Star Wars Episode 1: Racer comes to Switch, PS4 on June 23 – CNET [CNET]

Star Wars Episode 1: Racer will zip onto Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 on Tuesday, June 23, developer Aspyr said in a Tuesday tweet, after its last-minute delay back in May.

“We’ll see you on the racetracks,” the company wrote.

Episode 1: Racer was originally released on N64 and PC as a tie-in to The Phantom Menace back in 1999, adapting the movie’s rather excellent pod racing sequence — which isn’t quite as good as the climactic lightsaber battle — into a full-blown game. It’s being spruced up for modern consoles by Aspyr, which also handled the recent Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy remasters. 

Jake Lloyd and Lewis MacLeod, who portrayed rascally future galactic warlord Anakin Skywalker and massive jerk Sebulba in The Phantom Menace, played those characters in the game.

It’ll cost $15, which is a little pricey for a 21-year-old game without online multiplayer, but you can engage in the old-school joy that is split-screen multiplayer. It also has all those cool Star Wars music and sound effects, 25 playable characters and tracks that span eight planets.  The hardest track also offers a little taste of Anakin’s future, since takes place in a volcano (on Baroonda rather than Mustafar).

“It’s a great game and it has emotional resonance,” producer James Vicari told StarWars.com in April. “We really believe in reuniting fans with something they cherished, or connecting a new audience with something they may have missed.”

The game got a PS2 sequel, Racer Revenge, in 2002 and that was re-released on PS4 in 2016.

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