Star Wars Episode I: Racer

About Star Wars Episode I: Racer

Star Wars Episode I: Racer (1999) is LucasArts' podracing game based on The Phantom Menace, the best-selling science fiction racing game according to Guinness.

Star Wars Episode I: Racer in Depth

Based on the podracing sequence in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, it features all of the film's racers and its Tatooine course, plus additional competitors and tracks on Tatooine and other planets. Jake Lloyd and Lewis MacLeod reprise their film roles as Anakin Skywalker and Sebulba. Each podracer has an afterburner for a burst of speed, but its engine heats up as it is used, and pushing it too long starts a fire that destroys the pod and costs several seconds to respawn. Hitting too many walls or obstacles can also wreck one or both engines, and players can repair the pod while racing, though it slows down until the repairs are finished or stopped.

In Tournament mode, players compete in a championship, earning money for higher finishes to buy parts or repair droids and unlock tracks and racers. Free Race allows practice on unlocked courses with adjustable opponents but no rewards, and Time Attack races the clock, replaced on PC by a Free Play option with no opponents. Multiplayer differs by platform: the Nintendo 64 and Dreamcast versions offer two-player split screen, while the Windows and Macintosh versions allow up to eight players over a local network, using IPX on Windows and TCP/IP on Mac. It has appeared on many lists of the best Star Wars games, ranked fifth of all time by GMR in 2004 and third by PC Gamer in 2015.

Making Star Wars Episode I: Racer

LucasArts developed and published it, releasing the Windows version in May 1999 alongside the film. The team tested several graphics APIs but shipped with only Direct3D because, according to project lead Brett Tosti, Glide and OpenGL showed no performance gain. With only a few short clips of the film's podrace to go on, they approximated its physics, and Tosti said they did not learn how close their estimates were until the very end. It received generally positive reviews, averaging about 76 per cent on GameRankings for the Nintendo 64 and Dreamcast versions.