The RetroBeat is a weekly column that looks at gaming’s past, diving into classics, new retro titles, or looking at how old favorites - and their design techniques - inspire today’s market and experiences. Or maybe you’re just a big retro gaming nerd like me who loves seeing a low-poly version of a film as divisive and weird as The Phantom Menace.
But If you’re a fan of LucasArts adventure games, this game may be worth checking out just for that Tatooine sequence. Unlike with Episode I: Racer or other classic Star Wars games, this one is a bit harder to play these days. Eventually, this practice became much too expensive and difficult to create with a release date guaranteed to coincide with the release of a film, so now we see movies flock to the mobile space for their licensed games. It is basically an action game in which you play.
This Star Wars title from Lucas Arts is completely based on the movie Phantom Menace. There is a whole Armada of Battleships and troops besieging a planet and two Jedi knights come to protect the planet. It’s a snapshot of a much different time in the history of licensed video games, when developers were struggling to make 3D experiences that felt like true interactive versions of the moves they were based on. There is a disturbance in the force, and the Jedi are there to find its source. It also has some glaring problems, such as an awkward camera angle that is positioned far too high above your character and some lazy voice-acting.īut The Phantom Menace also has a lot of merit. It has not held up as well as other Star Wars games from that era, such as Episode I: Racer and Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast. Look, I’m not trying to suggest that the Episode I game is some massive hidden gem. If you played the 3D LucasArts adventure games from this era, Grim Fandango or Escape from Monkey Island, this sequence will feel familiar. As Qui-Gon, you explore the city and talk to its denizens as you search for a way to fix your ship. Here, the experience plays a bit more like an old-school LucasArts adventure game. But what really stands out is the Tatooine section. You have a mix of melee and ranged combat along with some puzzles. You can best describe Episode I as a third-person action-adventure game. The Jedi focused on their Force abilities and lightsaber combat, while Amidala and Panaka’s sequences had more of a third-person shooter vibe. You also got to play as several characters: the Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jin, along with Queen Amidala and even her bodyguard Captain Panaka.
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