Star Wars Prequel Games: Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:00] Star Wars Galactic Racer might be set in the New Republic era, but Pod Racing screams Star Wars prequels louder than Pepsi.

[00:14] Star Wars Episode 110, episode 24 this summer. And this bloodsport is largely beloved thanks to a video game. The saga is no stranger to incredible games.

[00:28] The titles based on Episodes 1, 2, and 3 get lost easily among the KOTORs and TIE Fighters of the galaxy. The prequel trilogy has earned a second look from fans after Star Wars' modern decade of disaster.

[00:43] And developers are starting to be at least clone curious with bangers like Zero Company. The prequel may have more motion than we thought, and it's worth a trip back to BBY to explore their gaming path.

[00:57] Where can Star Wars games go from Galactic Racer onward, and what should be left behind like Anakin's mom? These are the best, worst, and weirdest Star Wars prequel trilogy games.

[01:09] We've got racers, shooters, and ecology simulators all on deck, but let's start with the straight adaptations of the film.

[01:23] The flagship game for Star Wars Episode I, The Phantom Menace, released alongside the film in 1999. Like most Phantom Menace merch at the turn of the millennium, the game was a commercial success for PC and PlayStation,

[01:36] But that's more indicative of the massive Star Wars prequel hype than actual quality. After all, they sold a lot of Jar Jar Binks lollipops, too. The game recreates the film from its opening tea service to the Battle of Naboo,

[01:50] controlling a veritable Mount Rushmore of beloved protagonists and Obi-Wan Kenobi, Qui-Gon Jinn, Padme Amidala, Captain Quarsh Panaka, all voiced by rather dubious soundalikes. The voice for our attack, Alan. His speaking will be strong.

[02:03] Fate is a big theme throughout the prequel trilogy. The idea that one's destiny is fixed and uncontrollable. The same could be said of the camera in the episode one game.

[02:15] Pinned high above your character, the PLD renders gameplay extremely unpleasant as you leisurely lob blaster bolts back at battle droids. You can embrace the dark side and cut down innocent civilians who side-eye your rat tail.

[02:27] I'm selling the finest clay pots and handmade raw meat. You push boxes and complete fetch quests in a garish otogunga, but you won't find it fun for long.

[02:39] Jedi Power Battles is the superior game. Released a year later on PlayStation and Dreamcast, it follows Episode 1's entire plot in order, but only to the extent that Turtles in Time is invested in the story of Shredder stealing the Statue of Liberty.

[02:56] We're in beat-em-up territory here, complete with a handful of fighters, combos, minigames, and a few fun secrets. Far from the best example of the genre, but if you simply need to experience the plot of The Phantom Menace

[03:08] and you've had your fill of tag-a-ling and hand-maiden intrigue, Power Battles is the answer. There aren't really many options for Episode 2, Attack of the Clones.

[03:24] with scenes like the Geonosian Arena and its Taizo platformer droid factory, seems tailor-made for games, but the Starcrossed Tale only received one proper adaptation, a ponderous side-scroller on the Game Boy Advance,

[03:37] which fails to capture the burning passion of the film's love story. This is a terrible novel. Episode 3, Revenge of the Sith, the movie, the game, fared much better. A hack-and-slash romp through 17 stages,

[03:51] it's a bit like Power Battles with a bigger budget It ends some basic XP upgrades. It's packed with unlockable characters and non-canonical missions where Anakin unalives everybody and seizes control of the galaxy.

[04:04] No, the galaxy belongs to me. For a film that lives and dies by its duels, the single-player boss fights and PvP combat don't miss. Even the ubiquitous handheld ports were solid.

[04:17] I will break you down. The Episode III game oozes a prestige package. cutscenes completely spoiled the film which came out ten days later, so there are some crucial differences for gameplay purposes that kinda make more sense than the movie,

[04:32] like Anakin personally killing Mace Windu to cement his dark side heel turn. EA's Lord of the Rings Return of the King has a similar vibe, and also spoiled the heck

[04:47] out of its trilogy-topping movie before anyone could see it. The games are alike in a lot of ways, though from our point of view, we would give the edge to Mordor over Mustafar. Whatever happened to games like these? It turns out you don't need full motion video

[05:00] or fancy motion capture to convey the essence of a cinematic story. Sometimes all you need is a little Danish plastic. Traveler's Tales began their decades-long dominance as a licensed kids' game space with

[05:16] Lego Star Wars, whose simple title doesn't need to stipulate that it's covering the prequel stories because that's just what Star Wars was in 2005. The prequel era appears in numerous Lego entries, largely delivered through grunts and pantomime without an ounce of gravitas.

