That great disturbance in the Force you had just felt was not a million voices screaming in terror. In fact, I screamed in terror a million times. You see, Aspyr just announced that they are bringing Star Wars: Episode I: Jedi Power Battles to PC and Couple. I have a complicated relationship with Jedi Power Battles in the sense that I still have scars on my thumbs from playing the game all night on a broken PS1 controller. I bled for this game. I closed my eyes after each six-hour session and saw fields of lightsabers twinkling and dancing like brilliant leeches, chasing me through the Dagobahnian jungle of my dreams.
Jedi Power Battles isn’t even that amazing. Originally published in 2000, my friend and I just happened to be obsessed with Jedi Knights and the seven forms of lightsaber dueling. It was a terrible time in my life, sandwiched between my turbulent Trekkie career and my later, more forgivable period in the mazes of Tolkien and Warhammer. I think I had a dedicated Jedi name. Did you avoid Paleee? It’s very vital that I don’t remember this era in too much detail, so I’ll be watching the following trailer for the PC port with squinting and spread fingers. Here you go:
Quick overview: Jedi Power Battles is a scenic, quite brutal 3D fighting platformer that tells the story of the events of the movie Phantom Menace, except that I don’t remember Liam Neeson falling into cubicles so regularly or Ewan McGregor not being able to hack through a droid’s forearms -pilot or Samuel L. Jackson launched by the little green man. The best part about this is that you get plenty of nicely animated Jedi move sets to argue with until 3 a.m., when you belatedly realize that you’ve never been kissed in your entire teenage life. and that your bedroom smells of mortality.
What does Aspyr do with all this? Well, you can expect a choice of current or classic controls, secret areas unlocked from the start, Vaseline graphics, cute additions like Big Head mode, and a total of 13 returning and newly playable characters, including Rifle Droid and Tusken Raider. It is released on January 23. Let’s hope they give it a little more time than they did with the last Battlefront port, which was a planet-sized ruin.
If you want more of my midlife regrets or want my ill-informed take on film choreography, that’s me he spoke to Eurogamer at length about JPB about a year ago.
