A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (well, in ours, actually), legendary filmmaker George Lucas created Star Wars, the “epic space opera” media franchise that has taken over popular culture since 1977. As the franchise expanded with the release of more movies, it paved the way for comic books, merchandise, animated TV series, social media groups, fan art, memes, and video games.
All of this media served to round out the Star Wars universe and deepen the lore, but The Force hasn’t always been strong with every single adaptation or creation. Just as slot machine games for mobile phones took some time to refine themselves and get people playing, not all Star Wars video games have managed to resonate with fans. Curious to know what the worst ones are? We’ve created our own ranking below.
7. Star Wars Episode I: Racer (GBC Version) (1999)
Naturally, some of the worst games in the Star Wars pool were made a long time ago. With constraints like graphics constraints, a limited ecosystem, and hardware limitations, creating an immersive, mind-blowing experience was much more difficult. While the Game Boy Color was excellent at offering a range of video game styles and introducing creative and colourful games, it wasn’t so great at accommodating this Star Wars racing game. To mitigate those limiting factors, the developers decided to go with an overhead perspective, which completely obstructed the camera view and confused gamers on where to go—essentially the game’s aim.
6. Star Wars: The New Droid Army (2002)
The New Droid Army was created in relation to Attack of the Clones, which was already seen as the least-loved movie (after The Last Jedi later on) in the Star Wars saga. Considering this, it makes sense that many of the worst games tied to the franchise were related to it. The premise of the New Droid Army centres around Anakin travelling to Tatooine to research a new type of droid, which is interesting enough. And although the graphics were solid, the gameplay (particularly the combat) was awkward, and you were forced to simply walk through long stretches of desert sands at a snail’s pace.
5. Star Wars: The Clone Wars – Republic Heroes (2009)
Republic Heroes was a total flop. If we had to pick just one word to describe it, it would be lacklustre. After all, seeing as this was a tie-in game for The Clone Wars series, all the developers had to do was mimic the TV series’ art style and already-made storylines and create an action game based on it. They could have totally capitalised on the existing Star Wars love and made a simple game that people could play to complement their Clone Wars experience. But action games hinge on game mechanics and combat, and here the enemy variety is limited and there’s a constant tutorial system and terrible camera angles and jumping mechanics; as a result, Republic Heroes was certainly not destined to become a hit.
4. Star Wars: Flight of the Falcon (2003)
Flying is an integral part of the Star Wars universe, with the ongoing battles between the Galactic Empire and Rebel Alliance, iconic space battles showcasing incredible piloting skills, and the many types of ships that exist. Flight of the Falcon proves that the Game Boy consoles and Star Wars games have a tough relationship, as we’ve already seen with the unfortunate Racer game. This time, Flight of the Falcon was made in 3D, with the main premise being Chewie and Han piloting the Millennium Falcon. It’s no secret that space goes on for an eternity, but we aren’t playing a real-life simulation here, and getting lost in the void isn’t exactly fun.
3. Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002)
When a game receives a review score of 1 or 2 out of 10, you know it’s in trouble. Critics harshly criticised everything from graphics and level design to a poor save system. The controls are impossible to use, and the game is laggy in performance, which makes for an absolutely terrible experience. The character models were terrible, the graphics were underwhelming even for a 2002 release, and nothing was cohesive. As usual with other Attack of the Clones-related games, so many opportunities were missed to create a rich and memorable experience.
2. Star Wars: Masters of Teräs Käsi (1997)
We’ll bump this title down from first place because of the year it was made. But it still seems like Star Wars games had some trouble translating into fighting games back then. This PlayStation fighting game is similar to Street Fighter and Tekken, featuring all the fighting tropes from the ‘80s and ‘90s you can think of. The problem is that Star Wars is all about narratives and stories, so the developers tried to put one together to make the one-on-one fighting make sense. News flash: it didn’t. On top of that, the mechanics were horrendous, with limited combos and sluggish controls.
1. Kinect Star Wars (2012)
Kinect Star Wars is one of those games that elicits an automatic groan from Star Wars fans. It has a less-than-stellar reputation for trying to capitalise on motion controls—and failing pretty badly. Kinect was a motion-sensing technology made for Microsoft Xbox, which had a lot of people talking. Because it was such a novel technology at the time, people had high expectations. Unfortunately, Kinect Star Wars completely failed to deliver. The motion controls were not working, the gameplay modes and minigames weren’t what they claimed to be, and it made the Star Wars franchise seem like it was out of creative ideas. Not a good look.