Lego Star Wars: The Video Game

When two global brands joined forces in 2005 — LEGO bricks and the Star Wars galaxy — a phenomenon was born that redefined what a family action game could look like. Lego Star Wars: The Video Game retold the plot of the new prequel trilogy with unmistakable humor, where heroes and villains alike are assembled from plastic bricks and death means merely crumbling into a pile of pieces.

The heart of the game is cooperative action with light puzzle elements. You move through levels, thrash enemies with a lightsaber or blasters, collect studs (brick coins) and take apart and reassemble objects from the environment to get further. The key is switching between characters with different abilities, whether it's a Jedi with a saber and the Force, a droid able to hack a terminal, or a small character squeezing through a narrow crawlspace. The Game Boy Advance version had to adapt the content to weaker hardware, so it offered its own perspective and adjusted design compared to the big console releases.

Behind the game stands the British studio Traveller's Tales in collaboration with the publisher then known as Eidos, and later LucasArts and TT Games. It was this first installment that laid the foundations of the enormous LEGO games line, which grew with dozens of titles based on Indiana Jones, Batman, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings and Marvel.

The cultural impact is hard to overstate. Lego Star Wars showed that a licensed game need not be a rushed cash-in, but cleverly designed entertainment for children and their parents alike, full of references and jokes for fans of the films. The series gradually became one of the best-selling gaming brands ever and fundamentally helped the LEGO business itself.

The handheld GBA version fulfilled an important role: it let you take the galaxy far, far away with you on your travels at a time when there were no smartphones full of mobile games yet. Even with the technical compromises, it retained that light, undemanding and smiling style that became the hallmark of the entire line.

Why play: It's the start of the legendary LEGO series, a fresh and funny take on the prequel trilogy that will entertain Star Wars fans and the youngest players alike.