[05:32] And it works. The first Lego Star Wars, with 6.1 million copies sold, is easily the most commercially successful prequel trilogy game, despite largely being a joke. Star Wars movies are vehicles for drama and action and special effects. The plots and characters aren't really

[05:49] built with controllers in mind and the best prequel games do well to explore their margins in side stories. Some of the more interesting titles of the era are prequels to the capital P prequels like the Xbox exclusive Star Wars Obi-

[06:04] Wan, not to be confused with the disappointing Disney Plus show or Obi- Wan Adventures the Game Boy Color game that might be a better use of your time than the nine streaming series Ewan McGregor Obi makes for a great protagonist He literally sits out the worst parts of the Phantom Menace in a spaceship

[06:21] so you don't really associate him with extensive haggling or child slavery. And Jar Jar Binks and the Gungans do not appear at all in his self-titled games. Instead, we explore young Kenobi's journey from the mean streets of Coruscant

[06:34] to the fateful Neimoidian breakout room that kicks off the entire saga. What's that? I hope it's God's poison. Originally planned for PC with a unique control scheme

[06:48] where mouse gestures control the lightsaber, the game was personally tie-bossed by George Lucas and reworked for the launch window of Microsoft's console. The Padawan's green blade, aglow with emerald Xbox synergy,

[07:01] would instead answer to the analog stick of the mighty Duke. The exploits of Obi-Wan are nice to have,

[07:22] but Star Wars Bounty Hunter has a lot more to explain. Released shortly after Attack of the Clones in 2002, and set years before Jango Fett's decapitation, it tells the story of how the simple man making his way in the universe

[07:35] was chosen to stand at stud for an army of armored doppelgangers. If you'll come with me to Kamino to be cloned, you want to clone me.

[07:47] You're given access to Jango's entire arsenal and a surprising amount of freedom, blasting through seedy underbellies with a jetpack and roasting civilians and bounty targets alike. Industrial light and magic and Skywalker sounds all worked directly with LucasArts for the first time to create the game's cutscenes

[08:03] with great performances from the movie's Kimura Morrison, plus Clancy Brown as a rival Mandalorian bounty hunter who is no longer compatible with canon. Face to face, we know how we do this to the death.

[08:15] Be the best man we are. I am the best. The story explores the unfavorite side of Star Wars, the dirty, dangerous places far from the force where crime lords rule with a cortosis fist,

[08:27] and a guy like Jango fits right in. Bounty Hunter was cited as an inspiration for the doomed 1313 project and you don't have to squint too hard to see Shades of Andor either. Films convey character much differently from video games.

[08:41] A medium where Kyle Katarn and Cal Kestis carry more clout than Luke and Leia. Star Wars games are great at focusing on characters that the movies just don't have time for. The foxholes of a galactic war are filled with Ivan Versios.

[08:57] Good news for you, my lord. The war has begun. Excellent. Begun in Episode 2, The Clone Wars were. A brutal conflict that rages across 400 billion stars and largely takes place off screen.

[09:12] Wrapped up tidily in Episode 2, The Clone Wars created a huge void that expanded media was well fit to fill. Released in 2002 for PS2 and GameCube, Star Wars The Clone Wars waged the opening salvos from behind the wheel.

[09:26] Developer Pandemic used the vehicular combat game as a testing ground for the in-house Zero Engine that would usher in the era of Battlefront and its many prequel trilogy trappings. A GBA game, New Droid Army, emerged around the same time,

[09:40] while the amusing Age of Empires reskinned Galactic Battlegrounds rolled out a whole clone campaign DLC that let you lead the fight against space terrorists by playing as the evil Separatists. These titles barely scratched the limitless possibilities offered by a war fought over trade routes between clones and robots.

[09:59] An animated series or two was in order. Genndy Tartakovsky's god-tier Clone Wars micro-series made the fight look actually cool for the first time, but its only interactive representation came as a Flash-based browser game.

