Star Wars: Episode I Racer

The whine of engines, the sand of Tatooine rushing beneath the thrusters and a speed on the edge of suicide — Star Wars: Episode I Racer brings one of the few unquestionably great things from the prequel trilogy right into the palm of your hand. And wonder of wonders, on a small screen it works surprisingly well.

The game is based on the pod races, the iconic sequence from the film The Phantom Menace, and builds on the foundations of the better-rated N64 and PC version, which is among the most beloved Star Wars games of all. This handheld variant from 1999 had to squeeze that miraculous speed into the modest hardware of the Game Boy Color — and it manages: the feeling of whooshing along the tracks stays brisk and adrenaline-fueled despite the technical limitations of the pocket console.

Under the LucasArts licensing banner, the port was handled by the studio Tiertex, and its task was no easy one — to preserve the impression of extreme speed and the pod's handling on an 8-bit machine. Racing here rests on a pure sense of pace and on mastering tracks where every hesitation means a crash. It's the kind of arcade racing where you learn the track by heart and chase your own times.

For prequel fans it's a pleasant dose of nostalgia they could take with them anywhere. At release it was one of the few ways to play a favorite film scene on the go, and it was precisely this accessibility that made the handheld version a treasured pocket piece for every young Star Wars fan.

Today it's a fond reminder of an era when film licenses churned out handheld ports by the dozen — and when not all of them were thrown together carelessly. Episode I Racer is one worth taking for a spin.

Why play it: For a brisk sense of pod racing brought into the palm of your hand from the better-rated big version — a nostalgic ride for fans of the prequel trilogy.