them on different planets. There’s also a Death Star, you got to deal with that. You got to travel between planets, rescue your friends, defeat Darth Vader, and blow up the Death Star. You’re also way more advanced in knowledge of the Force than the Lucasarts Luke. You can use the force to fly and project force waves from your lightsaber. That’s certainly different from the films. But speaking of differences from the film, let’s return to “Darth Vader.”

For most people, playing through the first level of Namco’s Star Wars goes like this:

“Oh, I’m on Tatooine. Okay. I’m killing jawas and stormtroopers on a sand crawler, that’s not exactly like the movie, but it’s still Star Wars stuff, I can roll with this. Oh look, it’s Darth Vader. That’s weird. You wouldn’t think he would be on the first level, but let’s go…oh he turned into a scorpion. That’s not Star Wars…”

There are 6 (7 if you count the final Death Star trench run portion as its own stage) levels in Namco’s Star Wars. In two of those levels, you fight Darth Vader. They sort of combine Obi-Wan’s duel with Vader in A New Hope with Luke’s in Empire Strikes Back in the first of those levels with Luke fighting Vader on the Death Star. The rematch with Vader takes place not on the Emperor’s ship over Endor, but on Yavin IV. But in the four other levels, you don’t fight Vader, but “Darth Vader,” who as a shapeshifting entity born of Luke Skywalker’s fears, is one of the more interesting “expanded universe” characters.

When people discuss the game, Darth Vader and “Darth Vader” are often conflated, but the two are not the same. One is a mysterious fear entity seemingly at the command of the true Darth Vader (did Vader create him using the Force?) and the other is, well, Darth Vader. “Darth Vader,” who I prefer to call Nightmare Vader (yes, like Nightmare Geese) checks out of the game after a battle on Hoth, and is on the whole weaker than the true Darth Vader, who Luke can’t even harm unless he uses the guidance of Obi-Wan (Luke’s friends work as situationally useful menu items in the game) who, of course, instructs Luke to use the Force. The Darth Vader of this universe no-sells conventional damage. You have to use the Force to hurt him. Vs battlers, keep that in mind if you ever want to run composite Darth Vader.

If you were deceived by the title, I apologize, but Halloween’s coming up, and everyone’s entitled to one good trick. Freddy Krueger wont’ be fighting Darth Vader–because Vader would stomp him with the whole “can only be harmed with the Force” thing, but he will be up against Vader’s minion, Nightmare Vader!

Think of him like the Star Wars version of Phantom Ganon.

Forms And Powers

Nightmare Vader always begins in his default Vader mode where he walks across the screen and swings his lightsaber, but once he takes a hit he changes form.

Scorpion

The boss of the first level, Tatooine, who probably made scores of Japanese kids very confused. Why was Darth Vader on Tatooine, and why did he turn into a scorpion when I hit him?

He’s easy. he just crawls forward, and sometimes a little backwards.

My no-prize explanation for why he takes this form is that Luke, as a moisture farmer who has tilled the dirt all his life, would be very cautious of scorpions. You’re weeding the crops, your hands in the dirt, and then you get stung by something small that’s camouflaged in the dirt. Scorpions probably kill more people on Tatooine than wamp rats.

Bird

The second level of the game takes place on Kessel, as in “Kessel run,” and no, that’s not an edit, Kessel is Egyptian themed. I think they were going for a Battlestar Galactica thing. You know, these human aliens that form the cast actually landed on Earth and either became humanity or taught humanity.

So yeah, deepest lore time. According to the Famicom game, ancient Egypt was the result of Kesselians landing on Earth. Hey, they do say that these films take place “In a galaxy, far, far away.”

Vader takes the form of a skeletal bird monster that looks like the baby form of Aerodactyl. He’s a little harder than the scorpion, because he flies up and swoops down, but ultimately he’s not that much tougher.

Why is Luke afraid of a weird bird creature? I mean, look at him. Wouldn’t you be afraid? But if I had to pick a good reason, I’d tie this skeletal thing to the krayt dragons, you know, those alien bones out in the dessert of Tatooine? They got names and expanded lore because every bit of minutia in the films has expanded lore, even literal carcasses. As a child, Luke probably thought of all sorts of weird monsters those dragon bones could have belonged to. That’s the origin of this bird beast–a childhood fear created by childhood curiosity.

Shark

The third level takes place on the water planet Iscalon, which has an Atlantis/Greece theme going. I guess the Iscalon became the ancient Greeks and the Kessellians became the ancient Egyptians. That means China and Mesopotamia are the only legit ancient Earth civilizations. Go figure, white people are ay lmao spawn.

