Release order.
The way we watched Star Wars originally was like a dream during the 70's.
We first watched New Hope, loved it and became obsessed with it as most kids of that time. If you had anything Star Wars related like a Star Wars lunchbox, that was the creme of the creme. We devoured everything Star Wars related at the time such as toys and action figures produced by Kenner, our favorite toy brand of that era. A star wars videogame was still unheard of but some things came out that were an echo of it.
This was my absolutely most wanted toy as a kid sometime after Star Wars came out but never got. It would be about 4 years before I'd ever see a real Star Wars video game. (Empire Strikes Back on Atari 2600)
There was also a sort of Star Wars 1.5 thing before Empire came out that we watched...that (drum roll) most infamous and universally panned Star Wars Holiday Special. Yes, everyone thinks it's bad but we liked it nonetheless being the Star Wars obsessed dumb kids we were but if anything else, try and watch the cartoon sequence showing the very first appearance of Boba Fett animated in that weird 70's cartoon art style noticeable in shows like the Sesame Street of that era.
On second thought, just watch it here. I noticed that most videos of the Star Wars Holiday Special in youtube seem to have cut that sequence of Chewbacca's son (and getting into trouble) watching the full length cartoon. In any case, it was the best part of the Holiday Special.
Empire came, watched it and tripled our Star Wars obsession to the max. Mainly speculating if there was anything behind the whole Darth Vader and Luke relationship. We even checked out Sci-fi magazines for possible clues. One theory we latched on was the one where Boba Fett was Luke's real father in disguise due to how convincing the magazine explained it but the less said of that, the better.
We also got into the Star Wars comic books produced by Marvel at the time. The comics was actually well written and the writers made an effort to bridge the gap between Empire and Return even it wasn't canon. In any case, it gave us the Star Wars fix for something in between the three years between Empire and Return's release. By the time the movie came out, Return felt like an episode of the comic rather than the other way around.
After Return, we were happy and content for a long time. The prequel movies felt...off. Sorry but I'm not a big fan of the prequel series.
I don't even want to think of Disney.
