Ahh now here’s a favorite I’ve been wanting to cover for ages.
This is Star Wars: Episode 1 - Racer, developed and published by LucasArts in May of 1999
for Windows PCs, alongside the Nintendo 64 release,
which is probably the more well-known version of the game.
It also got released for the Macintosh and the Sega Dreamcast the following year, along
with a highly simplified Game Boy Color version, and even a beefy
coin-op arcade machine with proper podracing controls.
But for this video I’m going to be sticking to this PC version since it’s the one I
owned and played back then, and I just like it.
Although I vividly remember the first time I saw the game at all, which was at the local
Best Buy store where they had an N64 demo unit
hooked up to a massive 3x3 display of some
kind hanging from the ceiling.
I was instantly enamored with the game and the moment we upgraded our PC to be able to
play 3D accelerated games, this Windows version with its gorgeous gatefold box was on my short
list of most-wanted titles.
Although I don’t recall if this limited edition box is the one we got back then or
not, but hey, it's the one I have now so let’s take a look.
Turns out there were two covers released, one with Anakin’s podracer and one with
Sebulba, with the latter being much more uncommon
but neither are particularly cheap boxes these days.
Contained within is a colorful smorgasbord of late-90s PC game inserts, including the
limited edition goodies like this aesthetically-appealing podracer schematic and the
less-than-appealing young Anakin Skywalker poster.
Eh, could’ve been worse.
You also get this wonderful Spring ‘99 LucasArts product catalog,
and man I love looking through these.
This was quite a busy time for the company, with prequel trilogy hype reaching a fever
pitch and new games coming out seemingly every other month.
And of course you get the game on a single compact disc in a jewel case, as well as the
full-color owner’s manual, with 37 pages of full-color manual that is yours to own.
And even for 1999 this is a fantastic little booklet, filled with great concept art, useful
illustrations, and copious well-written tidbits detailing each facet of gameplay.
I just love a good bathroom break booklet.
Starting up the game provides you with an assortment of animated LucasArts artistry
in the form of logos and introductory cutscenes, with the main one showing a loose recreation
of Episode 1’s famous podracing scene.
[beep!]
["And they're off!"]
[now *this* is FMV podracing!]
You’re then presented with the main menu screen, John Williams’s classic Duel of
the Fates playing on an endless loop.
[♪♪♪]
At this point you can choose to play multiplayer, a single race, or the tournament mode.
We’ll just be looking at tournament mode in this video because single race simply allows
access to stuff unlocked in tournament mode, and multiplayer requires a direct connection
to other PCs through a local area network.
Sadly you do not get split-screen multiplayer goodness in this version like you did on the
consoles, and that always kind of bummed me out.
What you do get is the ability to create a profile for yourself and then watch a short
in-game cutscene, where you wander into this cantina, shoo away whatever randomly-chosen
droid or creature happens to be standing in your way, and then selecting a podracer.
Each of them have seven performance statistics inherent to their vehicle, as well as an 8th
statistic that’s a little more vague and that is the size and shape of the podracer itself.
The driver really is of no consequence, but you get to choose from everyone shown
in Episode 1’s podracing scene and plenty more, with over 20 drivers unlockable
by the end of the game.
Finally you can select from and compete in one of three tournaments with up to seven
races each, with the goal being to place fourth or better on each track to reach the final
competition, the Boonta Eve Classic from the movie.
After this you’re presented with a management screen, allowing you to begin the selected
race, inspect your podracer for no reason other than to admire the polygons and GRAFIX,
and perform a number of podracer upgrades and tweaks.
We’ll be back to this in a moment, but for now let’s drop right into the podracing
itself, beginning with another cutscene introducing you to the upcoming planet.
"Welcome podracing fans to Ando Prime!"
"Home of the benevolent Andobi Bendu monks."
"Your host, the wisest of the wise..."
"Ten-Abu Doba!"
[barely-audible announcer introduction]
[podracing sounds commence]
Now this is podracing!
Or, this is "Episode 1 - Racer," to be more precise.
Did anyone actually call it by its proper marketed title back then?
I know my friends and I always just called it "Star Wars Pod Racer," but anyway.
The gameplay is precisely what you’d expect for an experience based on the nearly 20-minute
scene from Episode 1: absurdly fast racing through sci-fi environments with excellent
sound design, interrupted by the occasional piece of grating dialogue.