…Does that makes white people superior or inferior…?

Anyway, while it doesn’t have the Greek stuff, Iscalon (spelt Iskalon) was an actual planet in the old Star Wars comics published by Marvel. You know, the ones with the green rabbit. I found that out looking up Iscalon, before I just thought it was an original planet created by Namco so they could have a water stage. But I was wrong, it’s actually a pretty deep cut. Props, Namco.

The boss of the stage if shark Darth Vader, which sounds awesome, I wish there was a shark Darth Vader action figure–not of the shark in the game, but Darth Vader in the form of a shark. He’s got a mouth full of lightsaber teeth.

The shark is actually a little easier than the bird because you can “fly” around with the boss this time as Luke swims in this level.

Our three Vaders have been land, air, and sea. I appreciate the theming, Namco. Very Getter Robo.

The fourth level of the game takes place in the Death Star, and at the end you fight not Nightmare Vader, but Darth Vader himself, who cannot be defeated until you activate Obi-Wan (supporting cast function like items in this game, something that would be carried over to Lucasfilm’s NES version). Obi-Wan tells Luke to use the Force, the one thing that can harm Vader, and Luke does so, turning Vader vulnerable.

Wampa

The fifth level of the game is Hoth, so of course you’d be up against a wampa at the end. No need to no-prize why Luke is afraid of wampas. Did you ever play Shadows of the Empire on the N64? These things were scarier than anything that came out of Doom.

Some guides online say that you can only hurt the wampa if you activate Princess Leia to…do something to it. But I’ve looked into it and you don’t need Leia to kill the wampa. You can destroy the wampa without activating any character, but if you do activate Leia on the wampa, it’ll slow him down a little and make killing him easier. He’s the hardest of the Nightmare Vader bosses, because he does a forward jump which can catch you off guard, but in the end, he’s just a big dumb critter.

Time for some USELESS WAMPA FACTS, brought to you by Wookiepedia, because there’s not a single scrap of Star Wars lore that hasn’t been expanded into a book.

–Wampas are reptomammals, which sounds like a TMNT subgroup, and combines the best traits of mammals and reptiles. I just thought it was a bigfoot.

–Trompas are a thing that exists and are Wampas for more temperate climates.

–Wampas compose 11 percent of Hoth’s animal population. How do they not starve if they’re 1/10 of the animals? Are the rest just tauntaunts? Like is the planet nothing but wampas and tauntauns?

–The dense fur of a wampa prevents Rebellions life scanners from sensing them, meaning the wampa was unknown to them until it captured Luke Skywalker. I got to say, Star Trek scanners are much superior. They’ve never conked out against dense fur.

–There is a force using wampa named Ku-Kak.

With the destruction of the wampa, Nightmare Vader was seemingly no more. The next level would take place on Yavin 4 in which Luke would have one final showdown with the real Darth Vader before blowing up the Death Star, combining, at once, the climaxes of all three films in the original trilogy. As on the Death Star, Luke needs to activate Obi-Wan to help him defeat Darth Vader, which I thought was a missed opportunity on Namco’s behalf. Luke should 1v1 Darth Vader fairly to represent his growth as a Jedi knight.

Presumably in this timeline, Luke just kills his dad, if he even figures out Vader is his dad. But he doesn’t snap and go to the dark side, likely because there isn’t an Emperor to egg him on go “Good, let the hate flow through you…” Nintendo Luke proves, along with Nintendo Batman, that it’s not the act of killing the bad guy that drives heroes to fall, it’s their own inability to deal with their deep seated psychological baggage.

…But though men can die and join the Force, can nightmares ever truly die?

…Okay, this one was from the Lucasarts game, but it’s so appropriate here that I couldn’t help but put it in.

Freddy Krueger

The 80’s and 90’s had a strange habit of adapting R-rated material for children. You wouldn’t show a five year old Robocop, or First Blood, nor The Toxic Avenger, but all these films got cartoon adaptations and video games. And remember, back in the 80’s and 90’s, cartoons and video games were basically kid stuff. Nowadays, you got Adult Swim making the idea of adult cartoons mainstream, and no one finds it strange that most gamers are old enough to drink, but that wasn’t the case back in the day. Yet people in charge of the entertainment industry knew the score. They knew that kids watched Die Hard and Terminator. It’s not hard at all to see things you aren’t supposed to when you’re a kid. The trick was in giving the kids what they wanted without upsetting parents. The result were a ton of R-rated characters getting adaptations in which their signature ultraviolence was, to say the least, toned down.