[10:13] Jay Filoni, the ascended fan who now essentially runs Lucasfilm, cut his teeth on his own Clone Wars series in 2008, This one made the leap from Cartoon Network to console.

[10:30] Republic Heroes is a bog-standard platformer, while Jedi Alliance takes advantage of the DS's styrofoam swiping for its dual-character lightsaber skirmishes. Both games meet the standard of whelming one might expect from a spinoff to a spinoff,

[10:44] but they're both overshadowed by the Clone Wars lightsaber duel, to gain every single person imagined the first time they held a Wiimote. The plot takes a backseat to motion control action, de-emphasizing the outsourced assassinations and turgid love affairs that define the film.

[11:00] Instead, it zeroes in on one memorable aspect of the movie for a fun and satisfying power fantasy as a vertical slice of the saga. You perceive the force as river of the school where things are taking...

[11:13] No words can follow Jedi school. Lore is great. Expanded universes are beloved for a reason. There are thousands of well-worn paperbacks yellowing in the Legends library that can attest to that.

[11:26] But too much lore can elbow out the cinematic impact that made Star Wars a phenomenon. What is Star Wars if not a series of archetypical characters engaged in blockbuster set pieces,

[11:38] any one of which could be separated from the whole as a standalone experience? The Trench Run, The Battle of Hoth, Terras Tasi Combat. You can carve out any given ten minutes from a Star Wars movie and probably find a decent game in there.

[11:53] Space Tip Combat was the first place anyone looked, which quickly evolved into a sub-line of quite respectable flight sims and shooters. Imperial post-soy, send ahead. 30-0, set.

[12:05] 1998's Rogue Squadron was an original trilogy affair, but the devs at Factor 5 included a secret that evaded even GameShark detection for seven months. The UK release of The Phantom Menace

[12:17] was celebrated by reviewing the Naboo Starfighter that was hidden in the code a gleaming Art Deco Buck Rogers ship that mogged the busted Y in the Rebel Hangar The Starfighter made it clear that the future was here and it was all about the past

[12:33] A Battle for Naboo is Rogue Squadron with a prequel coat of paint. Like its predecessor, it's a mission-based series of skirmishes that makes the most of the N64 expansion pack with a propulsive plot powered by dialogue and dogfights.

[12:46] The Starfighter itself is back with a little less aura now that we've seen a nine-year-old boy master it in seconds, along with a fleet of the finest chips the Royal Security Forces have to offer. Unlike other games in the series, you play as RSF Lieutenant Gavin Sykes throughout the whole story.

[13:03] Cool guy, but he's no Reg Antilles. Battle for Naboo is exactly what you'd expect from Rogue Squadron, the Episode 1 version. Factor 5 took their talents back to the OT for the GameCube's twin Rogue Squadrons,

[13:16] but LucasArts didn't leave the prequel age behind. 2001's Starfighter, the series' PS2 debut, is no slouch. Less Star Fox than Ace Combat, the game mixes sim and arcade as it weaves through the narrative of Episode I from the perspective of three characters,

[13:32] including fan-favorite Nim, a mononomic space pirate who had one day earned an 18,000-word Wikipedia article. Nim and his signature ship Havoc would return the next year in Jedi Starfighter,

[13:45] scrapping the separatists and the antebellum of the Clone Wars. It's a fuller package than its predecessor, but both rate highly among prequel games. For all its faults, the prequel trilogy always excelled when it came to space and aerial action,

[13:58] full of big battles between cool-looking ships that sound awesome. Now this is pod racing. Actually, this is pod racing. Thanks to George Lucas' lifelong fascination with fast cars, so much of Star Wars is propelled by the energy of a show-stopping death race.

[14:15] a promise fully realized in The Phantom Menace. The film's entire second act revolves around the Boonta Eve classic, a 500-mile-an-hour Grand Prix through the twisted canyons of Tatooine. For the competitors, ILM dreamed up enough pilots to fill a glupshiddle graveyard,

[14:31] most of whom die horribly while Greg Proops cracks wives. Star Wars Episode I racer dares to ask, what's their story? The 1999 game for N64 and PC

[14:47] features 23 playable pods nearly all doomed to expire on boot to ease We embody racer Rats Tyrell Family Man racking up wins and whoopee-oopees in the months before he's vaporized

[14:59] We become Ben Cuadoneros as he purchases pit droids and upgrades his extremely dangerous ride

[15:12] so it doesn't fail when it matters most. We are Anakin, forced against our will to endure Watto's juggling as we dream of freedom on the track. There's not much combat in the game for technical reasons,

[15:25] and while it kind of diminishes the chariot race tension of the movie, it's still a standout racer on a system that had a lot of them. A code allowed you to dual-wield two N64 controllers.

