Way back around 2002, my brother received a copy of Star Wars: Episode 1 Racer on PC for Christmas. I enjoyed watching him speed along in very fast, very dangerous Podraces, complete with intense crashes and nail-biting victories. Fast-forward roughly two decades, and here I am playing through Star Wars: Galactic Racer, developer Fuse Games’ spiritual sequel that ups the ante in every department – be in the more lifelike graphics, greater range of vehicles to race with, or the faster, more intense races where every wrong move will result in a fiery end. Not can. Will.
Star Wars: Galactic Racer is set in the time after the Original Trilogy, where the fall of the Galactic Empire has left many pilots in need of a place to use their skills. Enter Darius Pax, an aristocrat who forms the Galactic Racing League. This new federation welcomes racers of all kinds, though the arrogant Kestar Bool is threatening to take it over using his family’s connections.
Key Details
- Developer: Fuse Games
- Publisher: Secret Mode
- Platforms: PC, Xbox, PlayStation 5
- Price: $59.99
- Review Code Received: No
Enter The Galactic League
To counter this, Pax hires Shade, a masked smuggler-turned-racer who has their own history with Bool, to surpass him as the Galactic League champion. With the help of their trusty mechanic Hibi, Shade will have to brave the perils of the Galactic League championship tour and prove themselves as the fastest pilot in the Galaxy… or at least the one whose last name isn’t Skywalker or Solo.
Galactic Racer‘s campaign is a fun underdog story, with the standout character being Hibi – who is a little too eager to turn Shade’s racer into a high-octane death machine. There are also a few treats for The Phantom Menace fans, like the return of Anakin Skywalker’s old podracing nemesis Sebulba, who lets you relive some of his past races in the form of playable flashbacks.
Start Your Afterburners
There are 4 different vehicle types to choose from in Star Wars: Galactic Racer: standard speeders, swoop bikes that give you an extra boost after drifting, skim speeders, and the iconic Podracers. On the track, Galactic Racer plays like your typical racing game: hold down the right trigger to accelerate and move the joystick left and right to steer. Holding the Square Button while turning lets you drift to get past those tight corners, but you should be careful not to slide out of control if your drifting stat is low. The X Button activates your afterburners for an added boost of speed, but this requires a meter that automatically recharges after a short time.
There is also the Ramjet, a separate booster that sends you flying even faster, but this has the potential to overheat and explode your speeder. In some colder environments (like the icy Ando Prime), the overheat meter will fill slower, allowing you to keep it going for a longer period of time. Either way, there is one thing that Star Wars: Galactic Racer captures above all else: speed. Pure, barely-in-control speed.
Of course, you will also take damage by bumping into obstacles and other racers, and sometimes you will need to stabilize your systems by pressing the O Button in time with a meter. Take too much damage or ram into something too fast and your vehicle will crash – and if you crash enough times in the Campaign, you will lose your token for the tour.
At the start of each race, you have a limited time to check all of your systems, like the afterburners and drift, by pressing the corresponding buttons in a sequence before the timer runs out. Any successful sequences will give you a special bonus the first time you use the corresponding system in the race, but you will still be able to use them even if you mess up.
Races are intense on even the lowest difficulty settings, and taking your eye off the track for a second can spell disaster – not to mention all the times that opponents will try to run you off the track in order to get ahead. Qui-Gon Jinn once said you need Jedi reflexes to race in the Star Wars galaxy, and I can confidently say that’s true in this game. Expect to crash. A lot.
A Race To See Who’s The Best
There are many different gameplay modes in Star Wars: Galactic Racer. The first is the aforementioned Campaign, which lets you play through the story of Shade as they make their way through the Galactic Racing League. At the start of the story, you can customize Shade’s outfit, voice, and gender, though the options for their suit and helmet are more limited than those of Star Wars: Zero Squadron. After all, you can only play as a masked human this time around. What’s really cool is you can give Shade’s helmet a voice filter like Darth Vader or Kylo Ren.
Between races, Shade can walk around the hub world, talking to NPCs, buying upgrades from Hibi, and getting ready for the next competition. When you’re ready to race, you can select which course you want to run by heading to your speeder. The story plays out in three acts, each with its own tour of planets and branching paths that let you pick which races and challenges you want to compete in. Keep in mind that you have a limited number of entry tokens for each tour, and running out means that you’re out of the competition and will have to start the tour from the beginning.
I Don’t Care What Universe You’re From, That’s Gotta Hurt
If you want a break from the Campaign, there’s the Scenarios mode, in which you play as another racer on a smaller tour to earn bonus points. Then there’s Arcade, where you can perform all kinds of challenges like time trials, brutal elimination matches where the goal is to be the last racer standing, and podraces. Of course, there’s also Multiplayer, where you can race against other players over the internet. The PlayStation version even allows you to link up with your Epic Games account so you can crossplay with friends who play on PC.
Just like Star Wars: Zero Company before it, Galactic Racer does a fantastic job of recreating the sights and sounds of the Galaxy Far, Far, Away. Each race course is rich in detail, from the spaceship scrapyards of Jakku to the red dust clouds of Crait. Even the crashes are impressive to watch, especially when an opposing racer wipes out in satisfying slow motion. Music and voice acting are top-notch as well.
Final Score – 9/10
Star Wars fans are officially 2-for-2 when it comes to video games in 2026. Zero Company gave us a satisfying turn-based tactical game a few months ago, and now Star Wars: Galactic Racer has delivered the pulse-pounding racing experience I’ve been waiting for since that one Christmas morning back in the early 2000s. Episode 1: Racer fans won’t want to miss out on Star Wars: Galactic Racer, which shows that even when the Empire is no more, there is still plenty of carnage to be witnessed on the podracing track.
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