Star Wars: Super Bombad Racing Preview

Lucas Learning has utilized the Star Wars universe and characters in everything from first-person shooters to real-time strategy games. The company is apparently crusading to extend the franchise into every conceivable genre. Kart racing is perhaps its one grievous omission so far, and in the interest of correcting this error, Lucas Learning is slaving away at Star Wars: Super Bombad Racing. Thought you'd seen it all? Think again.

Super Bombad Racing is exactly what it looks like: A kart racing game (in the vein of Mario Kart) that stars exaggerated Star Wars characters. Bombad's racers are represented in the superdeformed style more commonly associated with popular Japanese culture - that is, they have disproportionate, bulbous heads and tiny bodies. Star Wars' heroes and villains are probably the last characters anyone expected to see with such oversized melons, but here they are. Some of the characters appearing in Super Bombad Racing include Yoda, Anakin, Amidala, Sebulba, Boss Nass, and everyone's favorite, Darth Maul. Each character races in a miniature version of his or her relevant vehicle from The Phantom Menace. Anakin uses the Day-Glow yellow Naboo fighter, while Darth Maul pilots the Sith Interceptor he flew in the movie. Different characters, of course, feature different driving styles and controls.

Tracks in Super Bombad Racing are located everywhere one might expect after having seen The Phantom Menace. They include such predictable locations as the Tatooine pod-racecourse, the Naboo swamps, and a highway on Corsucant. In addition to the normal racing environments, there are some enclosed arenas for use in the multiplayer modes. Interestingly, one of these is located on the large asteroid from The Empire Strikes Back. As in all kart racers, power-up items are littered around the tracks. It seems that most of these items are of a nonviolent nature, as Bombad is specifically targeted at younger gamers.

If you take your Star Wars gaming ultraseriously, Super Bombad Racing's irreverence probably isn't for you. It's becoming increasingly hard to be so serious, though, and therefore all but the most uptight fans will probably want to give this game a try. The overpopulation of kart racers hasn't made them less fun to play, so Bombad's a pretty safe bet, and it'll be interesting to see what the PlayStation 2 can do for the genre. Look for Super Bombad Racing to hit stores sometime in the spring of 2001.