Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace [PS1/1999]

System Played: Playstation 1

Year Released: 1999

Year Reviewed: 2014

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace is a third person action game based on the movie of the same name, developed by Big Ape Productions (no idea) and LucasArts.

TURMOIL HAS ENGULFED THE GALACTIC REPUBLIC!!! The taxation of trade routes to outlying systems is in dispute! The Trade Federation has stopped all shipping to the planet of Naboo with a blockade of zzzzzz….. wha?! oh, sorry!


PhatMen follows the “plot” of the movie, starting with Obi Wan and Qui Gon on the trade federation ship for an important business meeting, before going on a droid killing spree to liven things up a bit.

They’ve gone with tank controls, ala early Resident Evil, which doesn’t feel like the best design decision for this sort of game, and you don’t get any control over the camera either, the right analog being wasted on rolling around the place (the exact same thing the L1 button does).

With your single attack button, you swing a lightsabre around, willy nilly, or hold it down to knock lasers back at enemy droids ...or in their general direction at least.

There just isn’t any depth to combat, so the game is spent just hoping that you can deflect most of the barrage of enemy shots and find a medkit before too much of your health is sapped away. But being short ranged weapons, they’re pretty ineffective against 6 droids firing at you constantly. The Jedi characters also have a Force push move to knock droids on their metal posteriors, but it isn’t a huge help.

The camera is just too high over head, almost looking straight down on you, so you can’t see very far ahead, like where all the enemies are shooting at you from! ...unless you just go running off straight into them that is.


You play the first five (or so) levels as Obi Wan before switching over to Qui Gon, and then later Padme and her ship captain. You know him! No? The black guy? ...racist!


There’s a bit on the first level where you’re running away from the shielded roller droids things and the floor gives way beneath you. The first two times this happened, i was killed instantly and had to restart the level from scratch. Given this, I assumed that you’re supposed to jump over the grate or get around somehow before it collapses? but no, the third time I survived the fall, and this is just the way you’re supposed to go … so why did it kill me the first two times?! It’s a bad game is why!

There’s quite a bit of platforming required too, and the camera setup + control scheme combine to make it an absolute chore! I spent 10+ minutes on the Gungan city level just trying to successfully make 3 jumps to get across a single bullshit room - Awful!

On the plus side, you can go on a killing spree around city if you want, chopping Gungans to pieces, and nobody really seems to mind.


Later when you get to Mos Espa, I spent ages stuck in the scrap yard because it wasn’t obvious that you could climb up and over this one inconspicuous ‘block’. Then you have to tramp around the just dreadful, confusing, streets, trying to find people who will trade you bits of junk for Anakin's pod racer, which is absolutely mind numbing, and somehow even more tedious than the game had been up to this point ...which seemed impossible!

These larger levels can get really confusing, since everything looks the same and it isn’t always obvious where you’re supposed to be going. The camera perspective and lack of any kind of map don’t help, and neither does the fact that the game is extremely buggy, badly scripted and often just unplayable.

It’ll crash, or you’ll fall through solid walls, or an NPC character will just die off screen for no reason, causing Game Over!


The last couple of levels, where you play as Padme, are terrible because you don't even get a proper weapon! just some useless electricity thing that can’t even kill enemies ...which isn’t a big help against the legions of droids shooting at you.

In fact these final levels are just unplayable without the invincibility cheat turned on - and even then are still no fun whatsoever.

Likewise, all boss fights are pretty much impossible to win without cheating, due to their high health and your crumby control scheme.


Want to be in the pod races? tough shit! you needed to buy a different game if you want that.


What more is there to say? The graphics are quite bad and the frame rate takes a kick in the arse when you have several droids onscreen at once firing at you (which is a lot of the time).

The game only uses stills from the movie, with cinematics in between levels recreated using badly aged PS1 FMV’s.


The film score (perhaps the only thing from The Phantom Menace that wasn’t a complete disappointment) is used, but feels cheapened by being ham handedly cut together as ‘background music’, and also sounds badly compressed.

The other sounds used are awful, frequently getting ‘stuck’ and loop until you have a headache and just have to switch it off.

The voice acting is terrible too, with long pauses between every line of dialogue cheapening the production values further. Soundalikes (in the broadest sense of the term) are used in lieu of the movie cast, who obviously had better things to be doing, with the exceptions of Jake Lloyd and the JarJar guy (who are still looking for followup gigs if anyone is interested?).


And that’s Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. The first half isn’t unplayable, just absolutely not worth playing. The second half is worse.

An absolutely bloody awful game.

2/10