STAR WARS™ Episode I: Racer

Oh my god, it is finally here! This game was my youth! I played it on N64, Dreamcast, and PC, and this version is by far the best podracing game (it's also the only one of it's kind) of the 90's for me. Such amazing sense of speed, beautiful WAV music score, a boatload of different crafts to unlock, great gamemodes, and at one point in the past, a community building custom controller rigs just to enhance the podrace feel (i should know, I was one of them), debug and tweak the game to run on multimonitor setups (gotta have even more sense of speed). Closest thing themed like it is WipeOut, Slipstream 5000 and Pod. It wins in the theme department. This game is polished to perfectly emulate the Episode 1 racing experience, and it does so with a grace you'd only expect from a Lucasarts game. Closest thing like it in terms of sensation of speed; Need for Speed, Megarace 3, MotoRacer, Race the Sun. And still, this game feels faster, more controllable, and overall a lot more "rewarding". Once you have the feel of a craft down to perfection, piloting it becomes almost addicting. In terms of difficulty curve, this game throws you right into the lion pit. No hand holding, just pod racing. You lose, you are going to feel it in the credits department. It is possible to fail so hard you don't even have enough credits to keep your craft repaired. Get gud. It will pay off. After you memorise all the tracks, every corner, where to bank, slide, boost, brake, roll and glide you WILL rake in the big bucks and start the collect-a-thon part. Your now decked out garage has every craft in the game, all the droids you'd ever want, and a real sense of achievement. Even if you're not into Star Wars, get this game because it's just a hell of a racing game.

Ohh, wie lange habe ich mich auf diesen Moment gefreut, nach 18 Jahre wieder Star Wars Racer zu spielen. Funktioniert perfekt mit Windows 10.

Won't run on my PC even after switching to native resolution and making compatibility changes. Swing and a miss, gog.

Won't work, crashes to desktop

My first foray into Racer involved a CTD that required me to dig through the game folder for a 'video settings program', which turned out to have been located in the GoG client. Then I tried to see if an XB360 controller would work - no joy. For my actual first race, I crashed a bit learning the controls (Who needs pre-emptive research? Guesstimate! (In hindsight, why was 'Nose Down' boost related?)) In my second race, my view was fixed backwards and couldn't be set forwards. Still, fun.