Kalhar

Kalhar was a Mantellian Savrip^[1] male who was considered a dreaded monster.^[2] In 0 BBY,^[3] he spent time in Chalmun's Spaceport Cantina in the city Mos Eisley on the planet Tatooine. While he was in the cantina, other patrons steered clear of him until a fight broke out and the Wookiee Chewbacca fought with Kalhar,^[2] using a bowcaster to defeat the Mantellian Savrip, who only fought with his fists and head. Kalhar had red eyes and gray skin. While at the cantina he wore a brown vest and open-toed brown boots.^[1]

Behind the scenes

"One of our favorite aliens came from the scene in Star Wars where Artoo-Detoo and Chewbacca are playing a holographic chess-like game on the Falcon. Artoo's playing piece was beating Chewbacca's, and we really liked the look of that monster. So we named it Calhar and made it the boss in the cantina level of Super Star Wars. It's like a little trivia game for players; they know they've seen the creature before, but they may not recall from exactly where."

―Jon Knoles^[4]

Kalhar first appeared in the 1992 LucasArts video game Super Star Wars, in which he served as the "Kalhar Boss Monster" of the game's eighth level. The level can be played as either Chewbacca, the smuggler Han Solo, or the Jedi Luke Skywalker,^[1] but the 1993 Super Star Wars Official Game Secrets written by Rusel DeMaria and Wallace Poulter suggests Chewbacca be used to fight Kalhar and so this article assumes this option to be correct.^[2]

According to the game's lead animator Jon Knoles, the team working on the game really liked the design of the Mantellian Savrip dejarik piece seen in^[4] the 1977 film^[5] Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope and so decided to include it as a real creature in the game, hoping players would recognize it without knowing exactly where they had seen it before. The character's name was misspelt as "Calhar" in "Game Room: Where Aliens Are Fair Game," an article written by Sue Berkey and published in the third issue of the Star Wars Galaxy Magazine^[4] in April 1995.^[6]