Shortly after Star Wars' 1978 debut in Japan, the world saw its first bona-fide feature-length Star Wars ripoff -- Uchu kara no messeji, or Message from Space. Taking visual cues from Star Wars as well as actual plot points, the Japanese knock-off featured "a super-fortress flyover, a white-clad princess, rogue star pilots, dogfights in space, a plucky robot, an intergalactic watering hole, a planet-killing space-station-moon, blasters, swords, armored minions, and a climactic trench-run to deliver a torpedo into an open shaft", to quote our coverage from Insider Online #95 (Hyperspace members can read that here). And, true to form, it even spawned a sequel a year later.
