Tim Veekhoven returns to a subject close to his heart – the classic West End Games releases of the 80’s and 90’s – over at StarWars.com. If you’re unclear on the influence these games had on the wider canon of the Star Wars galaxy head on over, you’ll be amazed what the WEG releases brought to the table.
West End Games managed to turn the lives of many Star Wars fans upside down from 1987 to 1998. During those years, West End Games published an avalanche of Star Wars roleplaying game material such as sourcebooks, gamebooks, RPG adventures, miniatures, and even some cool board games. The West End Games books were the first publications to expand greatly beyond what was known from the vintage era of the movies, and they mesmerized Star Wars fans with their incredible amount of new information. Novelists such as Timothy Zahn turned to these books for inspiration when they wrote new spin-off novels. A lot of canon names and terminology we take for granted nowadays, such as Rodian, Twi’lek, Quarren, Ponda Baba, or Momaw Nadon, were first published in West End Games publications.