It’s 13th November 1984. We’re almost 18 months beyond the release of the final – as it stood at the time – ever Star Wars film Return of the Jedi and still 12 days away from the arrival of the first Ewok TV movie (a cinematic release if you lived in the UK and Europe) Caravan of Courage. So far, home video has only delivered us The Making of Star Wars in 1979, the 1977 original back in 1982 and SPFX: The Empire Strikes Back earlier in 1984, so the arrival of The Empire Strikes Back on VHS, Betamax, LaserDisc, CED VideoDisc, and V2000 was understandably a huge deal.
Video stores couldn’t keep it on the shelves, the release hit number one in practically every market on the planet and Star Wars was very much still at the forefront of moviegoers minds. Ahead still lay the Ewok films and the animated Droids and Ewoks cartoons, while Empire wouldn’t hit network television for another three years.
Within a handful of years the saga would take a nap through the Dark Times (unless you were into D6 RPG games, when the West End Games releases very much kept us occupied) but on this day in 1984, it was as good as it got for 80’s Star Wars fans.
