Star Wars Episode I Racer

N64, Star Wars Episode I Racer (1999) game

What summed up this game for me was an evening where I spent over two hours attempting to take first on the 'Abyss' track in the Invitational Tournament. At first it seemed impossible, but with continual practice, persistence and patience, one more go after one more go, I gradually saw my performance improve until I reached that sweet goal of first place. It was worth the effort, and that's why this game is more than the sum of its junkyard parts: okay graphics, irritating voices, repetitive sound effects and music. The challenge is the thing. You sense these racers don't cheat, and everyone's in it to try hard, and while the environment is often severe and hostile, making even a slight bang into the side of the track burst your podracer into little chunks, or an opponent might smash into the back of you with the same result, there is definitely a unique feel to the racing that you don't get in either ordinary car varieties or other fantasy racers like the 'F-Zero' series. It takes a lot of getting used to, but once it clicks and you get to know the tracks, where to air brake, when to lift you finger off the accelerator, the time to turn hard or smooth, whether to push forwards to reach boost status on a straight, it becomes quite the tactical experience, and I can't think of any other racer where you have to factor in the best moment to make repairs on the fly, at the risk of further damage or a loss in speed.

It's not really much of a 'Star Wars' game, in that there's not a lot of familiarity beyond a few recognisable faces (C-3PO, R2-D2 and Jar Jar Binks all show up at Watto's), and what there is quickly becomes annoying (Watto's incessant chatter, repeating the same few phrases over and over - don't get me wrong, at the time speech in games was still exciting in itself, but now it grates like a podracer on the side of a rock face!), it's more about weird and way-out alien landscapes which are probably in some non-canon book somewhere that I couldn't care less about, and wacky characters that you aren't ever really going to know. The environments are sufficiently diverse, but it would have been better if we'd seen more recognisable locales. I'm not saying there should have been a Death Star Trench Run track (please, no!), but somewhere like the streets of Bespin might have been suitable rather than places only those interested in deep lore would know. But it's pretty slick, it's fairly fast (not in the 'F-Zero' league, but what is?), and in the Hi-Res mode it looks pretty sharp and smooth (this was another game I chose to replay partly because it worked on my monitor without a VGA adaptor, just like 'Daikatana,' and also, I simply still had an empty file to play on without having to delete an old one which I don't like to). But it's in the racing that it does reasonably well. For a chunk of the game I wasn't very impressed, considering it either too easy or too hard, but when I got to that 'Abyss' level and succeeded through good old fashioned persistence and stubborn repetition, I realised I was having a good time.

I always take nostalgia into account for an old game (in the game's favour), and in some ways there couldn't be much more nostalgia for me than this one: it followed on from my favourite film of 1999, 'Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace,' which I still love to this day, and was singlehandedly responsible for setting me on the path of N64 ownership. Since it's now twenty years since I got the console, it seems a good time to tell this simple tale: I was always pro-Nintendo, ever since getting a second-hand Game Boy in the mid-90s, so I was predisposed to consider their N64 as my potential console of choice. I'd earned a bit of money by making a deal with an Aunt and an Uncle, who would each give me a certain amount of money for each GCSE I passed with A-C grades, and I passed all of them so I had this money at the end of the summer to spend. I don't know what first gave me the idea to buy a games console, but I know that early in my first year at college we went out into the town on a photography assignment to photograph various things and return later. While there, myself and a friend visited some shops, and in HMV I had a go on this very game. It seemed astounding to me that there was this 3D camera view that swirled round your podracer at the beginning of the race, and it all seemed so fast and smooth and exciting that it was the decider that made me choose the N64. And I never looked back. I wonder how different things would have been if I'd got into Playstation instead? I'd have missed out on some amazing experiences so I made the right choice.

Obviously twenty years later I wasn't particularly expecting the game to hold up that well. For one thing it's a film licence and as a rule that still holds true, games and films don't mix well. It's also a game I've rarely gone back to, though I had raced two files so I must have had another run through at some time, but it only allowed for two players maximum and so wasn't one of those multiplayer experiences that warranted playing as no one else I knew was really into it. So it was a pleasant surprise that it held up fairly strongly, not a great game by any measure, but solid, dependable, and as I said before, a challenge. Ody Mandrell was my racer of choice on this third play-through, and only the first time I'd ever actually completed every track without cheating - on my original file I got stuck on 'Grabvine Gateway' in the Galactic Podracing Circuit, and on my second file I'd used a button code or some such sneaky trick to bypass 'Abyss' on the Invitational Circuit, so it was a particularly pleasing challenge to beat. Some later tracks were surprisingly easy (I think I won 'The Gauntlet' on my first go, and 'Inferno' only took a few attempts, the final two tracks you unlock), while others were rock hard, so progress was a little uneven and frustration set in when you can only race the next track rather than having multiple options to play through.

It's tough that you can only win Truguts once in each race, so in order to upgrade your podracer you need to come first or second, and may as well quit otherwise. Playing the junkyard 'stock market' didn't seem to be an option as you could only seem to sell it back to Watto in his shop at the same price you paid, though if that had been a way to make money it would have been great fun and given more incentive to keep finishing a track you were failing at because there would be new items on offer. Still, it was details like this that gave it more depth rather than simply racing, which is what makes it stand proudly next to other racing games on the system. There were irritants, of course, the main one being that voices became rather annoying, with every little scratch or dent eliciting a yelp, and as I said, Watto's repetitive babble didn't help. And the fact that your podracer was so susceptible to damage. But the tactical nature of it all pulled you through, and only persistence, and balancing the needs of speed and care, as well as some intelligent use of shortcuts would win on some tracks.

Once you'd beaten 'The Boonta Classic,' the final main track, and a recreation of the one from the film, all you got were some scrolling end credits, not even a clip from the film or Liam Neeson telling you how well you did, which is a bit disappointing, but if you go on to come first in all the Invitationals as well, you unlock the option to play every track in a mirrored version. Unfortunately, unlike 'Diddy Kong Racing' and its gift to you to play the entire game through like the first time (except mirrored), it doesn't make any difference if you win a mirror track, so you may as well not bother - there's no sign on the tournament screens that show what position you'd achieved, and only the top record and best lap to register any specific difference for each track. Otherwise I might have been tempted to play through them again to add another '1st' to the screens, because it was so challenging, and a real struggle to wrestle victory from the tracks sometimes - and it was the tracks rather than the other podracers that you feel you're battling, what with so many objects to collide with and wipe you out with a whoosh of debris, or the side of the track to land a glancing blow that does the same. It was well presented, as film licenced games usually are, but it had had more effort expended on its gameplay than that might signify, and lived up to the other good 'Star Wars' games on the system nicely.

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