Galactic Racer Finally Fixes One Of The Darkest Parts Of Star Wars Games
Is it not enough to pilot a landspeeder and enjoy the view?
Star Wars might have begun as a live-action film (or, in the last few years, television) franchise first and foremost, but since A New Hope’s humble beginnings, it has become a billion-dollar multimedia empire. Toys, novels, comic books, theme parks, there is no medium left untouched by the cultural domination of that galaxy far, far away. Out of all of the art forms that Star Wars has dabbled in, video games have certainly become one of the most reliable wells.
Since 1982’s The Empire Strikes Back for the Atari 2600, the rapid technological development of video games has provided a great opportunity for fans to explore the myths, locations, and characters central to Lucas’ sprawling creation. However, across those games, especially the ones released in the last two decades or so, a problem starts to emerge – they’re all focused heavily on combat or warfare, from the Battlefront games to the recent Star Wars: Jedi series. Naturally, galactic-scale battles and lightsaber duels are a huge part of the series, but so is the childlike whimsy and wonder that Lucas made sure to emphasize during his time with the series – and based on the latest glimpse at the upcoming Star Wars: Galactic Racer game, it appears that we’re finally getting another game that honors that spirit.
The new teaser for Galactic Racer (developed by Fuse Games and published by Secret Mode) doesn’t show off much of the story, which we know takes place in the Outer Rim and centers on the power struggle for control over an illegitimate racing competition known as the Galactic League. What it does show is a whole host of different locations such as Tatooine, Hoth, and Endor, along with a bunch of the playable vehicles in the game, which include podracers, speeder bikes, landspeeders, and a brand new vehicle type making its franchise debut in the game, the skimspeeder.
Galactic Racer is definitely not the first and only racing game released during Star Wars’ long history in video games: there have been podracing games as far back as Episode 1 Racer on the N64. But in the era of triple-A gaming, it feels like the focus has become increasingly on replicating cinematic action and intense combat coupled with self-serious narratives, which isn’t inherently a bad thing, but it does feel like some of the varied experiences found in 90s and early 2000s Star Wars games is missing. There’s something refreshing about an experience designed solely to have fun with, not a story about rescuing the galaxy and carving up Stormtroopers, but one dedicated to the wish fulfillment everyone developed watching Anakin build his podracer and win the Boonta Eve Classic.
So far, it looks like the stakes in Galactic Racer won’t be so focused on fatalities.
Hopefully, Star Wars: Galactic Racer achieves the kind of success necessary to ensure more games like this, because as fun as fighting with a lightsaber is, there are so many strange and wondrous corners and concepts within the universe that would lend themselves to all kinds of different gaming experiences, whether they be puzzle-solvers or platformers or even more racing games.
The beauty of Star Wars as a multimedia juggernaut is that fans can get projects with wildly different tones and intentions, and gaming shouldn’t be any different.