[15:38] Analog sticks a-kimbo as you cranked the engines, yanking you for victory or oblivion. It almost felt like the real thing. The arcade game basically was the real thing. Sega created several Star Wars cabinets with interesting hardware,

[15:52] but nothing ever let you enter the world of Star Wars butt-first like Star Wars Racers. Plop into Annie's plexiglass pod, place your hands on the throttles, and pray the force is with you. All that's missing is the plasma coupler.

[16:06] The well-received console game was followed in 2002 by a more aggro sequel, Episode I, Racer Revenge. With an emphasis on intrapod violence, it's a more fleshed-out game mechanically that never quite took off the possible casualty of the prequel backlash.

[16:21] Criticism was calcifying into consensus, and fans had fallen out of love with the pastime of pod racing. It would take two decades for another game to pick up the torch, first with the VR title Beyond Victory,

[16:34] followed by Galactic Racer, which proudly features the sport and its foremost ambassadors among several modes of roguelike run-based racing. Pods aren't the only way to burn rubber in the Star Wars galaxy. You've got ships, speeders, swoops,

[16:48] and, in 2001, super-deformed mascots. Super Bombad Racing is the first and thus far only Star Wars kart racer. The physics are floaty and fun, and the chibified characters are cute. It won't unseat Mario, Sonic, or Garfield as kings of cart cannons,

[17:04] but it's unique and almost charming at times, which is more than you can say for a lot of the games we've talked about so far. Thanks, The Maker, for the weird ones.

[17:19] With its jaw-dropping dinotopia, aesthetics, and dialogue no sentient being would ever speak, the prequel trilogy is George Lucas' own Death Stranding. the brazen self-belief of an artist with a budget and no one around to say no.

[17:33] Star Wars has been pretty buttoned up as a brand ever since the holiday special, and with Disney at the reins, we're unlikely to see anything as wild as Episodes 1, 2, and 3 again. The games they inspired looked and sounded the part, but rarely matched the unfiltered ingenuity of the film.

[17:50] There are a lot of platformers and third-person action adventures on this list, and even awesome racers and dogfight sims are pretty par for the Star Wars course, but a few titles tried something different.

[18:02] George Lucas founded Lucas Learning in 1996, riding the CD-ROM edutainment wave that brought number munchers and incredible machines to middle school computer labs around the world. The imprint released several Star Wars prequel games designed to fit in school curricula,

[18:18] betting on the children's love of Jar Jar Binks to teach them about fractions and natural science. Star Wars, The Gungan Frontier, sees the titular species in crisis. Their bubble cities are overpopulated they surrounded by giant sea monsters and half the planet can stand them Boss Nass enlists your aid in colonizing the moon manipulating its barren ecosystem for imported Naboo flora and fauna in a simplified sim life with hints of spore

[18:45] Planting trees and balancing the food chain while vibing to the ambient soundtrack is such a pastoral, zen experience that you almost forget that you're assisting an invasive and extremely annoying species.

[18:57] Anakin's Speedway offers kids ages 4 and up the opportunity to help the enslaved child build tracks for racers to die on, while Pit Droids makes use of the adorable automathons as lemming-style problem solvers,

[19:09] guiding them through mechanical puzzles that teach basic logic and spatial reasoning skills. This quirky little cluster of learning games is a breath of fresh air after traversing seeds for the 30th time, but they didn't exactly revolutionize early childhood education.

[19:24] If you're curious how the whole edutainment venture panned out, the last game LucasLearning developed was Super Bombad Racing, which, most would agree, has little pedagogical value to speak of. The division folded in 2001,

[19:37] seeding the market shortly before the entire space imploded amid widespread internet adoption. The games have always been quick to chase trends, even the ones based on movies that bucked them all at the expense of good taste and narrative coherence.

