First in the spotlight for being a fast paced racer was F-Zero. This game was the first racer that I had ever played which made you pay close attention to the action. If you even thought about blinking you were toast. Back when the SNES was the ultimate gaming machine this was one of the best games I had ever played. Then came the N64 and there was F-Zero-X and a whole new perspective on fast paced racers. With the racing on top of pipes and some of the jumps that you had to cross to make it to the finish line this made F-Zero-X my new favorite racer for the N64 platform. Now there is Star Wars Episode I Racer. If you have seen the new Star Wars movie then you'd better go and see it before playing this game to get the gist of what I am about to say. In the movie we see young Anakin Skywalker driving one of these "pod racers" in a race through Tatooine. If he wins the race he gets his freedom from being a slave. Before all of this goes down you hear a couple of characters talking about how you have to have the skills of a Jedi to be able to control one of the racers. I think that would hold true for this game also. 
This is the most fast paced racer of all time. There are constant turns, jumps and things that you must miss because if you hit them…well, you get the picture. You race through at least 20 different tracks each getting more difficult as you go. If you finish the race in 1st place you win "trugets" (I guess this is what they use for money in the Star Wars saga). If you are lucky enough you also win the opponents pod racer. Once you in trugets you can upgrade your racer, but man the parts are expensive --- 14,000 trugets for the ultimate engine. You can also use your trugets to purchase "pit droids", which as far as I can tell serve no purpose except for looks. I started out with Anakin as my racer of choice, but as I advanced in rank and gained more and more racers to work with, I eventually had to choose a different racer and driver. In one of the tracks you have to do a lot of quick turning --- and I mean quick. You don't even have time to scratch you head while doing this track. If you were to blink once the whole time you might as well start over again. To sum it all up, this is one of the best racers that I have seen since F-Zero, but it probably won't be the last. If you are into racers and own an N64 then this game is the one for you. 
   
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