Star Wars opening crawl no other "Star Wars" movies prior to 1977. In addition, it was not certain if the film would be followed with a sequel. When "The Empire Strikes Back" was released in 1980, the episode number, "Episode V", and subtitle "THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK" appeared as the first two lines of the opening crawl. To match its sequel's crawl, the episode number "Episode IV" and subtitle "A NEW HOPE" were added for the film's theatrical re-release in April 1981. The original version, without the subtitle, was not released again until the 2006 limited edition DVDs. Star Wars opening crawl The opening
Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game later became the "Star Wars" expanded universe, and its sourcebooks are still frequently cited by "Star Wars" fans as reference material. Lucasfilm considered the West End Games' "Star Wars" sourcebooks so authoritative that when Timothy Zahn was hired to write what became the "Thrawn" trilogy, he was sent a box of West End Games "Star Wars" books and directed to base his novel on the background material presented within. Many of the first uses of "Star Wars" alien names (such as the Twi'lek, Rodian, and Quarren) appeared for the first time in WEG's "Star Wars" books. Even after Disney's reboot