[19:50] Flash games were in their heyday in the 2000s, and Star Wars embraced the macromedia madness of it all with a clutch of prequel-era games for Cartoon Network. More impressive was the expansive browser-based MMO called Clone Wars Adventures

[20:04] that boasted 10 million registered players before it folded in 2014. R2, we have new recruits. R2? R2? Nothing chased the trend harder than the Kinect,

[20:16] the much-maligned Microsoft peripheral that jumped on the motion-control bandwagon when tracking your body movement with a creepy camera. The Kinect Star Wars on the Xbox 360 might be its most infamous title.

[20:28] Now, the 2012 release is built on the prequel trilogy, at least as much as a grab bag of gimmicky minigames can be built on anything. There's an obligatory pod racing mode where you grip a pair of throttles that don't exist,

[20:40] while the story campaign pluss you into war as a Padawan of your own design, using the Kinect to control a lightsaber with your flailing lens in a quite uncivilized fashion. The lasting legacy of Star Wars Kinect, however, has little to do with the prequels.

[20:55] The Galactic Dance-Off is a just dance-inspired collection of now-that's-what-I-call-music hits repurposed for Star Wars, with parody lyrics that make one yearn for the subtle wit of Weird Al Yankovic.

[21:08] Hollaback Girl becomes Hollagram Girl, LaRue's Bulletproof is Blasterproof, and Jason Derulo's triumphant ode to self-alliance is repurposed as Han Solo. spun by DJ Lobot while the titular rogue leads his dance crew of fascist collaborators

[21:24] in moves like the Trash Compactor. Even in the weirdest and most embarrassing prequel game, the original trilogy still takes precedence.

[21:41] Most of what we've discussed so far has been bad to admit at best, with a few standouts brushing against the feeling of pretty good. We wish that we could just wish away our feelings. But it's true.

[21:53] For whatever reason, it's hard to mine genuine excellence from the prequel setting. Only a few games pass. Half the video game industry is built by gruff sci-fi people in faceless helmets. Master Chief, Doomguy, Samus, and more all excel as blank slates on which the player can project.

[22:10] And what slate is blankier than a disposable clone? The Star Wars Republic Commando, released in 2005 for the PC and Xbox, and set between Episodes 2 and 3, you are Boss, the gruff clone commander of Delta Squad.

[22:25] Despite their genetically identical nature, his subordinates, Fixer, Scorch, and Sev, have fully realized personalities all their own, like color-coded Kaminoan ninja turtles who obey every order from your contextual squad command button.

[22:38] Your comrades are so well written throughout the gritty, violent story that you forget they're artificial drones at all. The team earned a devoted fan following. Their own action figures and spin-off novels were clearly homaged by Dave Filoni's Bad Batch in the Clone Wars cartoon.

[22:55] Republic Commando's first-person combat with an always-appreciated diegetic helmet HUD gives an infantry grunt's perspective on the cosmic clash. to more gory affairs than typical Star Wars. And that's saying something for a franchise with so many routine dismemberments.

[23:10] It eschews the esoteric mysticism of the Sith and Jedi and explores the unsung heroes whose blood oils the gears of galactic war, like Andor Wood 17 years later. Despite being one of the best Star Wars games period,

[23:25] let alone from the prequel era, Republic Commando never earned a sequel, which means we may never learn the fate of the clone we left behind. It's rarely a good idea to get attached to characters when there's a war on, especially if you're playing Zero Company.

[23:38] The turn-based tactical game from X-Fraxis X-Com Vets retains its spiritual forebear's insistence that anyone can die if the odds aren't in your favor. And if you opt into permadeath, as the devs recommend, you'll find yourself mourning your beloved operators through the many hours of base banter and trauma bonding that make up the lengthy campaign.

[23:58] Zero Company is, by all accounts, a big success. It's got the highest Metacritic score for a Star Wars game in 22 years, and fans seem perfectly aligned on its awesomeness. Between Zero Company and the goodwill from Galactic Racer, no one is arguing over whether the prequels suck.

[24:14] We didn't roll our eyes at the idea of another prequel game, or use it as an excuse to re-litigate feature-length film reviews from cranky Wisconsinites. When it comes to video games, we're finally ready to fall in love with the prequel era all over again,

[24:29] or at least the best parts of it. Thanks for watching, everyone. Be sure to let us know your favorite prequel era Star Wars game, and stay tuned to IGN for all things Star Wars.