As I mentioned before... For the twentieth time, I'm completing this game in my life and, consequently, this time I'm getting the platinum trophy. It was my first game on the N64 back in the day, and for some achievement hunters, it may be considered easy because it has a debug mode. However, I made a point of playing it all the way through, just like in the old days. It was worth getting it on a Black Friday promotion and playing it once again.

It was one of the best experiences I had at the time, and in this HD version, it couldn't have been any different. With an excellent soundtrack, the speed and fun were guaranteed.

On to the next one.

Amo esse jogo.
Passei horas no 64 com ele.

Ganhei esse jogo do meu pai no natal (não sei o ano, mas certeza que a muito tempo).
Me lembro de ir no Supermercado Extra e ver uma pilha de caixas dizendo que estava de promoção.
Lembro que meu pai de primeira disse q não ia comprar. N emburrei nem nada, eu sempre entendi as coisas, mas naquele momento eu quis fazer algo para ganhar aqle jogo.
Fiquei procurando ajudar em ksa, melhorar as notas na escola, já que eu só jogava nas férias e estava ainda em período de prova.
Lembro ainda que mostrava minhas notas pro meu pai (sem ficar pedindo o jogo de cara, mas deixando meio implícito).
Só sei q bem no finalzinho de dezembro, depois das compras pro natal, meu pai chegou com esse jogo pra mim.
Quase chorei (talvez eu realmente tenha chorado. N me lembro), chega tinha me esquecido do jogo.
E depois que abri e joguei, demorou pra trocar de fita kk.
Já tinha zerado o Zelda. E 007 já tava chato de tanto que zerei kk.

Joguei tanto esse jogo sozinho e com meus primos e amigos.
Tenho uma boa memoria afetiva com ele. Por isso a nota alta.
Sei que não vale isso tudo, mas pra mim vale, e é oq importa.
(Além de talvez ser o melhor jogo de Star Wars, deve perder só pro Lego)

Simply put, that's a super fun game!
It revolves just around the racing stuff, not getting into the entire content of the first movie of the prequels. It has a lot of cool looking maps, cool looking racing pods and a little dirty secret about Sebulba's... (actually, not really a secret if you watched the movie, hehe).
I played it as a child, so you may argue that it's just my overly coloured memory... maybe it was... nonetheless, I truly loved every single hour I spent playing this game, and, oh, for how many hours have I done it...

A pretty sweet F-zero type racer that offers some real challenge towards the end.

Obviously it doesn't reach the heights of F-zero, but it's still a great racer. You get that incredible sense of speed while visiting some pretty aesthetically cool Star Wars locations, while unlocking basically every pod racer known to man.

The controls can be sliiightly jank, as it's overly sensitive at times, also the main issue of this game is it's collision detection. Sometimes you will collide with basically nothing, some wonky hitbox, and it'll cost you the race, which can be pretty annoying. It doesn't happen that often but it exists.

There's a lack of pod customization as nothing ever changes visually, and the system to upgrade your pod is just kinda bland honestly. Really the 3.5 is for the blistering fast races. Even the course design isn't anything especially remarkable, this is what seperates F-zero from everyone else.

Still as previously mentioned, this game is FAST, and it's impossible to not find some fun with it. I see why so many people have nostalgia for this one.

(See all my Star Wars Rankings and reviews on my profile here, the list is titled "Star Wars Ranked.")

TWO ENGINES, ONE CHAMPION, NO LIMITS

When I was four or five years old, my parents gave to me what is arguably the most important gift I've ever received: A Nintendo 64 bundled with Star Wars Episode I Racer. I had played video games before, to be sure - I'd chanced upon my mom's old Game Boy at one point and I have memories of huddling around an NES with family - but this was the first video game system that was mine and mine alone. Many valuable experiences would come along soon after, most notably Ocarina of Time. But at first, there was only one game...

