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Part 3: The Race Begins
The Phantom Menace lets you play four characters, but Episode I protagonist Anakin Skywalker isn't among them. To get a chance to control the powerful Jedi-in-training, you must turn instead to Racer, where Anakin is the lone human character. Best described as a Roman chariot race in the Tatooine desert, Racer puts the player in control of Episode I's most stomach-churning land-based vehicles. Each pod has three independently moving parts, which consist of two 747-like engines and a central cockpit. Project leader John Knoles remarks that controlling those three parts "at 600 miles per hour four feet above the ground is something special. Usually any game that approaches that speed puts the players on a track where you have limited movement. For Pod Race, we give you an almost off-road feel to the courses at crazy speeds."
"In Episode I Racer, players control three independent parts at 600 miles per hour four feet about the ground."
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There's no doubt that while The Phantom Menace was developed on and for the PC, Pod Race was developed on and for the N64. Originally, there was some talk of having a dual-controller option for the game, so that players could hold an N64 controller in each hand and control the different parts of the vehicle. After much deliberation, however, that option seems likely to be scrapped (though it's not official, yet)
Racer logo.
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An exclusive image from the PC version of Episode I Racer.
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Racing through a tunnel (N64 version).
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- it just seemed too difficult for the vast majority of gamers. The development team figured the speed and controls were challenge enough. And the sense of speed is terrific, faithfully recreating the frenetic, exhilarating visuals seen in the Episode I trailers.
But Racer might never have come to be. "After finishing up Shadows of the Empire on the PC," says Knoles, "it was early 1997, and we thought it a bit early to start thinking about an Episode I game." They thought wrong. "We were invited up to the ranch to look at some concept sketches by Doug Chiang, the conceptual artist on the Episode I film. We were just blown away by the images he showed us of a sequence they were calling the Podrace," he remembers. "Since we had already been working on low-level terrain technology, we thought the Podrace would make a great game."
Perhaps Knoles was right, but a racing game would be new territory for LucasArts, and as any gamer knows, making a standout racing game is one of the toughest challenges any development team can tackle.
Another Racing Game?
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