Previous Next

However, with the release of the first in the prequel trilogy (Episode 1), a whole new universe has been opened up for some great new titles. One of the first out of this is Star Wars: Episode 1: Racer, where an entire fleet of racers and courses have been created based on the short pod racing sequence shown in the movie.

Shown at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in full force this year, Episode 1: Racer is Nintendo's big name game for the summer. But, is the game any good? I mean, this is LucasArt's first real racing game for any platform. Could they possibly succeed at making a good title? In a word, yes.

Before even starting up the game, one has to decide on something: To or to not include the Expansion Pak inside the machine. If you decide the former, you'll get a higher resolution, but also take a frame-rate hit. If you choose the latter, you'll get slightly uglier visuals, but a smoother frame-rate. It's a trade off that has to be experimented with before a final decision is made. Honestly, I'd rather go without the Expansion Pak and get a smoother experience, but that's just me.

Undoubtedly, the PC and Nintendo 64 versions are going to be compared side-by-side and the PC version will ultimately come out the winner. It's a given for the reason that the Nintendo 64 is limited to a small 4MB Expansion Pak to improve visual quality and no way to upgrade the processor and such, while the PC can have any component brought up to the next level. This allows Star Wars: Episode 1: Racer to run at extremely high resolutions such as 1024X768 on a PC while the Nintendo 64 is limited to 640X480 because of much lower TV capabilities.

Once you've got yourself set with the Expansion Pak and all that good stuff, it's off to the races. At the beginning only Anakin and a few other pods are selectable, with Anakin's being the most balanced. Likely he'll be the one to use for the majority of the beginner races. The first set of courses that are to be raced upon are in the Amateur Pod Racing league. There happens to be a problem with this, though. Racer takes the term 'amateur' to the extreme. What I mean by this is that it's almost impossible not to win a race. You can pick the slowest pod and still come out in first. I even ran a small experiment of crashing at least three times per lap and was still able to come out on top.

First thing that popped into my mind when this happened was that the game had been designed with very young gamers in mind and had left the older and more mature crowd out. But, instead of just giving up then and there, I pressed on and made my way through some more of the stages. One of the neat things about Racer is that on certain tracks there are stage leaders that you have to come up against. If beaten you earn the right to use and upgrade that particular pod. This makes the game more interesting and lets you see how different statistics of air brakes, acceleration, cooling, and the like can effect the actual race.

Although Racer seems to start out slow, after maneuvering my way through the first circuit the game's pace begins to move up a notch. Upgrades to acceleration and top speed start becoming a necessity, as the courses start to become so tight and fast that crashes often do occur and quick speed-ups will be required. The other opponents will also not be so far behind as before; most will be right up behind you waiting to take the lead at your first mistake. Needless to say, sometimes it gets pretty intense.

To go along with the hyper-fast racing, LucasArts has included portions of the Episode 1 soundtrack into Racer. Problem is that the Nintendo 64's lack of sound capabilities totally ruin John Williams' fantastic compositions. They become muffled out when pumped out of the speakers and I often found myself turning off the music just to get rid of the dreadful quality.

Most of Racer is decent, but one of the problems I've had with the game is some poor control handling. While it's possible to upgrade the turning and traction, when slightly moving the analog pad to the left or right to adjust the positioning of the pod it seems like it totally jerks it to either side, causing me to either crash or slam my engines into a wall. It causes many a great pain in the later races, I must say.

In addition to the regular single-player tournament, LucasArts has included a two-player straight gun-it-to-the-finish-line mode. As fun as it is for the first few times, it takes its toll on the frame-rate and it eventually becomes not even worth the effort to play through it. It would have been nice for them to concentrate a little more on improving the title's frame-rate problems and added in an extra mode or two to make playing this selective option a little more interesting.

After it is all said and done, Star Wars: Episode 1: Racer is still a very good game It isn't realistic because it doesn't need to be. It doesn't have the best graphics because it doesn't need them. This is Star Wars, people. And I must applaud LucasArts for actually putting together a nice little game, as they could have easily just slapped together some graphics and code and it would've sold millions because of the Episode 1 hype alone.