I like to think that I’ve been able to play most Star Wars games released on consoles over the past four decades, including more underground crap like Star Wars Demolition on the Dreamcast and Star Wars Chess for the Sega CD, but Star Wars Episode I: Jedi Power Battles has always been something that flew under the radar to me. I have no idea why, but I’ve always unconsciously ignored it over the past decades. Aspyr’s remaster/re-release of this PS1/Dreamcast “classic” has finally given me the best shot at playing it, but boy oh boy, I guess my subconscious was actually trying to spare me from the suffering. This game is absolutely heinous. To a nearly hilarious degree, mind you.

Oh poor Mace… what have they done to you…

I need to clarify right away that, despite their shaky track record, I do not 100% blame Aspyr for the quality of this remaster. Just like when Nightdive decided to remaster Rise of the Triad, you can try to polish a turd, but at the end of the day, it’s still a turd. I do have complaints regarding some very disappointing visual revamp decisions, such as generic, Microsoft Word-esque fonts and a crappy UI, but most of my issues stem from how Jedi Power Battles functions as a game. There is just no forgiving at how bad it is. Well, with the exception of the sound design. It’s a Star Wars game, so the music is fantastic. I just wanted to get this out of the way as quickly as possible because that’s the only true positive I can give it.

So, what’s Jedi Power Battles? As part of the plethora of games developed and published by LucasArts to promote Episode I: The Phantom Menace, this game loosely recreates the plot of the movie, but in co-op beat ’em up form. At first, the thought of a Star Wars beat ’em up, and by that a game where you can simply beat the living hell out of enemies with different lightsaber combos, is enticing, but it fell flat due to its execution. I didn’t even mind the fact you can basically play the entire story of The Phantom Menace as people like Mace Windu or freaking Plo Koon. In fact, the complete lack of canonical logic is borderline endearing. But man, it just sucks as a beat ’em up. From every conceivable angle.

Of course, Jar Jar just has to randomly show up during the Naboo swamp level.

What’s the most important aspect of a beat ’em up? The controls, of course. How are the controls in Jedi Power Battles? Absolutely disastrous. I don’t remember the last time I played a game with such ridiculous amounts of input lag. I still have no idea how I was able to complete levels and kill every enemy onscreen when I was rarely able to predict when my attacks would land. I’d press X, and the time between button was pressed and the action happening onscreen would feel completely arbitrary. Combos? Well, you don’t start the game with any. You need to beat levels in order to unlock them for your character. This means that the game starts off setting up idiotic hindrances at you, making the act of killing enemies feel clunky and way harder than it should be.

It doesn’t improve things once you actually unlock new combos. The hit detection is horrendous, and whilst you can get stun locked by enemy attacks, rarely does this happen to the battle droids you’re fighting against. To make matters worse, they gang up on you; not all characters feature a Force move that actually deals Area-Of-Effect damage. And to make matters even worse, sometimes a few of them will gang up on you with melee attacks (yes, battle droids punching and kicking you, it’s a sight to behold), whilst others will remain further back shooting lasers at you. You can deflect those lasers, but you still need to deal with the aforementioned input lag, as the timing needs to be 100% precise.

You can deflect blaster shots, but whether the game decides to compute your blocking as a deflection is a different story.

For real, it’s so janky, so bad, it’s almost funny. The graphics have aged like milk, but that’s mostly due to how 3D modelling worked back in the year 2000. I understand this is a remaster of the Dreamcast version of the game, which means I expected slightly better visuals than this, but still, can’t complain much about it. All I can do is laugh. At the very least, it runs at 60fps at all times. So what you have here is poor visuals, battle droids that do kung fu, and hilariously bad controls. There is local co-op, so you can actually have some fun with a friend by laughing at the game.

I do have to admit that I had a blast watching the CGI introduction which is played every time you boot Jedi Power Battles up. I don’t know if this video looked that bad on the original port of the game, but wow. Oh wow. Qui-Gon’s dead face reminded me of that terrible painting of Jesus that became a meme years ago. Has this always looked this bad, or did something go terribly wrong during the remastering process? I really wish I knew.

Look at poor Qui-Gon’s face. Tee hee hee.

As previously mentioned, I don’t even think this is Aspyr’s fault. Star Wars Episode I: Jedi Power Battles is just a terrible game at its core, so all the polishing treatment in the world wouldn’t have fixed its many, MANY problems. It’s a clunky, hilariously ugly, and poorly designed beat ’em up which, at times, feels so janky and unpolished, it almost becomes a funny experience. I guess I finally know why this game has always vanished from my subconscious during my Star Wars retro gaming sprees. I think I was just being spared from the torture.

Star Wars Episode I: Jedi Power Battles is available now on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, PC and Switch. The original version is available on PS1 and Dreamcast.

Reviewed on Xbox Series S.

A copy of Star Wars Episode I: Jedi Power Battles was provided by the publisher.