It’s hard to think of a time when Star Wars was not at its peak popularity, but in the late 1990s and early 2000s George Lucas’ multimediatic creation was on the decline. But with news of a new movie on the way which would start off a new prequel trilogy, things started to heat up, and with its eventual release, a considerably large number of videogames based on Star Wars Episode I: Phantom Menace hit shelves around the world, to varying degrees of success.
One of those releases was Star Wars Episode I: Jedi Power Battles, which hit the PlayStation and Dreamcast in March of 2000, more than half a year after the movie opened theatrically in 1999. It stars basically the entire cast of the film, retelling all its events as you brawl your way through 10 action packed levels. You can pick from just about anyone worth remembering from Phantom Menace, plus a few more just for kicks, but who are we kidding? Plo Koon was the only real choice, come on!
For a game of that era, it was enjoyable enough, especially with a friend in tow so you could tear through it together, wildly swinging lightsabers or shooting blasters until you hit credits. However, for a re-release 25 years later, it’s a pill that’s harder to swallow, and while Aspyr has done a decent job bumping up the visuals as best as they could, there’s just not a whole lot to really enjoy here thanks to a number of issues.
First and foremost, Jedi Power Battles doesn’t control very well. Every input is laggy and mushy, making the combat slow and artificially difficult. When you think about the prequel trilogy, you probably recall all of the high speed saber duels, right? Well, here, there’s not a trace of that speed or elegance, only flailing and hoping not to die and having to redo it all from the previous checkpoint.
Enemies are dumb and charge at you as soon as you come into their line of view, and in any other game with decent controls, it would be much more fun to dispatch them, but in this one, it’s anything but, resulting in a literal battle of attrition if you choose to engage them, since it’s way easier just to ignore pretty much every fight and rush forward, with the exception of mandatory stops along the way like boss fights. And no amount of power-ups help, not even making your lightsaber longer!
Funnily enough, and this is something I do not recall from its original release – I played it on the Dreamcast and haven’t touched it since – you have level select from the get go, letting you skip to the chase and go toe to toe with Darth Maul at the end. Sadly, if you choose to do that by yourself, I wish you the best of luck, he’s one mean and extremely cheap bastard.
There are a handful of two-player minigames where you can compete against one another in a race, a shooting gallery, and best of all, see who can wrangle Jar Jar Binks into a freaking cage first. No, I’m not lying, it is an objective, and taking into account how bad the game controls, you can imagine how painful of a task it is to accomplish.
For a Star Wars product of its time, Jedi Power Battles has a decent presentation for what it is. It features the likenesses, or the next best thing, all things considered, of the film’s cast, and it wouldn’t be Phantom Menace without Duel of Fates blaring on your speakers ad nauseam. Compared to the other games released at the time that were based on the movie as well, namely Episode I Racer, it’s quite faithful to what you sat and watched at a theater in 1999, but unlike that one in particular, it’s nowhere near as enjoyable, sadly, and has not aged nearly as well.
Aspyr has been having a good run bringing back old classics, with their recent release of some of the Soul Reaver games last December, but looking at their work with Star Wars titles in particular, there’s something to be said about the resulting products. That’s not to say that they’ve not been doing good work since there’s only so much you can polish a game that wasn’t a gem to begin with. Then again, given the amount of attention that Raziel’s adventures got and how they were improved upon for their remasters, it’s a head-scratcher why the same could not be done for this as well. Maybe if Nightdive Studios were the ones doing it, perhaps that would have happened.
