Star Wars: Episode One - Racer

By: Kirk Hiner

Genre: Racing

Format: CD

Developer: LucasArts

Publisher: LucasArts

Minimum Requirements: Mac OS 8.1, 233 MHz G3, 32MB RAM, 12X CD-ROM, 3D hardware support (OpenGL compatible)

Network Feature: LAN

3Dfx Support: Rave

Retail Price: $39.89

Availability: Out Now

Anakin Skywalker is a dork. This is why I don't get the national crisis that arose over Jar Jar Binks after Star Wars Episode One was released. Heck, in Nebraska, the National Guard had to be called out to quell the riots. I'll admit I didn't care much for the guy, but I don't think he was any more annoying than C-3PO. Fact of the matter is that if there was one thing that really screwed up The Phantom Menace, it was Anakin Skywalker.

I'm not sure if it was the actor who played him or the fact that George Lucas can't write dialogue any more than I can beat Obi Wan Kenobi in a light saber duel. Either way, the kid annoyed me more than a dripping faucet at 2:00am. And this is why my favorite thing to do in LucasArts' Star Wars: Episode One - Racer is to drive young Vader's pod straight into a rock with boosters on full.

Dork.

I could stop the review right here and give the game a stellar rating, but I'm sure most people won't buy it just because it allows them to kill Anakin Skywalker. I mean, I would've bought that Revolution arcade game if it allowed me to kill Aerosmith at the end, but that's just me, and I have issues.

To appease the gamers out there, I'll take a more professional look at Racer, LucasArts' first big dive into the Mac gaming pool in quite some time. I wasn't sure what to expect from this game. On the one hand, X-Wing and TIE Fighter are my two favorite flight sims ever, my nine-year-old niece demands that we play Dark Forces every time she visits (and you haven't experienced comedy until you've heard a nine-year-old girl ask an Imperial stormtrooper, "You wanna piece of me?"), and Full Throttle may have the most complete story of any graphical adventure game made for the computer. But on the other hand, Rebel Assault I and II. Enough said about that.

Knowing that Racer would be nothing more than...well...a racing game, I was nervous. This game needed to be great, you see. It needed to be so cool that it would sell enough copies to convince LucasArts to support the Mac with more conviction. So is it?

Yeah. Yeah, I think it is.

As with everything Star Wars, the game begins with the traditional scrolling text and John Lucas fanfare. To this day, the combination still sends chills up (or is it down?) my spine. However, most of the time the scrolling text introduces some dire predicament from which our heroes certainly cannot escape. In Racer, it sets up a day at the races. Good movie, great album, bad introduction.

But then comes the first cut scene. The only decent element of Rebel Assault II was the opening movie, which I would use frequently to show off the capabilities of my 9600. The cut scenes in Racer blast that stuff to eons. Ne'er have I seen anything so cool on my Macintosh. And what's even more amazing is that the gameplay graphics are almost as good!

Well, provided you have the right 3D accelerator. LucasArts claims that no additional 3D acceleration is required of owners of iMacs, iBooks, G3s and G4s. That's not entirely true, as 4MB of VRAM is required, and the original iMacs had only 2MB. They won't even work with the iMac Voodoo2 acceleration card because Racer doesn't support Glide acceleration...yet. At the time of this writing, LucasArts is working on a fix.

On my G4, the game looks sweet. The graphics are clean and the animation is amazingly fast. The only trouble I had with the frame rate dropping was after taking a screen shot with Snapz Pro 2. Otherwise no trouble. And although the game still zipped along on Tieraney's iMac, the graphics weren't quite as nice.

The music and sound effects are nothing short of stellar. Each pod racer has its own distinct sound, so it's possible to tell who's behind you without even turning around. I think there are more sound effects in this game than there are creatures in the Star Wars universe...from the subtle insults of your competitors to the not-so-subtle exploding of engines. And then there's that music. Don't even get me started on the merits of a John Williams score. Suffice it to say that the music does a great job of getting you pumped up for the race.

Although actually, you have to do some pumping of your own. Before the first race, you choose who you want to race as. I'm not sure I liked this feature, though. When playing games like this, I prefer to create my own character rather than become Ark "Bumpy" Roose or Fud Sang. I'd rather just design my own podracer and be my own wookie, as it were. However, you are given the option to switch to other characters with each race. This allows you to pick a podracer better suited to a particular track.

Before each race, you're given the opportunity to juice up your podracer with either new parts purchased from Watto's shop or used parts from his junkyard. The more races you win, the more money you get, the better parts you can buy. And don't worry. If you switch podracers later on, all the new parts you've purchased switch with you. The pit droids, which you buy to fix up your podracer between events, come too.

You're given three options for playing Racer. Single player tournament sends you through the Galactic Circuit. You must complete them order, and you can't advance to the next track unless you place. Single player free play allows you to play any track that has been unlocked through tournament mode. And multiplayer allows you to race over a LAN on any unlocked track.

Racing the pod is actually pretty simple to learn as there aren't a lot of controls to master. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to control the podracer using the keyboard. Be that as it may, you'll still want to use a gamepad or joystick for optimum control. After playing the game with both Macally's iStick and iShock, I eventually settled down with iShock. The bad news is that Racer has trouble recognizing more than one joystick. I couldn't get the iStick to work at all until I unplugged the iShock. And when I wanted to switch, I had to manually reconfigure the joystick setup each time.

And although it may be easy to control the podracer, getting to the race is another story. The user interface throughout the game is horrid. Sometimes hitting return will select the option you want, sometimes it won't. Sometimes the mouse works, sometimes it doesn't. And after you configured the joystick, the axis settings are applied to the menu options as well. In order to scroll up through listings of racers, you have to actually hit the pad down on the gamepad. I guess that when companies leave the Macintosh for a couple years, they forget all about user interface and integration.

But do you know what? It's LucasArts, and it's on the Mac. Racer is a successful return to the platform we love. The speed, graphics and sound of this game are sure to impress even those who weren't impressed by the movie. Separate of Star Wars, Racer is a fantastic racing game. Separate of racing games, Racer is yet another highly entertaining foray into the Star Wars universe. And for fans of smashing-Anakin-Skywalker-into-a-rock...well, it just may be the greatest computer game of all time.

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February 09, 2010