Sabacc Home Page
| Website | |
|---|---|
| Name: | The Sabacc Homepage |
| Owner/Maintainer: | Dave Sanborn |
| Dates: | 1994–1997 |
| Type: | Browser Game, Lore |
| Fandom: | Star Wars |
| URL: | The Sabacc Homepage (archive link) |
 | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
The Sabacc Homepage was an early Star Wars web site that existed between 1994 and 1997. The site was originally created by Dave Sanborn,[1] a student enrolled in Syracuse University's Computer Science program, as a means to develop his skills in HTML, C, and CGI scripting.
The highlight of the site was an interactive web page which allowed visitors to try their hand at a game of Sabacc, the fictional card game in which Han Solo won the Millennium Falcon from Lando Calrissian, according to Star Wars lore.
The Game
The game presented on the web site was fairly limited and made use of a fan-developed set of Sabacc rules written by '[email protected]'.
In the site's version of the game, a player was dealt a four-card hand, displayed via an HTML form. A CGI-scripted backend processed the player's card draws/exchanges, and then calculated a final hand score against a single computer opponent.
A leaderboard was eventually added to the site, which would display the top ten scores of the week.
Sabacc for Windows
Over the summer of 1995, Sanborn developed a version of his Sabacc game which would run on Windows computers. Called 'Sabacc for Windows', the game was written in Turbo Pascal, added variant rules to the base game, and was made available to download at The Sabacc Homepage. An emulated version of the software can currently be played via web browser at The Internet Archive.[2]
Future Plans
An archived news page from January 20th, 1997[3] indicates that Sanborn was intending to produce a multi-player version of the game as a Java applet, using new artwork supplied by Sean Murray, an editorial cartoonist at Syracuse University's student newspaper 'The Daily Orange'. This version of the game apparently never made it past the initial development stage.
The Star of Alderaan Campaign
On April 13th, 1996, Jason Ruspini, creator of the Star Wars Home Page at UPenn, received a phone call from a representative of Lucasfilm, and was told that because his site makes use of the Star Wars name and various other Lucasfilm trademarks, he would have to shut it down. This representative then went on to say that LFL was actively clamping down on the use of its "intellectual property", and planned to shut down many more fan-created home pages over the next few months.
In response to this news, The Sabacc Homepage created the 'Star of Alderaan Campaign' to protest Lucasfilm's actions.[4] Other web sites which wished to participate could post an image of 'The Star of Alderaan' (a fictional service medal in the Star Wars universe, given to the Rebel Alliance's most valued heroes) in a prominent location. Creators of participating web sites were also urged to write Lucasfilm, and explain why they felt such actions were so draconian in the face of a fandom which only wanted to share its love for the universe that the company had created.
A few weeks later on April 26th, Lucasfilm issued a statement clarifying their position on fan-created web sites (they had no desire to shut down either Jason's site, nor any other fan sites), apologized for the wording of their original statement (which they attributed to an overzealous employee), and also offered a set of guidelines to help fans produce their own Star Wars-inspired content, without running afoul of the law.[4]
