Star Wars Episode I: Jedi Power Battles

"Destroy some robots, save the planet and whip your lightsabre around before lunch..."

Jedi Power Battles is a game that attempts to cash in on scrolling action and classic beat-em up in a big way. While the game doesn't differ from the PSX version in anything outside of the topical aspects, you're given a clean ride through the world of Episode 1 using several of the known and unknown Jedi masters featured in the movie. Most of the game takes place during Episode 1 and you’ll recognize most of the locations that you’re battling through from the very start. Something that does catch the eye are the new introductions of Jedi masters that were never seen except for just a few short shots from the movie, all of which have a wide variety of moves that are unique to the way that the character is set up!

It's your basic hack and slash, with a bit of secret finding in between. Puzzles are non-existent, and the two player mode is especially fun in which your partner can run interference while you go from the side and take out the enemies. No longer are you just contained to a simple block, but with a little timing, you can deflect the shots that are fired at you right back at your opponents without breaking a sweat! Something that you’ll have to figure out though is just which of the six Jedi Masters are to your liking. The female Jedi is probably the fastest in the game and with a bit of practice; she can beat out the others in terms of style, appearance and speed. Again, it all really depends on your preference in what type of character you want to take control of. Through several of the stages, you’ll find that there is quite a bit of platform jumping and timing is damn near key to defeating a stage!

Secrets abound, you can unlock several different things by finish the stages with a maximum score. When you do so, you unlock new and more powerful combinations that you can use, on top of more special moves that you can use to take out a wide range of enemies. This adds to the fun in trying to break and destroy everything on the stage and once you’ve unlocked all of the moves, you can experiment with each of the combinations just to see which is the most powerful and which will give you the advantage! Now, these combinations are only allowed to be ‘bought’ if you’ve killed and destroyed just about everything on the screen and gained the maximum amount of points allowed for each stage, so playing through several times just to do so. This little feature to the game play is probably one of the better highlights of the game to allow for an extended replay value.

While a little confusing at first, the game controls revolve around a jump, a hard slash, and a chopping motion with the lightsabre. Combinations are a key thing here, in which the more hits you connect, the more points you rack up. Most of the moves are hard to pull off with the Dreamcast controller, and although you can use the analog stick, it takes a lot of getting used to. Just keep in mind that the learning curve of the control interface is very steep, and could take quite awhile before you're deflecting laser shots, and cutting apart enemies without taking extensive damage. Some of the fine jumping that is needed in later stages takes practice, and you may find yourself re-trying the same stage a few times before you get the jumping down just right! Outside of that, the action control in game is very well put together and fluid after mastering the control.

Clean and crisp, you have plenty of neat things to look at. From the extensive moves, to the movie type locales that you've seen in the film, and a few that you've only read about in the books, you'll find yourself on a visual roller coaster that keeps the pace, with detail, flare, and alot of eye candy. Placing you in the shoes of a Jedi player, you'll see that the special moves are sculpted after what they looked like in the movie. This is something nice to see, a little continuity in the movie to game transfer. Shadowing and colorization is key here, in which everything from effects to fog, to laser blasts being deflected back and the sparks that you see from the downed robot warriors makes for a visual treat. Nothing was taken for granted, and for a change, the characters don't move like stick figures! The different designs on the Jedi Knights is what will really catch your eye and again, the different characters all have their own set of specific moves which really set them all apart from one another.

John Williams would be proud of this one. Every stage has music from the movie, and it's brought to you in perfect stereo quality. The amount of work that went into it is clearly shown in later stages when it brings in the highs and the lows of the pace the game is taking. If you’re in a rather safe spot, the music will tone down just enough to to create that feeling of safety, while highly populated areas will create a little more intense tone. You'll see, or rather hear everything from the orchestra to the hum of the lightsabre coming across in crystal clarity. When listening to the game, you'll find yourself wondering if this was also done in THX sound by the way the bass thumps in your stereo speakers!

This is one of the few games by Lucas Arts that actually came out pretty good. While the game looks and sounds good, you'll have a hard time finishing it more than once, as the levels never really change and the secrets are really quite minimal. What would have been nice, is to see some sort of difference between the PSX and the DC versions of this game instead of a slightly changed visual feel to it. Boiling it all down, you're fighting on the same stages, with the same characters that do the same things; might as well stick the PSX version if you already have it in your library. When it's all said and done, you'll find that the game is worth at least the three-day rental from Blockbuster, or worth picking up at your local store for about 20.00 to add to your collection of Dreamcast games. Either way, you really won't be sorry that you played this title!

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/21/01, Updated 11/20/01