That particular N64 has long since left my collection. I sold it off, along with my collection of games, to get hold of newer and more exciting devices. However, as console generations have gone by and the technical leaps have become less and less pronounced, I have recently found myself going back to the games of that era to see how they've held up in the intervening years. Just recently I added a "new" 64 to my collection, the first I've owned since I was a preteen. As I grip that gray controller plugged into that black console with the Episode I Racer label peeking out at me from within, I feel a certain... Comfort. Nostalgia, of course, but something else as well. A feeling that something that has been absent for a long time has finally come home to roost again. This is where it all started, some twenty-odd years ago. I can't imagine what life would be like without it.

Yeah, okay Doc, but what about the game?

Now obviously I give F-Zero X big ups for being the fastest racing game on the platform, but Racer is no slouch at all. In fact, it might be faster. I dunno. Maybe some nerd out there can do the math on that. But you go damn fast. A souped-up podracer can get up to speed in no time flat and negotiating corners can be a sweat-inducing exercise. The framerate isn't the smooth 60 X provides, but that's an understandable concession given how much more visually dense this game is by comparison.

The track design is definitely a strong point here. The different planets you can visit all have distinct aesthetics and they all look great. I was especially fond of the races taking place on Mon Gazza, with sections where you zip between the treads of massive tank-like vehicles or travel through cages that let the planet's unearthly red glow pour in from all sides. The scale can be genuinely impressive, and it really enhances the feeling of speed as you zip by each setpiece. The layouts are also solid, with there usually being at least one shortcut you can find on any given track. Some of them are impressively well hidden and may also be a bit more perilous to account for the time you'll be saving.

There's a remarkably broad cast of playable characters, each with distinct stat spreads that are a lot more impactful than what is featured in many of Racer's contemporaries. Your mileage may vary on how much appeal you'll get out of Lucasfilm's silly alien design, but one thing is for sure: The podracers themselves look cool as hell. Mars Guo's comically monstrous engines make navigating tight corridors a task but they're just as powerful as you would anticipate. Neva Kee's is comparatively minuscule but has a unique design with rear-mounted thrusters. Aldar Beedo's machine just looks cool all-around, decked out in a cool blue adorned with various decals. And I am a fan of Ebe Endocott's more aggressive, angular style. Not all of them have the most competitive abilities, but that cast is broad enough that you can assuredly find somebody who suits your tastes.

Before events, you can spend your hard-earned truguts at Watto's shop. Upgrading is a fairly straightforward process but the high-end parts can be prohibitively expensive early on. So here's what you do: First, buy all the pit droids you can. Keep an eye out for the aforementioned parts at the junkyard. Pick one of them up at a discount and do some low-stakes races until your droids repair them, then either keep them or sell them for a huge profit. This will let you boost your stats in record time. Or just race, I guess. The yields from placing first aren't huge but do get better if you're willing to risk everything by setting the race to winner-takes-all.

All of this culminates in the Boonta Eve Classic, the game's recreation of the famous race featured in Episode I. It's a long and varied track, with an abundance of branching paths and obstacles that will keep your blood pumping when you're flying at top speed. At one point you'll travel through a canyon with Tusken Raiders taking pot shots at your machine, and you'll pass by a sandcrawler shortly thereafter. Upon placing first, you'll be rewarded with Sebulba, Anakin's nemesis, being unlocked as a playable racer. It's a fun time as a final challenge (outside of the invitational courses) and also a fun time for Star Wars fans.

However, there are a few things that I feel hold Racer back from being quite as enjoyable as some of its peers:

- Man, this game is blurry on the N64. I don't have an expansion pak right now, unfortunately, so I can't tell you how much the increased resolution it can afford would improve clarity. However, I can say without hesitation that in a game where you're hurtling towards sharp corners at breakneck speeds, being able to see what you're heading for is pretty important. Ports of the game obviously improve this, with the Dreamcast version in particular looking and running great, but the N64 is where I played it first gosh darn it so that's what we're going with.