Case in point, the NES version of Nightmare on Elm Street.

The game today is probably best known for the AVGN episode on it, and the Nerd’s criticisms are valid. It’s a Nightmare on Elm Street property in which characters spend most of their time beating up enemies that look like they could have come out of any video game’s haunted house level. If it wasn’t for the big Nightmare on Elm Street logo on the HUD and the bosses being various forms of Freddy, one could easily confuse the game for some sort of independent property about a guy in a red shirt punching out Spirit Halloween props. Still, I wouldn’t say it’s a bad game. I think it’s a pretty decent little platformer with some unique Nightmare on Elm Street derived elements. It’s also one of the very few NES titles in which you could use an adapter to do 4 player co-op. Did you know that? I bet you didn’t!

The game is based mostly on Nightmare on Elms Street 3, the one with the Dream Warriors, a group of troubled teens trained by Nancy, survivor of the first film, in lucid dreaming techniques so they can fight back against Freddy inside their dreams. It was, in my opinion, the best Nightmare on Elm Street after New Nightmare, and with the theme of fighting back against Freddy, it was ideal to adapt for a video game. Like in the film, the goal is to finish off Freddy Krueger “for good” by collecting his bones and burning them. That was the way of killing Freddy in the film. Every film had a different way of killing Freddy, though none of them kept him dead for long. The first film had Nancy bring Freddy into the real world where he was vulnerable, the second had the power of love, the fourth had Freddy explode when he saw his own reflection. Yeah, that’s an obscure weakness of his, he explodes if he sees his own reflection. Superman has obscure weaknesses like “Q-radiation” and Freddy has obscure weaknesses like his reflection.

You play as a random Springwood teenager running around Elm Street collecting Freddy’s improbably, precariously placed bones scattered throughout platforming hazards. I guess reality and the dream world are starting to blend together, because I don’t think the real Springwood has bottomless pits, giant spiders, and jaundiced Frankenstein monsters. Hey, it’s not as if the films themselves didn’t lean into the ambiguity between dream and reality, especially the first one.

There’s a timer that ticks down as you play, representing your character getting sleepy. While you can reset the timer by finding coffee pick-ups (ah, coffee!) and loud radios, eventually you will fall asleep, at which point the world gets darker and deadlier as you slip into dreams.

You remember the independent retroclone game Eversion? It’s sort of like that, but far more mild.

The colors become darker and the enemies tougher and slightly spookier. Falling drops of acid become blood. Spikes on the ground become reaching Freddy claws. Giant bats become skeleton bats. Giant spiders become mutant Freddy spiders. It’s actually kind of cool, I can’t think of another game from the 8-bit or even 16-bit era that does something like this. But though the levels get tougher, you’re a dream warrior, and you don’t want to dream no more, so you’re going to use your lucid dreaming powers to kick Freddy’s ass.

Lucid dreaming in Nightmare on Elm Street is kind of weird compared to real life. In real life, you can use lucid dreaming to do pretty much whatever you want to in dreams. I once summoned the Big O, it was fun. But the dream warriors are limited to transforming into idealized, superpowered version of themselves. The kids sort of become like budget X-men. One got super strength. One got a sonic shout. There are three forms you can take in the game, and you can eventually cycle through all of them, which I love. I love games where you can switch forms, like Mega Man or Little Samson. The first form you acquire is the acrobat, who has a much better jump than default and throws javelins, and while no one in the series specifically turn into an acrobat, it may be a slight reference to Taryn, who turned into a lithe knife fighter.

Hey man, some kids dream of being superheroes. Others dream of being the guys superheroes beat up. Such is the world we live in.

The second form you get is the ninja, which does a flying kick when he jumps and throws ninja stars. The stars aren’t as good as the acrobat’s javelins, but the kick is very good against bosses, provided you know how to use it without hurting yourself. You got to remember that your character has one hitbox and his kick has another. No one turns into a ninja in Nightmare on Elm Street, but I think this is a reference to a dream warrior from the fourth film who had martial arts powers.

Unlike the Taryn reference, I’m pretty sure this one isn’t a stretch, as Freddy even calls Rick a “ninja warrior” when they fight.

The final form you get is the wizard, who’s magic blast has the largest reach in the game, though is slower than the javelin, and can hover when he jumps like Peach in Super Mario Bros. 2. You’ll mostly be using this form for platforming, as the ninja and acrobat are better for bosses, but the wizard is quite good for certain platforming sections as his blasts can hit enemies that you’d otherwise risk jumping into and his hovering allows for very controlled aerial movement. The wizard is a blatant reference to a character from the third film down to the appearance of the robes.

