May 4 is more than just a day to the fans of a certain epic space opera.

It is Star Wars Day.

Since the first movie was released in 1977, “Star Wars” has grown out of the silver screen to a franchise that spawned almost every single kind of consumer product.

So it is not surprising that the mega-franchise has moved to the realm of video games.

In fact, “Star Wars” games have spread across almost every single console ever released.

The first game that was in the galaxy far, far away was simply named “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back,” and was made in 1982 for the Atari 2600.

It is interesting to note that this is the first video game to be released by Parker Brothers, the company made famous by the board game “Monopoly.”

In the classic game, Luke had to fight a never-ending horde of AT-ATs in his snowspeeder.

This started the flow of Star Wars games, one of the most popular being an arcade game.

The arcade game “Star Wars” was released a year after the Atari 2600 game, and features the rebel attack on the first Death Star.

The game was a continuous cycle of three stages.

The first stage was to approach the station, the second was over the Death Star and the last stage was the iconic flight through the trenches of the empire’s strongest weapon.

Once the player destroyed the station, the game started again with a higher difficulty.

Critic Brandon Erickson played for 54 hours, setting the impressive endurance record for the arcade game.

During the SNES era, “Super Star Wars” entered the market featuring the story of the trilogy.

This is the first set of games that followed the plot of the entire original trilogy, though there some embellishments like Han Solo literally fighting in the carbonite conversion chamber.

The series was also unique because it was the first game to have the entirety of Episode 6: “Return of the Jedi,” even allowing players to play as the Ewok Wicket.

The trilogy also featured a high level of difficulty and revolutionary vehicle sequences.

Even 18 years later, the Super Star War Series stands as one of the best and difficult of the franchise.

Star Wars has a massive expanded universe that is not necessarily bound to the movies that spawned the franchise.

The best example of this is the exceptional game of “Knights of the Old Republic.”

The role-playing game from BioWare was one of the first games that explored the galaxy thousands of years before the events of the movie.  This game also served as the inspiration for the popular MMO, or massively multiplayer online game, “Star Wars: The Old Republic” which replaced a previous Star Wars MMO “Star Wars Galaxies.”

The Star Wars franchise is juggernaut that has touched all genres and consoles of video games.

Though there are certainly bad games in the Star Wars line up, the roster proves that movie based games can be good if not excellent.

The classic “Super Star Wars” and more “Rogue Squadron,” “Battlefront,” and “Old Republic” series prove that.

There are still parts of the universe that are still in the dark and there will be new Star Wars games until fans have the drive to explore every single corner of the galaxy far, far away.