Like any good Star Wars adventure, Jedi Power Battles kicks off with scrolling text. A nice touch, even if it is just the EULA. Beyond that lies a very unusual prospect. This is a remaster of a game that is not really considered a classic. It’s remembered, I suspect, with a mixture of fondness and frustration. Both of these emotions survive intact.
Aspyr’s on the remastering duties and the top-line notes are: the game looks clean and it’s lovely that everything’s unlocked from the start, but there’s also still a fair amount of rough edges and bugs. Character models are updated – at least the ones I tried out – but I also fell through the floor a few times, and I’ve read stuff online about vehicle sections being a bit ropey. Be warned.
I have had fun, though – at least some of the time. Originally released in 2000, this is a blend of hack-and-slash combat and platforming across a bunch of locations from the first prequel Star Wars film. You kill a lot of droids in this game. Hopefully they’re the bad droids with the sort of sad flamingo-beak heads. Sometimes, though, they’re the good droids who just got in the wrong place at the wrong time. Apologies, Protocol Droids!
Combat is about combos and managing multiple enemies and knowing when to stop swinging the lightsaber and use it to block and deflect in-coming laser fire. It’s fine, and when you chop a baddie in half with one swing or perfectly reflect a laser bolt back at whoever fired it at you, it’s somewhat more than fine. Platforming, meanwhile, is weightless and both unpredictable and fussy. There is always a sense of negotiating with invisible walls, and the camera rarely helps. Sometimes it’s just a bit of nonsense between the next fight. Sometimes it’s kind of pretty, taking you through evocative Star Wars dioramas with a minimum of fuss. Sometimes it’s so incredibly punishing that there are simply no words.
Here’s the thing, though, none of this matters as much as it should because time has done something fascinating to Jedi Power Battles. It’s given it an aesthetic, and elevated that aesthetic to the point where it looks kind of gorgeous. If your TikTok stream is filled with ’00s vibes and club flyers and old print ads for pre-smartphone phones and digi-cams and whatnot, if you know about Y2K Futurism and all that clean-edged, bubble-rounded jazz, you’re going to be quite happy here. Simple metallic textures and very sharp lines make the spacecraft and future-city levels in Jedi Power Battles strangely luminous. Give me an elevated walkway with a reflective marble surface, or a wall of lasers, or a door that someone’s put a lot of energy and thought into how it opens and I’m happy.
Levels without that degree of clean metal are less striking, but even they benefit from a slight uncanniness. Even in some swamp or crumbling temple, the screen is pulled back a touch too far, or maybe the character models are a little too small for the environments – whatever it is, there’s something a little spooky about rattling around these giant, clean-edged environments.
It’s also just fascinating to see a game that was once tinged with that Valium CRT dreaminess delivered with such precise lines and corners in a remaster. Does Jedi Power Battles look better or worse than it once did? I can’t really answer that in any objective way. But I will say this: it’s one of those good/bad games that has aged in a very interesting manner. Is 2000 really a long time ago? Apparently the answer is yes.
Code for Star Wars Episode 1: Jedi Power Battles was provided by the publisher.
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