[somewhat irritating alien exclamations]
And man, this is still a lot of fun.
One of the most important things for a racing game to get right is a sense of speed, and
Episode 1 Racer is one that absolutely nails that.
If the speed of the simulation was too slow, it risks breaking the suspension of disbelief
knowing that these podracers are moving at velocities exceeding 600 miles an hour.
But if the simulation were to move too fast, or even moved at a speed that was accurate
to what it would be in reality, then the game would simply be unplayable.
“You must have jedi reflexes if you race pods” may be true, but expecting every
gamer to possess those would not be very enjoyable.
Thankfully, the combination of the environments, sound effects, graphical effects, and control
scheme make approaching 1000 miles an hour here not only feasible, but desirable.
The controls in particular are something to be commended here, because it gives you just
enough options to be able to fully control your pod
without ever feeling like the room for error disappears.
And seeing as they made this work as well as it does even on a keyboard, that’s impressive.
Now you might want an analogue control method of some kind, whether it be a joystick,
a gamepad, a steering wheel, or even the mouse.
But personally, I’ve always played this version of the game with the keyboard because,
well, I just got used to it back in the day.
But also because I find the precise digital controls spread across the keyboard to be
a good match for this kind of twitchy racing.
And the manner in which LucasArts split up the required inputs by default cleverly avoids
the problem of ghosting when you’re pressing multiple
keys simultaneously on a keyboard without NKRO.
On the right hand side of the keyboard you use the arrow keys to turn left and right
as well as pitch up and down, and on the left hand you have the WASD keys for controlling
thrust, brakes, and the somewhat superfluous rolling left and right.
There are also keys on the left side for performing repairs, changing cameras, taunting,
as well as the all-important slide key.
When this is held down, your podracer goes from rapidly strafing left and right to having
a more nuanced and fine-tuned control scheme that’s better-suited for navigating sharp
corners and narrow passageways.
And finally, there’s the boost mode, enabled by pressing a combination of inputs.
Whenever you’ve maxed out on speed and this indicator turns from green to yellow, you
can pitch down and press Shift to enable the boost, which will take you well beyond your
normal thrust speed at the expense of handling and heat generation.
And that’s where this indicator on the bottom-left of the screen comes into play, showing your
engine status alongside an audio cue letting you know you’re about to overheat.
If you push too far then an engine will catch fire and will need repairing on the fly, and
if you keep pushing you’ll explode, so balancing thrust with boost is key.
Before long though, this becomes second nature and you don’t even need to look at any of
the indicators at all, relying completely on the audio cues and timing
to make sure you’re going as fast as possible in your current podracer without combusting.
[BOOM]
Of course, if you do explode then you’re quickly reset with fresh engines, but obviously
that’s not ideal since you lose valuable time.
And parts do wear out the more you screw up as well, so you will also
have to perform repairs once you complete the race.
This is not something that you do manually, it just gets fixed up over time by your pit droids,
so buying up as many of those as you can, as quickly as you can, is very much advised.
And since it takes time to fix a podracer, at this point you just
switch to another one and keep playing.
Because the way things work in tournament mode is that you play more of a manager for
every podracer, rather than a single racer themselves.
Once you’ve chosen a racer, you can then invest your credits into improving their podracer
through parts upgrades, with everyone sharing the same pool of credits, or you can swap
between them at will depending on your repair needs.
You also have the options to simply switch out any damaged parts for others that are
in better shape or have different stats altogether.
Entering Watto’s shop or junkyard will provide dozens of parts options covering all of the
performance categories of your podracer,
and this certainly isn’t the most streamlined process.
There’s a lot of menu interface weirdness that makes it feel clunky with a mouse, and
I wish there was more of an overview of all the available parts at once instead of having
to navigate through each one individually to see what it does.
And I also wish Watto would just shut up already.
"I am-a betting heavily on Sebulba!
He always wins, ehhehehehaah!"
Seriously he never stops, it’s just an endless loop
of the same annoying sound bites over and over...
"Have-a you seen-a my chance cube-a?"
"HAVE-A YOU SEEN-A MY
CHANCE CUUUUUUUUUBEEEEEEE-AAAAA?!?!?!?!"
OKAY, how about those visuals though?
Mm, 1999.
I kinda miss this era in PC game graphics.