Learn from his mistake. Don’t run up to the bad guys when you’re in wizard mode.

You end up being a pretty potent dream walker by the end, an oneironaut not to be messed with, but you’re going to need those powers, because Freddy has forms all his own, and don’t be surprised if he’s turning you a funny cartoon angel again and again and again before you finally win.

Remember something about the dream warriors: though their Dokken song is badass, though their music video ends with them giving Freddy nightmares, in the films themselves their win-loss record against Fred is…not that good. The point being here is that Freddy can take down even X-men characters.

Well, not like, powerful X-men characters. I mean like, Wolfsbane. I think Freddy Krueger could beat Wolfsbane.

That the NES dream warrior not only defeats Freddy Krueger but beats him several times over the course of a single night makes him the Professor X of the dream warriors. Even Nancy doesn’t have his dream skills.

But of course, Freddy didn’t go down without putting up a considerable fight…

Forms And Powers

Standard

Freddy’s standard form isn’t very challenging. He walks around, slashing with his claw, and occasionally makes giant leaps that vaguely remind me of NOES II. You know, the homosexuality metaphor one where Freddy takes over a guy’s body and becomes “real?” Freddy does a big teleporting jump in the film and the way the sprite tucks his legs up reminds me of it.

Freddy is also assisted by giant gray claw hands that rise out of the ground, though these claws aren’t very accurate. Sometimes they spawn near you, sometimes they spawn across the screen. Still, they’re something to be aware of when fighting Freddy.

Head And Glove

The game gets quite a lot of mileage out of sprites of Freddy’s head and glove, which shouldn’t be that surprising. What do people think of when they think Freddy Krueger? They think of his glove and his messed-up burn victim face. You’ll also encounter a Freddy head on a ball chain, which I suppose is Freddy in “snake mode,” who will lunge at you and bite his own tongue off to create a bouncing stage hazard. It’s probably the grossest boss of the entire NES library, and I think the attacking tongues are a reference to the “I’m your boyfriend now, Nancy” scene from the first film.

Bat

Looking like something you’d fight in Cuphead, the Freddy bat flies around and spawns little skeleton bats, which means it’s basically the glove but with minions. It’s probably the lamest form since its the one that looks the least like Freddy. It’s the giant nose and skull-white face, it’s too “off model,” even for a guy that’s shapeshifted into some weird things throughout the series, such as Super Freddy. In fact, I’d go as far to say that the Freddy bat might be the most not-Freddy of all of Freddy Krueger’s transformations.

Ghost

What I think they were trying to do with this form was reference when Freddy’s “ghost” animated his corpse during Dream Warriors, but I don’t know. Intent aside, what we got is kind of cute. This is probably the cutest form ol’ Fred has ever taken on. Just look at it! It’s Freddy as a cute, legless Casper. And just like bat Freddy, he spawns little minions.

God, just look at them. They’re like things you’d decorate a Kindergarten with during October.

After defeating all of Freddy’s forms at the end of the levels, you fight them all back-to-back in a boss rush in the boiler room of Springfield High. And that includes fighting the head and glove separated and then together. It’s quite the challenge, here’s hoping you saved up a few extra lives, but once you fight past the Freddy army, you dump his bones in the furnace and destroy Freddy Krueger once and for all!

Pfff! Of course Freddy isn’t dead. The guy comes back from the dead more often than Dracula. Death to Freddy is more of a

You know, this ending would have been perfect if a gloved hand came out of the ground. In the NES Friday the 13th, Jason moves his head. That’s more than this.

So, Who Wins?

I got to give it to Freddy.

Not only does Fred have more forms than Nightmare Vader, he’s got forms with more abilities. Mostly, Nightmare Vader moves around and deals collision damage, but Freddy has forms where he spawns minions. Ultimately, Freddy has answers to all of Nightmare Vader’s forms. Scorpion form is just a less mobile version of the head and glove forms. Bird form is a version of the Freddy bat that can’t produce minions. Shark and wampa form could conceivably overpower Freddy, but when destroyed, Freddy can just create another form, and any of the flying forms can keep out of the range of the shark and wampa forms.

Nightmare Vader’s best bet to defeating Freddy is to stick to Vader form, but that’s a very fragile form. He only assumes the form of Darth Vader as an opening gambit, and one hit knocks him out of it. He never demonstrated any force powers in Darth Vader form, but even if he did, it’s not enough to take out Freddy while avoiding getting him from Freddy’s familiars.

In this fight, the nightmare of a small town trumped the nightmare of a galaxy far, far away.