A great Star Wars game, but not the best.

User Rating: 8 | Star Wars Episode I: Racer N64
By darthcobain17 | Review Date:
Racer was a good game. The basic premise of it is that you pick a racer, then compete in some different race circuits in order to be the best pod racer in the galaxy. There are 3 main circuits, the Amateur Circuit, the Semi-Pro Circuit & the Galactic Circuit. You start off with Amateur and work you way up. As you win races you earn trugutts, which you can then take to Watto's shop to buy upgrade parts for your pod, and pit droids to maintain said parts. Before the race you can set the winnings on one of 3 different levels so that if you are confident of victory you can earn more money. Once you complete a race (usually by finishing 4th or better) you cannot go back and try it again t make more money. So, win first or else restart, you don't want to miss out on that cash! The trugutts are especially important as upgrading your pod is essential to victory in this game. As you beat these 3 circuits (which consist of 7 races each), you unlock an additional circuit called the Invitational Circuit. This one consists of only 4 races, and some of them are tough. As you progress though the game you unlock all of the courses that you complete, and if you finish first and beat the track favourite, you also unlock that character to play with in the game. This game was pretty fun, there were lots of characters and tracks to unlock. There were a few glitches though, but not major ones, as follows:

1) To use the Turbo feature was a tough process, you have to hold the stick forward for a certain amount of time until it's ready, then take your finger off the gas and then put it back on. Why they just didn't assign turbo to one of the buttons I don't know. It made it very distracting to try and use the turbo because if you take your eyes off the track for one second you are screwed. Plus, sometimes your only have a certain, very tight window in which to use turbo so if you don't get it right, you've missed it.

2) The graphics were actually really good, but sometimes when it looked like I was going the right way I'd run smack in to a wall! The definition in some spots wasn't the best, but once I figured out the track and knew it well it didn't matter anymore anyways.

3) Upgrading the pod I found frustrating. I had to buy parts, I could go to the junkyard to buy parts, and I had to buy pit droids to maintain the parts! That was a little too much. It's all about the racing, not the garage. Also, after finishing a race, not being able to go back and upgrade winnings was a bummer. You can't have enough cash in this game, because those other racers are merciless. One other side note. After I beat the game, I went back in to play the Invitational Circuit, and a lot of my pod racers upgrades had disappeared! That sucked. But overall, this game, as with a lot of Star Wars games, was a very good game and was somewhat groundbreaking. I would definitely recommend this game, but if you want to go straight to Racer Revenge for PS2, the follow up for this game, do it. In Racer Revenge they made all the right improvements.

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