Episode 181 - It's Jar Jarring - Star Wars Episode 1 Racer

Do goola podcast sa bantha poodoo. Welcome back to the podcast! As
we near the end of the year, we like to look back on a game or two
that are more nostalgic for us, and Racer somehow got overlooked
until now. Racer is maybe the first of our nostalgia picks that
really holds up, at least in our opinion. This is a very
straightforward video game, all the things considered, but the
focus makes for a surprisingly solid racing experience. True to the
movie, podracing in the game is extremely fast and almost 100%
guaranteed to end with a lethal explosion. The tracks lose a bit of
their focus as the game goes on, but the core mechanics are skill
testing in an enjoyable way and the game is short enough that you
can get to the point where you’re playing it to improve very
quickly. It’s very mechanics first, but it being Lucasarts, due is
paid to making sure that the world, characters and sound design
fits with the movies. The presentation suffers in some ways, but
the worlds of the game are well realized for the time and also
Watto is there, which is great. We’re going to talk about the
feeling of playing the game for the first time and once you get
used to it, the mechanics we did and did not remember using as
children, and we spend a decent amount of time just complaining
about the prequel trilogy. Thank you for joining us again this
week! This is a great palette cleansing game after what has a been
a heady year and one that I was really surprised by. I’ve come to
expect the games we liked as kids to pretty much always be worse
than you remembered, so for this to hold up as well as it does was
pleasant, at worst. If you haven’t played this game in a while, or
god forbid, not at all, it’s surprisingly accessible with a recent
remaster and the original PC version on Steam, so maybe give it a
look. Post your fond recollections of the N64 in the comments or
over on our Discord. Next time, we’re going to be talking about
Slay the Princess, so we hope you’ll join us for that.