STAR WARS EPISODE 1: RACER
Now this was podracing!
The movie itself might have been a load of guff, but two great things came out of The Phantom Menace. First, John Williams’ Duel Of The Fates (most memorably used in the Darth Maul fight scene), 1 and the CG-fest that was the high-speed antigravity podracing on Tatooine. Pleasingly, both of these things feature in Star Wars Episode I: Racer, originally released in 1999 on N64.
An arcade-style racer, this is a barebones WipEout-style affair. Despite the graphics’ smoothness, they haven’t aged all that well, and there’s an annoyingly small draw distance and occasional distracting environment pop-in. Each of the four tournaments is geared around a different difficulty challenge; three of them have seven tracks, and the final bonus one has four. Each of the 25 tracks is unique, though tracks on the same planet may reuse sections. From desert environments to skysuspended airways, jungles, moon-bases, and icy tundras, there’s lots of variety, but thrills are few and far between, and given the ease of even the harder tournaments, many feel like they just last too long.
What still comes across is a blistering sense of speed. Sure, it’s missing much in the way of the interesting track gravity you might expect from a zero-grav racer, but tight corridors and hairpin turns can still delight as you shove your pod nearly on its side. Two-player racing is also a welcome holdover. Racer was once very impressive and it still runs well enough, but it all feels basic now. It does raise the question – why haven’t we had a new version that’s as exciting as this was in its day in 21 years ago? 2 Oscar Taylor-Kent