Although admittedly this particular footage doesn’t look great anymore since I’m running
it at 640x480, which is the resolution I played it on back when it was new.
And the HUD elements look distractingly blurry, a problem that unfortunately exists no matter
what resolution you choose, but oh well it gets the job done.
Heh, anyone else always see this "3" as the Monster Energy logo?
Well now I'm just getting distracted, anyway.
What I’m trying to say here is that, while technically it’s not amazing anymore,
in terms of aesthetics for a decades-old game I still think it looks great all things considered.
Star Wars design language and color palettes mesh
perfectly with late-90s graphical capability, I feel.
The 3D models are just polygonal enough to be believable and the textures are just detailed
enough to look good at high speeds.
I also like how most of the alternate routes and shortcuts are clearly laid out on the
minimap, and man there are a bunch of them.
Finding and mastering the shortest and most navigable bits of track is key to a first
place finish and a NEW LAP RECORD.
And then there are environmental effects like snow, dust, water, lens flares, and all sorts
of objects breaking apart on collision that looked positively fantastic back then and
remain enjoyably charming now.
I especially love the design of the tracks that take place on worlds filled with neon
and rusty metal everywhere, and the mining stations with zero-gravity sections where
you’re flying past floating rocks and electrical hazards.
Tracks like these make your choice in podracer quite significant, since a larger but faster
pod might be too difficult to navigate compared to a slower but smaller one.
In fact, the hazards are the other main pillar of the gameplay here, with each track and
permutation of said track containing its own unique props, pitfalls, and perilous problems
to plow through or pilot past.
Though I always found it odd that podracers slip and slide while going over icy surfaces,
since, well, they’re not actually touching the ground right?
The game itself says you’re hovering four feet off the ground in these things,
so why is ice slippery?
Oh well, it’s one more tricky thing to navigate and I dig it nonetheless.
Once you finish that you’re crowned the king of pods or something and the credits roll,
and all that remains are the additional challenge tracks.
I actually enjoy most of them, but... wrregnugh this one in particular, Abyss?
It is by far the worst in the game.
Visually I like it but it is poorly and unfairly designed.
It’s the only track in the game that harshly punishes you
for not taking the exact correct route.
So unless you take this top portion of the track every lap, you have zero chance of winning
due to it forcing you down a long, out of the way loop of track that puts you way behind.
And due to the nature of this top portion of track, it’s incredibly
easy to fall off either side.
Not only that but it is oddly buggy, with your pod just blowing up
on certain sections of each turn.
Quite simply, I hate this track and everything about it and after about 40 minutes of trying
to attain a podium finish I said screw it and gave up.
I ain’t got nothing to prove, this track can suck it.
And lastly there are the perks of this particular version running on Windows.
If you’re used to the much more limited N64 version, it’s awesome to see that it's capable of
running up to 60fps on PC, even on period-correct hardware like this Pentium III-based system
with a 16MB Voodoo3 graphics card that I’m using here.
There are definitely some tracks that play smoother than others,
but overall it’s a wonderful experience on PC.
I mean, if you can get it working.
I’ve experienced an array of bugs, graphical glitches, sound system problems, and compatibility
issues over the years, and that’s just on Windows 98.
On a modern system, it can be a true test of patience to get working 100%.
Thankfully, GOG.com has recently rereleased the game on PC and it works fantastically
right out of the gate, at least in my experience so far.
Not only that but you can crank the resolution up as high as your display provides.
So yeah, you want this in 1440p or 4K or whatever? Go for it!
It'll still be 4:3 aspect ratio but it looks awesome.
So if you want to revisit the game on a newer PC I’d highly recommend this version just
for ease of use, and if you’d like to support this channel at the same time feel free to check out my
affiliate link to GOG below this video.
Either way though, I was happy to find that Star Wars
Episode I - Racer holds up incredibly well.
Even after having not played it for at least 10 years.
I’m sure some of that has to do with my own memories of the game from when it was
new and just playing it a crapload and beating it.
But I also truly think that it stands
out even today as one of the more satisfying and speedy sci-fi racers of the late 1990s.
[beep beep beep beep beep! BOOM!]
[Watto humming along to "Pandora" by Anders Bothén]
Hehe, well that was fun to make.
And I hope this video was fun to watch.
Either way though, as always I thank you very much for watching!