The Premium edition of Stern’s Star Wars takes Steve Ritchie’s high-velocity 2017 salute to the original trilogy and adds the premium toys that bring the galaxy to life. The Master of Flow laid the saga out across a fast two-flipper field with a horseshoe lane, a five-bank of drop targets, and a clever miniature LCD screen embedded right in the playfield, and the Premium piles on extra mechanical spectacle over the Pro’s already-deep ruleset — building toward a staggering nine multiball modes and a wizard mode, with up to six balls in play at once.
The game is built around character and mission selection. Choosing your hero shapes the path — play as R2-D2 and pick the Death Star missions and you’re on a smooth road to Destroy the Death Star, while the skill shot lets you light Tatooine missions for an easy start. The TIE Fighter and Hyperspace hurry-ups feed into multiball, and the real scoring lives in the playfield multipliers: stack them onto the Death Star, Endor, and Hoth shots, then work Endor and Hoth from the left flipper for easy hundred-million games.
It’s a table that rewards both the casual blaster and the deep strategist, with extra balls lit for clearing the third mode or downing eighty TIE fighters. Loud, relentless, and dripping with iconic sound, the Star Wars Premium is Ritchie doing what he does best — long, fast, satisfying shots in service of a galaxy far, far away, in its fully-loaded form. The Force is strong with this one.