STAR WARS™ Episode I: Racer

No money, no parts, NO DEAL :D

Somehow I missed this one. This is a truly fantastic racer from 1999, and I can remember its release coinciding with the showing of Episode 1 in theaters. LucasArts had also released X-Wing Alliance, so, of course, I was more interested in testing my then-new gaming rig (which I built prior to entering my freshman year of college) that way. I had heard of Episode 1 racer, but had never given it much thought. I bought it here based on LGR's recent review of the game, and I must say that Clint's review was spot on, and I am thoroughly impressed. This game works great in Windows 10, particularly on old hardware (in my case, a Thinkpad T60 with DirectX 9-era ATI graphics from 12 years ago), and a Logitech F310 game pad (make sure to set the game pad to "XInput mode." Yes, I'm aware the game was written for DirectInput, but Win 10 handles it, and the game recognizes all of the buttons and axes). Highly recommended.

Finally GOG has it! Do not wait, its working, its working! Totally worth the money. Races are extremely entertaining, fast and intuitive. Just like in the movie. Yes, there is a couple of bugs, but who cares?

This is one of the most enjoyable racing games ever made. The graphics are indicative of the time periode this game was made in (1999) butt are charming to game in regardless. Wonderfully enough you can set the games resolution to your monitors native resoltion (for me 2560x1080). The keyboard controls work well, but I wish there was controller support. The game itself features a hand full of tracks (not as many as you might like) that are fun to race on because they work for the way the pods race, feature various short cuts, and each map looks unique. This game really brings part of the Star Wars universe to life. I owned this game years ago but gave up on running it as compatability with windows became an issue. Glad to see this game on gog!

I wouldn't have known about this game unless my grandmother didn't have it installed on her Windows 98 PC for some reason (I was the only one who ever played it). Things the game does right: - Vehicle damage. Having consequences for boosting ahead makes it feel more rewarding. - A layer of verticality. It's not space racing. It's not car racing. It's something in between. Flying in this game is just gliding, which really fits well to the theme. - Controller configuration. It is incredibly easy to configure a controller. It took me less than a minute to tweak the default settings to work on a Xbox 360 controller. - For a racing game of its time, it has quite a lot of depth in vehicle selection and upgrades. Things the games doesn't do right: - Controls. They aged pretty well considering the added verticality, but there are some things that aren't that great. Menus just glitch out if using a mouse and are pretty hard to navigate with the keyboard. For boosting, you need to glide down first, which is just annoying and doesn't feel like it has any other purpose other than annoying you. Things the port does right: - Resolution. Maybe I'm a bit biased, because I bought it on day 1 it launched on GOG, but going from 1024x768 (or some more exotic resolutions) to 1920x1080 after the second hot-fix, was amazing.