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.
Jan 10 2016. I played this game from start to finish in one weekend. In the time from release to when I played this game there have been several walkthroughs posted, of which I used a few to get through the main storyline and finish the game without much trouble. But the trouble was the most interesting part. Messing up and schooling yourself on coding methods, hacking together spaghetti code, putting everything in nice functions, etc.. You'll actually somewhat learn to code in this game. Just gotta get a modifier, a syntax reference (besides the lower part of your modifier, it's good to have a keyword reference in dead tree format, and yes there is a few out there), and an arcade cabinet to work on. There is SO MUCH stuff to be explored in this game, the mind boggles. To sum up a few of the things worth collecting; -DigitalTrashXX diskettes. They're spread all over the world, and can be read using a floppy reader computer, or if you're already savvy with the in-game programming language; just about any computer with a screen. -Screwdrivers, fryingpan's, booze, coffee, water, mystical cubes, doors, junction boxes, computers, buttons, elevator panels, almost EVERYTHING can be hacked with your modifier. So you did your first playthrough? Great, now delete your saves, and take it slow. Don't take any missions, just ignore Pixie and the Gang, and go into every building you can (and can't, because switching open doors to locked doors is pretty damn trivial). Hack the planet. You might find Ratvader's last chillaxing place, away from the ministery. You might find Zarah's TV to be an entrypoint. Maybe you'll find the secret arcade? Maybe fix your bad creditcard balance? Who knows!? But most of all, you'll be having a blast, while you're learning a programming language. For that alone, this game gets full marks from me. Yes, sure, the game has quite a few bugs with hanging dialog, but you learn to save often. This is by far THE best way to get gamers into programming.
