Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Spawned Some Great (And Some Truly Terrible) Video Games
Depending on who you ask, The Phantom Menace is either a misunderstood masterpiece or a steaming mound of bantha turds. Released in 1999, this was the first Star Wars movie in 16 years, and it was accompanied by one of the most aggressive marketing campaigns the planet has ever seen. Everything from toothpaste to Pepsi vending machines had the faces of Darth Maul, Anakin Skywalker, and Jar Jar Binks slapped on them.
It was everywhere. Magazine covers, adverts on the sides of buses, TV spots, radio commercials—if there was a blank space or a merciful moment of silence anywhere in the world, it was promptly filled with a promo for The Phantom Menace. Naturally, this relentless sensory bombardment also included games. There's a long history of great Star Wars games stretching back to the '80s, but this was not the series' finest hour.
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The PlayStation, N64, and PC were the major platforms of the day, and the Phantom Menace marketing blitz hit them hard—both around the time of the movie's release, and for several years after. Despite being responsible for classics like X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter, Dark Forces, and Rogue Squadron, LucasArts mostly failed to turn The Phantom Menace into a worthwhile video game, with only a handful standing out from a bad crowd.
The first game, launching just a few days after the film's release, was a straight-up adaptation—the kind most big ticket Hollywood films would spawn in the late '90s and early 2000s. Slipping on the Jedi robes of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn, it saw you playing through the story of the movie, albeit with a few artistic liberties taken. An action scene that lasted a few minutes in the film would be stretched
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