- It's easy, until it isn't. Some of the tracks can be quite tricky, especially with the aforementioned handicap of your environment looking like mush, but if you're halfway decent at controlling your podracer and you've sufficiently pumped up your stats you can smash into walls all day long and still place first. Your competitors don't ever seem to make meaningful mistakes or crash, but they don't really push for a win either, whatever rubber-band AI might be in place notwithstanding. As such, if you get out far enough ahead of them (which isn't terribly hard to do) you won't have to worry too much about them catching up. With that being said, there are a handful of tracks where things get surprisingly dicey. Most of them aren't too bad, but one particular track titled Abyss - people who have lived through it are probably cringing right now - is just an absolute pain in the posterior. Ranking first on every other track is easy enough, but every time I come up to Abyss I just skip over it. It isn't worth the headache! I should also note that some of the hazards feel like big middle fingers insofar as they can seem just about impossible to avoid when you're trying to stay at a competitive speed.

- Tying in with the above, while I do think the locales look fantastic, there just isn't enough variety amongst them. You're going to start seeing the same setpieces very quickly, with each subsequent track set in the same location feeling like they're simply building upon the previous one. What's more, towards the end of the game these tracks start to get pretty lengthy. Some races would take me upwards of eight minutes to complete, which might not be too noteworthy for some who are used to marathon-style races in their games, but given how much the speed demands your attention I found them to be just a bit exhausting. The Boonta Eve Classic was an exception, though - that was just a fun race all around.

- With all of the above in mind, the full package does feel remarkably light on content. Numerically speaking, there are plenty of tracks and upgrades to play around with, but given how easy races can be and how easy maximizing your stats can be, I did about all I could in the space of a single evening. If you're the kind of person who likes running time trials, I feel there's a lot of room for optimization on these tracks, so that could definitely be a draw. However, the experience as a whole is just too brief and never really feels like it opens up.

- The OST is a bit underwhelming. Episode I's bombastic score definitely does a good job of building up the tension and excitement, but only plays on the last lap of any given track. Otherwise, it's a bit barren. The music is also noticeably compressed in this version of the game, as you would probably expect, though that didn't really bug me too much. I just wanted more music!

- Watto

- The boosting system feels very awkward and tacked on at times. If you're not familiar: You initiate a boost by holding forward on the control stick and then pressing A when a gauge fills. Boosting is a lot of fun and you can get to pretty extreme speeds doing it! It's just a shame that actually using it means needing to have a decent stretch of open road in front of you so you can charge it up. You can't move the control stick from its forward position or it will stop charging your boost, and once you start boosting so much as nudging an obstacle or another racer (or landing after a jump) will cancel it. It's a bit slow and finicky to execute, and once you start getting to the more complex high speed tracks you will probably struggle to find places to actually make use of it. That's a real shame, as you really feel the speed when you can get away with it. I wish more of the tracks had been designed with it in mind.

- Also, just a personal gripe, but after watching the movie you'd expect there would be more crash and bash action out on the track. Not a whole lot of reason to ram into your competitors, here, especially since I don't think they'll ever wreck. I'm also not sure if a podracer's size has any bearing on its durability, but if not, it probably would have been an interesting aspect of balance to explore.

There's a few other oddities, like a couple of secret racers, a debug mode and even an extra control scheme where you use two controllers at once (it sounds really wacky and I'd love to try it, but sadly I only have one N64 conch to my name as of writing). Speaking of, the splitscreen option doesn't appear in the menu unless more than one controller is plugged in, so don't be like me and forget about that.

