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| | Publisher: LucasArts  Genre: Sports | | Mac OS X: Not Supported Mac OS Classic: Mac OS 8.1
CPU: G3 @ 233 MHz RAM: 16 MB 4x CD-ROM |
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Do you dream of speed? Does the thought of traveling at high speeds only a few feet from the ground send chills down your spine? Hold on to your goggles. Fire up those converters. Tune in to the Force, and get ready because Star Wars Racer is here. This race is intense. Your small cockpit is filled with dust and sweat and trepidation. The few hand-made instruments just below your field of vision tell you your engines are starting to overheat. Determined, you push the throttle forward and leave your worries behind. Speeding past other racers, you begin to contemplate how sweet the victory lap will be. Such is the thrill of pod racing. Pod racing, you ask? Why, yes, pod racing. Pod racing as in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Star Wars. Apple pie. Baseball. Presidential scandals. What better defines America? For Star Wars fans everywhere, including the zillion or so fans outside the U.S., this game is a must-have. You have seen the movie. You loved the pod racing scene. If you were like me, you were probably urging the movie on to pick up the pace by that time. What the movie did not tell you is that pod racing was huge in the outer rim of that galaxy. Drivers, gangsters, and everyone else loved pod racing. It was the most popular sport on most planets. This game puts you in the thick of the Galactic Pod Racing Circuit. Pod racing is the Indy circuit on steroids. Pit Row This game is very well done, the graphics are superlative and the scenery screaming past your pod on the various worlds is detailed enough to be distracting. There were 18 pod racers in the movie. All of them are in the game with the addition of two more. Each pod racer is very detailed. The feeling of traveling at 500 mph is very real in Pod Racer. I welcome any comments from those of you who played this game while sitting in the Intensor LX chair, that would be a real kick in the pants. Your view from right behind the pod racer clearly reveals the pod, the cables with their tenuous hold on the huge engines just a few feet in front of you, and most importantly the flimsy energy binder keeping your two engines in sync.The part of the game that allows you to chose your pod is unique. Pods are selected via a hologram delineating each pod’s strengths and weaknesses. Pods are upgradeable at Watto’s shop or the junkyard. Obviously, the junkyard is for the racers who are monetarily challenged.After selecting a pod, the next challenge is selecting a racing circuit on which to race. I, of course, started out with the Amateur Pod Racing Circuit. After one run through the first world of Tatooine, I went on to place first in each of the seven races. Here is my first criticism; there is a huge difference in the competition between the amateur in the professional races. It is very easy to win the amateur circuit, but I was hard-pressed to even place in the top five on the professional Galactic Pod Racing Circuit. Granted, it should be gradually more difficult, but for me it was too steep. That aside, the races are great. Each offers a unique course. That is a good thing because not much changes about the race. All require you to navigate three laps and dodge similar obstacles. On one world the obstacles are icicles and on another large earth moving equipment. All take place on, under or above the planet surfaces. The most unique are the zero gravity tubes on Oovo IV. Do yourself a favor the first time through and watch all of the QuickTime cut scene movies, they are worth seeing. The eight worlds are unique, some have different race courses depending on your level of play. With all the great graphics and sounds, it is a wonder the explosions of your pod are so lackluster. Do not expect much when you do crash and burn. The best part of crashing are the crashes that put you into a death spiral before you turn into bug squat. The actual explosion definitely needed more attention from the artists.
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