Before each race, you can visit Watto’s shop to buy new parts using your prize money from races.
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You can improve a number of your pod’s attributes, including its self-repair function, through a nifty upgrade system. Activating this causes your speed to drop considerably, and so choosing the right time to do this – and before it’s too late – is both important and another thing you have to take into account while hurtling around the track. The self-repair ability, which enables you to resolve moderate vehicle damage and put out engine fires, also introduces another fun risk/reward element. It requires skill and decent track knowledge to pull off effectively, resulting in a deeper gameplay experience. There’s also the increased risk of smashing into something, and even clipping a wall is often enough to cause your untimely demise. Boosting will gradually overheat your engines, and if they get too hot you’ll suffer an engine fire, which you’ll need to put out before it causes your pod to explode. Thankfully, your vehicle has a few abilities – cleverly borrowed from the film – to help you in your quest to secure a podium finish.įor example, by pushing forward on the control stick, you can charge up a meter and then activate a speed boost. You really do have to learn the intricacies of certain tracks and handle your pod masterfully if you want to keep winning. Nevertheless, by the time you reach the game’s later tracks, you’ll frequently find yourself smashing into walls and obstacles, and those few seconds respawning really start to add up. Wrecking your pod thankfully doesn’t disqualify you from the race, and instead you respawn a few seconds later. Clipping walls and objects will cause damage to your pod, whereas hitting something head-on at high speed almost always results in utter obliteration. And it really cannot be understated just how fragile your pod is. Your pod is susceptible to damage, to the point where it can be outright destroyed. A couple of these tracks are absolutely punishing, and Star Wars Episode 1: Racer quickly goes from being a leisurely, albeit high-speed cruise to a frustrating gauntlet of continuous head-on collisions. Extremely tight corners, nefariously placed obstacles and feistier AI make securing and maintaining the lead a difficult prospect. Later tracks ramp up the challenge considerably. Earlier tracks, on the other hand, are mind-numbingly easy, especially when the AI racers don’t put up much of a challenge. And then there’s the game’s difficulty, which spikes considerably about two-thirds of the way through. For example, track length varies greatly: you’ll finish some tracks in just over two minutes, whereas others will drag on for over three times as long. There’s an underlying sense of inconsistency that permeates Star Wars Episode 1: Racer. This variety of locales keeps things interesting, although some of the later tracks are just more advanced iterations of earlier ones in the game. You race across locations such as ice planets, gas giants and asteroids, encountering a range of imaginative environmental hazards along the way. Having the Star Wars universe as a basis gives the game considerable creative licence when it comes to track design. You can choose from a wide range of alien characters, each with their own model of racing pod. The single-player portion of the game tasks you with completing four tournaments, featuring a total of 25 tracks. In addition to the Boonta Eve Classic – the Tatooine race course in which young Anakin Skywalker faces off against the devious Sebulba – there are a number of other tracks set across the Star Wars galaxy. Star Wars Episode 1: Racer is based and expands upon the podracing sequence from the film. Hype and excitement for the film no doubt fuelled sales of Star Wars Episode 1: Racer, which sold over 3 million copies and earned the game a Guinness World Record for best-selling futuristic racing game (despite being set a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away). Star Wars Episode 1: Racer was released in 1999, as part of the promotion for Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, which at the time was the first new Star Wars film in over 20 years. Star Wars Episode 1: Racer review – how does it play today?