The LucasArts description:

"Star Wars: Behind the Magic, an entertaining insider’s guide to the Star Wars universe from LucasArts Entertainment Company LLC. Expected to release fall 1998, Behind the Magic delivers an in-depth look at the Star Wars phenomenon, including rare, unseen footage, behind the scenes images, and insight into the characters, vehicles, technologies, and talent which shaped the unique scripts and storylines."

The Review:

I received a "Vehicles Special Edition" CD for this review with the warning that I had to have an Intel brand processor to run the software. Luckily, this was untrue. Most of it ran trouble-free on my 233 Mhz AMD K6. The sheer volume of data on the CD was impressive. If I were more obsessed with the Star Wars movies, I could spend days checking out all of the stuff on the CD, and this copy just includes information on the vehicles! The movie sequences all ran smoothly, although the program loaded somewhat slowly because it was loading a long movie into memory. The sound quality was excellent.

Other modules within the complete set include: Characters, Weapons and Devices, Behind the Scenes, Events, and Locations.

From the one minute 20 second opening movie clip to the vehicle drawings and descriptions, it is clear that this is a well-crafted work. Why, then, did the creators make it so hard to exit the program? To exit, you have to click on "Controls", then click the "Exit Program" button. Trying to use the alt and tab keys to switch to another program crashed my computer. Some other elements of the user interface are equally strange.

For instance, after clicking on a picture of the Speeder Bike from a perfectly understandable layout, you get the splash panel above. It is not entirely clear, but you have to move the hand-shaped cursor over the "Explore" icon and click to get to the panel below which shows the actual details of the Speeder Bike. I hope that they improve this, or at least offer better on-screen clues in the final version.

Once at the Speeder Bike panel (above), though, the interface is superb, if a bit noisy. Each of the selections on the menu on the left move or make noise whenever the cursor is positioned over them. It makes you want to click each of them, just to see what happens next. Each of the vehicles has a menu like this, but not all of the selections are available for each vehicle.

Clicking Description activates a pop-up box which typically contains two or three paragraphs describing the vehicle. You have to click on the little round X in the upper right corner to close it. This isn't much of a stretch for Windows users, but I wonder what the Mac people think. All of the pop-up screens close using the little X in a circle.

Image Gallery displays a pop-up which contains a non-automated slide show. The Next and Previous controls are pretty straightforward. All of these seem to be stills from the Star Wars movies.

Behind the Scenes displays several paragraphs describing how the creators conceived the vehicle, and what capabilities they thought it should have.

BTS Images displays drawings and models (also in a manual slide show format) showing how the vehicle image was created for the films.

Technical Details shows a detailed illustration of the vehicle with all the visible parts labeled.

The Video menu selection starts a video clip. Not all vehicles are accompanied by video clips. The Speeder Bike video shows Leia's chase through the woods of Endor, her fall from the bike, and the Storm Trooper's wreck. Very impressive.

Audio activates a pop-up which allows you to play audio clips. Most of these are sound effects, but some vehicles also have a monologue by one of the creators of the vehicle describing some aspect of its creation.

The Rotational Model which starts on the upper right and takes up half the landscape is great. Using the cursor, you can turn it in any direction, allowing you to view it from any direction - even the bottom.

My only complaint: the picture at the lower right on the specifications display is NOT an "Aratech 74-Z Military Speeder Bike", despite the caption. It was instead an AT-AT, or All Terrain Armored Transport. No matter which vehicle you view, its always an AT-AT.

Each of the other vehicles has a similar display. All of them are interesting. Once you overcome the oddity of some of the navigation techniques, you'll enjoy this immensely.

Over-all quality of the materials in the CD were very good. One last complaint - there's a memory leak somewhere in this Demo. If you run it several times in succession, it starts to take up a significant amount of RAM, and could eventually crash the system. This is one of those things that the software folk typically get a handle on and fix before final release. I expect that the full-blown product will be delivered without this bug.

To end on a high note:

I loved this CD, and I want the real thing!

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Copyright © 1998 Paul Roberts

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