After watching the credits roll (which included a few gags, such as a credit to Tim Schafer under "Never actively tried to sabotage the project" and another one for Princess Zelda) I had mixed feelings. Racer, for me, was a strange introduction to the world of 3D gaming. That one of my earliest experiences was not only a licensed game, but also happened to be one I consider good, feels like a small miracle. And yet, for all of the positive qualities it touts and the care that obviously went into crafting it, it definitely feels like the pack-in title that it came to me as. There just isn't enough substance here to justify what was likely a full retail-price game at release. It's very technically impressive and ultimately felt like a tech demo. In light of that, the ten dollars I paid for my secondhand copy feels perfectly reasonable. However, if you have a thirst for speed that just can't be quenched, I still recommend you give it a try. Especially if you can play it via a method that smooths out the visuals and performance. It might not have a lot of staying power, but I still had fun coming back to it after all these years.

Now let me show you my chance cube...

This game is pretty good. Not fantastic, but pretty good.

First, the good:

First, the core racing mechanics are a lot of fun. It's apparent that the developers really understood what made podracing so exciting in the film, and they've translated that excitement well. The racers are fast, the boost and repair mechanics are great ideas implemented well, and while it clearly borrows a lot from the F-Zero series, it never actually feels like it's copying F-Zero.

I've also gotta give bonus points for it performing surprisingly well on N64 despite having super detailed graphics. This is one of the best-looking games I've seen on the platform, and while it doesn't get great framerates, it does manage serviceable framerates (at least by N64 standards) for the most part.

Now, the not-so-good:

The controls in this game are frankly weird. It's not entirely the game's fault, since the N64 controller simply isn't well-suited for what this game is trying to do, but it presents problems nonetheless. Chief among them, you can rotate your podracer 90 degrees with the C-left and -right buttons. This is basically required to get past some obstacles. Unfortunately, unless you're using some sort of really weird claw grip, it's basically impossible to tilt and accelerate (A) at the same time.

Worse, the game doesn't actually tell you this. Even the instruction booklet doesn't mention this in the controls section; it's tucked away in a "Tips for Success" section near the back. In fact, the game doesn't tell you much of anything at all about how to play it. Some of it can be intuited, but a lot of the controls aren't actually useful until certain points in the game (such as Z to drift), so they're very easy to miss even if you diligently test the controls when you start playing. It's a built-in handicap if you don't both have and read the instruction booklet.

The boost mechanic is really cool, but super awkward to use. You have to hold Up on the control stick while driving at top speed to charge boost, let go of A, and then immediately press and hold it again to activate boost mode. This makes it physically impossible to prepare in areas where there are a lot of curves, as steering too hard (which you will need to do) cancels your boost charge. In many cases, by the time you have a chance to fully charge it, it's not safe to activate anymore. Not the worst, but it does make it feel like maybe the track designers and the game mechanic designers weren't entirely communicating.

Some sections of tracks have a more cinematic camera, and the game plays a little more on-rails. This would be fine, but when the camera is doing a barrel roll and you still have to dodge moving obstacles, it can feel borderline unfair. The camera in a game generally shouldn't itself be an obstacle.

That's it for the not-so-good, now here's the downright baffling:

There are four shops in the game that you can visit between races, and three of them serve very similar purposes. One lets you buy parts, one lets you upgrade parts, one lets you buy used parts that are worse for cheaper, and all three are run by Watto. The last shop (possibly also Watto? I couldn't tell) is the only one that felt meaningfully distinct; it lets you buy pit droids, which help you repair your podracer faster. None of this is necessarily bad, but really, all four could've been combined into one and it would've been fine.

The shops also won't show prices (or your own current funds) until you try to buy something. It's not the worst thing in the world, but it gets really tedious if you want to be optimal about your purchases. Just picture it: You visit a shop, select each item one-by-one to see the price, leave, repeat for two more shops. It's time consuming, and really requires a notepad by your side if you wanna do it right. My recommendation is just buy the first thing you can afford and don't even bother trying to be optimal.

The menus are just all out of order. You have to select a game mode (choices are Tournament, Free Play, Time Attack, 2 Player), a racer, and a track before you can get to the options screen to control things like music and sound volume. It works just fine, but it's super weird.

So that's it. Reading this might give the impression I didn't like this game. I certainly had a lot to complain about.

