STAR WARS™ Episode I: Racer

There's no denying that the Star Wars franchise had astounding video games to tie in with the series. Jedi Academy, Battlefront 2, Republic Commando, KOTOR, all stand as timeless videogames that faithfully recreate the world of Star Wars in some way. Hell, even Lego Star Wars is a blast. This is one of the more hidden gems amongst the lot. I remember playing this game when I was a really small kid (6-8 years old?). Sure, I sucked, but the menus, the atmosphere, and me liking the prequels a lot really made me hooked on this game. I go to play this game with more racing game finesse, and it is pretty great to play. There's elements of micromanagement of your individual components, what to buy, at what durability, and in what area should you specialise your pod. There's a repair mechanic where you can repair your chassis to prevent from wiping your car out, which cuts your engines for a brief while so that the repair can succeed and you can carry on. There's a boost mechanic that strains your engines, and should you apply it for too long, you will overheat and potentially wipe out. There's a nice sense of control in multiple axes and a big sense of pace and speed. A diamond in the rough amongst the already brilliant Star Wars games.

This was by far my most favorite racing games this side of the PS1. You will have fun playing this at some point, the only issue I ever really had about it was how most racers ended up driving way too similarly after you buy up the best parts. No matter, the pods are so differently designed that you'll want to race them all at some point. The really big problem with this game was that it was absolute terror to get it to run past what systems it was originally made for. Even with an obscure patch that was released for the game you'd be hard pressed to get it working on any other windows version at all. Somehow this was brought back to racing form on everything, so even if you already have the CD you should be looking into this version.

This game is great...i initially rated it a 4 and after playing it again, i'm rating it a 5. The speed is impressive and the game still is as fun as it was back in the day. The level design is crazy good, with shortcuts, several ways to go through (depending on what your pod is better at, all the ways are interesting) and the AI isn't too bad. And you can host and play multiplayer games too! For those having trouble: don't forget to set your resolution with the tool first. And launch it outside of galaxy.

Episode I Racer is a decent racer that gets an added boost from having the power of the Star Wars universe behind it. Despite being based on a film which most Star Wars fans would rather forget, the fast and frantic gameplay more than makes up for it, and LucasArts should be commended for having developed that fateful pod race into such a sizeable and varied experience.

Works right out of the gate, Just make sure to manual change your Resoulution prior to running the game via the game page setting tab... Higher res makes this game look amazing over the orginal resoultion, keyboard control are just the way I remmember then,, Easy and simple. hands down of the best starwars games to date.. now we need a re-make would be amazing.