I was seven years old when Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace came out. Like many children, my movie tastes were very different then. I loved the movie when I saw it in theatre. But, in hindsight, I loved the podracing and that was about it. I honestly do not know if I watched the movie past that point. But, I truly loved the podracing.

I remember getting all the podracing toys, legos, and most importantly: the video game.

Star Wars Episode 1: Racer was originally released on the Nintendo 64, PC, and Dreamcast. I played the Nintendo 64 version and loved every second of it. I loved Sebulba and worked so hard to unlock him. Then, just like in the movie, you could burn your opponents with Sebulba’s engines. I remember being so incredibly excited that they let you cheat, just like Sebulba in the movie (now that I write it out, it does seem weird that I sided with the “bad guy” of the podracers?).

For this review, however, I played the recently released version on Xbox One. And let me tell you… I still love it! I cannot believe how well this game holds up. The re-release does not change the graphics or anything. It’s simply a port of the original. But that is not a bad thing. The game was awesome then and it’s just as awesome now. I played through the entire thing twice because I was trying to get all the newly added achievements in the game. I would have happily played through a third time to be honest.

As for the actual game, it’s really straight forward. There are four series and seven different worlds. Each series has a track on each of the seven worlds. Except the last series, which only has four tracks. That makes a total of 25 tracks. Each track, even though only spanning seven different locations, feel totally different. I honestly loved all of the tracks and think they vary in difficulty to a very satisfying result.

The controls, on the other hand, sort of leave a little to be desired. The podracers are obviously floating, which makes braking understandably difficult. I get that as far as the podracing lore goes. But… when coupled with the extreme speed of your podracer, some turns on certain tracks become literally impossible. Some tracks consist of you just bouncing back and forth from wall to wall until your podracer explodes. This is fine in the early game, where the opponents also make mistakes. But on the final series, the opponents are perfect on every turn and build leads that are insurmountable. I won every single race in the first three series with little to no difficulty. But the third and fourth race of the final series seemed nearly impossible. I had to be accurate to the frame it felt or I would lose any hope of winning. This was with a completely upgraded podracer. Maybe I’m just bad, but the difficulty curve came out of nowhere on the last set of races. This is coming from someone who generally loves when games have steep difficulty curves. The curve in Star Wars Racer, however, was nothing but frustrating.

So to sum it all up, I give Star wars Episode 1: Racer a 3 out of 4. It’s honestly a very fun and satisfying experience. Until it becomes a total frustrating mess at the end. The game and its controls are not perfect and that only becomes more obvious when you get into the higher difficulties. But if you’re willing to overlook some obvious flaws and just enjoy some classic racing, this game is for you. It honestly might be one of my favorite Star Wars games and I was pleasantly surprised that I still had as much fun now as I did as a child. I strongly recommend this game.