But here's the thing: As I said at the start, the core racing mechanics are a lot of fun. And boy howdy do I mean that. For all of the issues I had with this game, I still recommend it. The frustrating elements get less and less frustrating the longer you play the game. I had a blast the entire time I was playing, and while I can't in good conscience give this higher than 3.5 stars, those are a very solid 3.5 stars. Despite everything, the actual racing remains fun, and for that I'm willing to cut a lot of slack for some questionable design choices peppered throughout.

Even people who hate the prequels tend to love the podracing scenes. As much crap as those movies get, I think we can all appreciate how they opened up the door for a lot of fun and exciting avenues for "EU" or, as it's known these days, "Legends" (screw you very much for that Disney) to explore in ways the OT never did. A personal favorite from my childhood, seeing this ported over to more modern hardware does my heart good and getting to revisit it after all these years allowed me to happily realize it's still the absolute banger I remember it as.

What sets Racer apart, aside from the franchise's iconic aesthetic and score (Duel of the Fates plays over the main menu. Epic!), is its unparalleled sense of speed. The game is all about managing impossibly sharp turns and split-second reactions while moving at a rate that would make a certain anthropomorphic blue hedgehog jealous. Except for that stupid endgame race where you unlock Bozzie Baranta which forces you pump the breaks hard at a couple of points to avoid falling down to some lower tracks that will basically spell the end of any chance of victory if not avoided. Buncha Bantha poodoo, that one is.

This is accompanied by some fantastic track design that really tests your ability to remain in control at such an exhilarating pace. Their variety is also seriously impressive. You'll revisit the same handful of planets over and over again, so you'll have to watch their opening cutscenes multiple times, but the courses themselves always shake things up with big alterations or entirely new elements that ensure there's no feeling of repetition despite the reused assets. There's even a lot of surprise depth here in the form of purchasing parts to upgrade your roster of vehicles and alternate modes to help you practice to improve your lap times. The sole thing missing is better competitive play as your stuck with exclusively local two-player.

It will never happen as Disney is absolutely TERRIFIED of leaving their little post-prequel, pre-sequel trilogy era safe-space they are enjoying a modicum of success in, the fact that this saw a rerelease at all is something of a minor miracle, but I would ADORE this concept being revived with full 12-player online multiplayer. There are certainly enough unique racers here with their own stats to give you an idea of what an enticing prospect that would be. Regardless, this is the rare, basically single-player only racing title that will delight you nonetheless with how well it brings even the most devout haters favorite part of The Phantom Menace to life for you to experience for yourself. With shocking fidelity to boot! Actual actors from the film such as Jake Lloyd, Lewis MacLeod, and Andy Secombe reprise their roles for authenticity. Undoubtedly among the best Star Wars games that ever has been or will be made. Nobody did it like old school LucasArts.

9/10

A Star Wars racing game purely based on the concept of pod-racing, that sounds like fun!

Well, it kinda is. It starts off pretty easy, you know, not much to worry about and stuff like that.
But then, you start to notice that the tracks start to get longer... and longer... and longer, so much so that by the end, each lap will take you almost 3 minutes to complete!
Then, the stages themselves also start to reuse assets from each other, and while many of them introduce new parts of the track for you to race on, there's still a lot that you will be racing on more times than you should.

By the end, the stages start getting so hard and so long, that the endurance run starts becoming so tiring, that there were multiple times where I considered shelving this game.
I did persevere until the end, but I was so tired, that I didn't even feel like doing some of the extra race tracks that the game had to offer.

Like, the gameplay itself can be very fun! Keeping an eye out on your machine so it doesn't blow itself up, trying to find the best time to do small repairs so you don't get left behind, and trying to find the best times to boost, that was engaging and fun.

But the bottom line is, this game's long-ass race tracks tired me out, and the game's big difficulty spike towards the end made me not wanna play this again anytime soon.
Maybe some multiplayer sessions in the future would be nice, though.