Even though I’m never really off it… It’s safe to say I’m currently on a Star Wars kick, after making my girlfriend watch all of the films and demanding she pick a favourite, I’ve managed to stoke the fires of my own deep love for the series. Enough at least to want to pick up ever game in the franchise at once but for the sake of time, I guess I can only play a few. Trying to divvy my time up into just a few seemed impossible but did get me thinking about which of the many, MANY Star Wars games out there is my absolute favourite. Now, sit back, relax, maybe have a Jawa Juice or a couple of cups of Spotchka? While I tell you all about why I love Star Wars: Demolition so much…
Demolition came out way back in 2000, a different time of green ketchup and actually good Saturday morning TV. During this time, an impressionable 10-year-old Will had just gotten his first games console to call his own, A PlayStation 1 that I didn’t need to share with my older brother! Along with this gorgeous piece of grey plastic I also got a copy of Star Wars: Demolition, My parents were well aware that even without knowing anything about video games, if Star Wars was written on something, I was bound to enjoy it. So, I sat myself down to have a go and found myself playing a game that I later realised was just baby’s first Twisted Metal. You take the role of any one of a small group of characters in a no holds barred vehicle deathmatch on courses and maps set within the Star Wars universe. Among the available pilots and drivers are Luke Skywalk…I mean WADE VOX ad force sensitive young man driving Luke’s classic land speeder, Bounty Hunter Arrua Sing on her chopper like Swoop Bike and General Otto, a fairly portly Imperial Commander at the…wheel? Stick? Whatever, at the controls of an AT-ST.
Gameplay consisted of you picking your vehicle and doing whatever it took to leave your foes as a smoking pile of wreckage! Sure, there were a couple of game modes to play with, but they all came down to the same thing, last man standing is the winner. I usually found myself hopping into the cockpit of a T-47 Snowspeeder flown by twins Tia and Ghia, using a tow cable to grab and drag anyone dumb enough to get close to me! With the AI being what it was in the early 2000’s you can imagine most of my enemies were stupid enough to be grabbed a lot…
I really did put hour after hour into this game, spending most of my evenings and weekends wracking up wrecks and watching the assorted FMV scenes over and over again and rising to the top of the in-game leader boards impressing absolutely no one as this was an era before widespread online gaming, but I didn’t care, this was pure and deep love for a franchise. Since the vehicles and locales have always been my favourite parts of the stories in a galaxy far far away, this was an ideal game for me to play, there was no grand storyline and really very little ambition, just a lone child smashing up STAPs and Cloud Cars while giggling as a dummy in a Pod racer careened into a waiting Sarlaac pit and boy do I miss it…