#THE PHANTOM MENACE PC GAME MOVIE#
But like the movie itself, the many video games developed to accompany its release were disappointing.
In 1999, The Phantom Menace was the hottest thing in Hollywood. Star Wars: Obi-Wan, which launched exclusively for the Xbox, was slightly better, letting you twirl the analogue stick to spin your lightsaber about-but it was yet another deeply okay prequel spin-off, and its platform exclusivity only limited its audience. Star Wars: Starfighter was a space combat game based around the events of The Phantom Menace, but despite some impressively big scale set-pieces, it was exceedingly average. It was terrible, alas, despite the ability to unlock and play as Darth Maul, and I'd be amazed if many people even remember it existed. Levels included the streets of Theed and Coruscant, Tatooine (obviously, it's a Star Wars product), and the swamps of Naboo. Jedi Power Battles was an awkward fusion of a beat-'em-up and a platformer, with some infuriatingly clumsy jumping sections and repetitive, button-mashing lightsaber combat. It was a decent, if basic, semi-sequel to Rogue Squadron. You would shoot down Trade Federation fighters, dodge air mines, and pilot a bunch of vehicles, including the very yellow Naboo N-1 starfighter. Set during the events of The Phantom Menace, you played as ace pilot Gavyn Sykes, who sounds more like a rugby player than a Star Wars character. Star Wars Episode I: Battle for Naboo, meanwhile, was business as usual. It's a neat idea, and a rare example of a Star Wars game not focused on action. Doing so involved releasing plants and creatures into the wild to create a food chain, and ultimately a balanced ecosystem. Gungan leader Boss Nass wants to colonise Naboo's moon, and needs you to seed it with life.
#THE PHANTOM MENACE PC GAME SIMULATOR#
LucasArts released a few educational games, including a strategy game/ecology simulator called The Gungan Frontier. Considering the developer only had a few short pre-release clips of the movie to base an entire game on, it did a fantastic job. But the racing itself, especially in first-person, felt fantastic. Get a good head start and you wouldn't see your opponents again unless you took a corner really badly.
It was incredibly easy, presumably because LucasArts wanted children to be able to play it without bursting into tears-which was the only mark against it.
Developed in-house at LucasArts, it perfectly recreated the breakneck, knife-edge tension of podracing, where one mistake can shatter your rickety little space chariot into a million flaming pieces. Star Wars Episode I: Racer took the best scene from the film, the podrace on Tatooine, and turned it into a blisteringly fast sci-fi racing game. However, a much better Phantom Menace game was released on the same day. TIE Fighter, Rogue Squadron, and Dark Forces, it was a big disappointment-and felt every bit like the cheap movie tie-in it was always destined to be. From the publisher behind stone-cold classics like X-Wing vs. But the clunky controls, weird top-down perspective, and general lack of polish mean it has since faded into obscurity. It felt sufficiently Star Warsy, and slicing up Battle Droids with a lightsaber was enjoyable enough. An action scene that lasted a few minutes in the film would be stretched out into an entire level here. Slipping on the Jedi robes of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn, it saw you playing through the story of the movie, albeit with a few artistic liberties taken. The first game, launching just a few days after the film's release, was a straight-up adaptation-the kind most big ticket Hollywood films would spawn in the late '90s and early 2000s.
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