First time I played this was at a birthday party for some kid who's parent worked with my dad, I think, I never met him before nor did I ever see him again after. When I got there he was in his room playing Spyro 3. He must have just gotten it because he was at the start. I watched for a while then he asked if I wanted to play. I took the controler and never has any other video game hooked me as quick as Year of the Dragon. I played the entire time I was there. When the boy and all the other kids left to sing, blow out the candles, and open presents I stayed in the bedroom playing this game. I didn't stop till I had to leave. I immediately asked my parents if they would buy it for me. This the first video game I obsessed over. It is still to this day one of my favorite games. A masterpiece.

This is the most baffling game I've played. This game is hard as fuck. There are no checkpoints in the levels meaning if you died you have to restart the whole level. The levels are super long. The only why to prevent that is to save manually in the level which is easy to forget. The combat is relentless and the developers love to fuck with you. You WILL die. Blocking blaster fire won't work when the game spawns enemies behind you or a droideka rolls up with it's shields. Pro tip never get on a turret. It's a trap. You have no protection. The game also has escort levels because the developers are insane sadist and feed of the player frustration. Level 5 made me lose the will to live. There is no way to see exactly how much health is left only vague "I'm fine" or "I don't know how long I can keep going". Plus there's no way to heal them. Did I mention the levels are long? And to top it al off we got platforming. In a game where the camera is top down most of the time. Good luck judging things like distance and height. But the difficulty isn't what makes it baffling. That honor goes to the truly unhinge things you can do in this game. Star Wars Episode 1 The Phantom Menace may be based on the movie, but it allows you to make Obi-wan & Qui-gon unleash the dark side with in them. Things you can do in this game. Genocide the Gungans as Obi-wan. Have Qui-gon become a cereal killer in Mos Espa. Skip an entire trading quest by killing to two people that have the items you need because the drop them on death. Save the son of a poor mother whose being held in a cage by some hunter, then kill them both.You don't just kill the men, but the women and children too. That's right. YOU CAN KILL KIDS IN THIS OFFCIAL LICENSE STAR WARS GAME! IN 1999! THIS GAME IS ONLY RATED T! How did this not make news in a post Columbine world? Who though it was find to put that in? All the little gungan kids: dead. Anakin's friends: dead. Anakins mom: dead. Jaba the hut: dead. You can kill EVERYONE. now, the game does want you to not do that and you will soft lock yourself or get a game over with a special message saying one of the main characters has died. For instance killing jab the hut will cause a game over screen to appear about 30 seconds later saying "Padme has died". Most major characters do that if you kill them. Except Anakin's mom. The game soft locks and Anakin calls you a murderer. Or some times you can get away with it. Padme will even comment if you are on a killing spree that "There's a murderer on the loose". The developers knew players would do this because why have that line in the game if not. Why give the kids death sounds? As I said earlier the developers were insane. You don't get a game over or soft lock if you kill Newt Gunnery in the last level as Padme though. Instead he drops a key card that I have no idea what for because getting to him ends the Padme segment in the last level so no time to use it on anything let alone find it. Speaking of the last level I've never beaten Darth Maul legitimately. I got up to him and saved right be for the fight but I was 2 hit's a way from dieing. The only way to fix that was to replay the hole level and do better. The final Level is the longest level in the game were you go back and forth switching from playing as Padme to Obi-wan so I did not want to go through all that again. That being said I did beat him once with out cheats via a weird thing the game does. When the game over message pops up every thing but the animations will freeze in place. You'll notice battle droids tend to walk in place while it's on screen. So I was fighting Darth Maul and theres something that explodes when you hit it near the pit in the center of the room. I hit it and the explosion killed me. However Maul was also in the blast so he lost some health too. Not much, but some. I then notice that his health was still going down despite the game over. My best guess is the hit box for the explosion was frozen on screen due to the game over but the animation completed rendering it invisible. Maul was still in the explosion's hit box and continued to loose health. I sat and waited as his health slowly went down until he died. It played the death sound and every thing. Sadly the game over screen prevented the last scene from playing. Another weird thing I encounter is at the start of level 4 Garden of Thead theres a cut scene that plays were a bridge get's blown up preventing you from just walking to the exit of the level. One time I paused at the start of the cut scene and left and didn't get back to it till the end of the day. When I unpaused the audio was out of sink. More importantly though was finding out that the audio and actions on screen are tied to gether and must happen at the same time meaning if one is delayed then both are delayed. When the scene ended and I got control of Obi-wan the audio from the cut screen was still playing and the bridge was still there meaning I could walk across it. When the Audio of the explosion played the bridge the collapsed. I fell like that could be a speed running trick if it could be replicated. I'm kind of rambling now and I still haven't talked about the fact the game has dialog choices or that you can make Obi-wan uncivilized because you can use blasters, grenades, and a rocket launcher not just light sabers. The game has a charm that kind of makes me forget about the gameplay issues. Then I die and realized I never saved and I remember.