Look, the prequel trilogy is pretty bad, but preteen-me didn't care about that. I was knocking back Pepsi with Boss Nass on the can and terrorizing my younger sister by rolling towards her screaming "I'M A DROIDEKA!" By that point I was already ingesting a steady diet of Star Wars crap - reading Shadows of the Empire comics, collecting pogs with Dark Prince Xizor on them, and wearing the tape out on my Special Edition copies of the original trilogy; I wasn't just swept up in the hype, I had become one with it. It is perhaps for this reason that I still hold The Phantom Menace up as the best in the prequel trilogy. Yeah, it's still bad but I think it's better than what came after. From time you time, you might catch me making the case that it used more practical effects and sets, that Yoda was still a puppet or whatever, but that's a weak argument. No, it's because I was directly in the target demo when it came out, and because seeing a new Star Wars movie wasn't just special in 1999, it was almost unexpected. Of course it was going to imprint something onto me.

Anyway, hearing Greg Proops say "Beeeeeeen Quadinaros!" has a calming effect on me, like the gentle crash of waves easing me into the ocean. Fun fact: you can pay Greg to say that or any podracer's name on Cameo and he'll not only do it, he'll put a little mustard on it for you, because he's just that kind of professional. How do I know this? I've made some financial decisions that are unwise but which I do not regret, thank you for asking.

Naturally, I loved Star Wars: Episode One - Racer when it came out. Played the hell out of it. It only seemed fitting to buy a cart and add it to my Nintendo 64 collection back when I was building that (along with Shadows of the Empire and Rogue Squadron.) Just like the prequel trilogy, I think Episode One - Racer is something I liked way more as a kid and whose faults only became perceptible to me with age.

Controls are tight and I never felt like they were encumbered in any noticeable way by the N64's wacky gamepad, and there's a good variety of racers and parts for your pods to fine tune things to your liking. The presentation is also on point, and it almost goes without saying that the sound design is excellent. All of this is exactly how I remembered, Watto saying "eeeugh, anybody seen-ah my chance cube?" has never sounded better. What I don't remember is these tracks being long as hell. Too long, even! As courses become more narrow and rich with hazards, you'll find yourself in a position where you've blown the hell up one too many times for the race to be salvageable, and the thought of having to make up for the sheer length of time you've spent on a race that's become unwinnable just makes quitting out and retrying that much more aggravating.

I also have to acknowledge the fact that I played this game on a 4k TV using a Retrotink, and although the Retrotink is a far better option than your run-of-the-mill no brand upscalers on Amazon, it still has some issues with brightness and color vibrancy. There are some courses here that are dark, and while they're perfectly readable on a CRT, when you pass them through an upscaler you're just asking to careen into a pillar or wall that you couldn't see coming. So I'm taking that into consideration with my complaints, and even then I don't think the issues I mentioned are so severe that they encroach on the experience in a significant way.

But... maybe I'm making excuses again? Maybe this is just another version of my "Phantom Menace still used a puppet for Yoda. It has Yaddle in it, man. Yaddle." Some sick problem I have where I see a podracer and I take my shirt off, pound my chest, and walk around the room shouting "Yes! YES!" It just does something to me.

Episode One - Racer gets four kisses on the cheek out of five.

Reviewed on Mar 23, 2023


7 Comments


I really need to try this one.

I too grew up with the prequels (tho I watched them one or two years after The Revenge of the Sith came out*) but I barely played any of the games based on them. I may not be too keen or racing games but this one sounds fun as hell, I'll check it out for sure.

Great review!

1 year ago

Thank you! I don't really know which prequel games are worth checking out besides this one, I really only played the Star Wars games on the N64, and by the time I had other consoles with games based on the prequels, I had already shifted over to not liking them. I do have Bounty Hunter on my backlog so at some point I'll fix that.

1 year ago

Is Bounty Hunter good, though? I want to like Bounty Hunter. I have this cool samurai Jango Fett figure that I have accidentally broken like, three times.
I never got to play this back in the day, but playing it now immediately transports me back to that summer of 99 before anyone had seen the film and everyone was so hyped.

Its nostalgia is potent, even having only played it for the first time in recent years. Taking you back to a time where oversaturation wasn't possible and the thought of another Star War was almost unreal.

A good game.

1 year ago

My number one non-movie/game related memory of Phantom Menace was really REALLY wanting Darth Maul and his Sith Speeder from Pizza Hut which for some reason had toys. He was the only cool character in that movie to me, and even back when I was a dumb kid I thought Jar Jar was stupid and they should've pushed Maul as the main character.

1 year ago

@Cherry - It is a powerfully 1999 game. I'm getting to Shadows of the Empire soon and was going to touch on that more, because the most interesting part of Star Wars' history to me is that period in the mid-90s where every new product was more about testing the waters for a new movie, and it was such a starkly different time than it is now.

@Vee - Yeah, well I think Darth Maul and Jar Jar should kiss.

1 year ago

how wude.