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That great disturbance in the Force you just felt wasn’t a million voices crying out in terror. It was, in fact, me crying out in terror a million times. You see, Aspyr have just announced that they’re porting Star Wars: Episode I: Jedi Power Battles to PC and Steam. I have a complicated relationship with Jedi Power Battles, in the sense that I think I still have scars on my thumbs from when I played it all night on a busted PS1 controller. I have bled for this game. I’d close my eyes after each six-hours session and see fields of lightsabers flickering and dancing like luminous leeches, chasing me through the Dagobahnian jungles of my dreams.
Jedi Power Battles isn’t even all that amazing. Originally published in 2000, it just happened to come along at a time when myself and a friend were obsessed with Jedi Knights and the seven lightsaber duelling forms. It was an atrocious period in my life, nestled squarely between my liverish career as a Trekkie and my later, more forgiveable spell in the labyrinths of Tolkien and Warhammer. I had a dedicated Jedi name, I think. Evaed Paleee? It is very important that I don’t remember this era in great detail, so I’ll be watching the below PC port trailer through squinting eyes and parted fingers. Here you go:
A quick overview: Jedi Power Battles is a scenic, fairly punishing 3D platformer-brawler that follows the events of the Phantom Menace movie, except that I don’t remember Liam Neeson tumbling into pits quite so regularly, or Ewan McGregor being unable to hack through a Pilot Droid’s forearms, or Samuel L Jackson getting launched by a little green man. The best thing about it is that you get a bunch of nicely animated Jedi movesets to, as the case may be, argue about till 3am, at which point it belatedly occurs to you that you’ve never been kissed in your whole adolescent life, and that your bedroom smells of mortality.
What are Aspyr doing with it all? Well, you can expect a choice of modern or classic controls, secret areas unlocked from the start, Vaselined visuals, cute flourishes such as Big Head mode, and a total of 13 returning and newly playable characters, including the Rifle Droid and Tusken Raider. It’s out 23rd January. Here’s hoping they give it a bit more time than they did the recent Battlefront port, which was a planet-sized shambles.
If you’re thirsty for more of my midlife regret, or want my ill-informed take on movie choreography, I went long for Eurogamer about JPB a year or so back.