In honor of ‘Star Wars Day’, as May 4th has come to be known, we’re republishing this ranked list of all Star Wars games on Switch and other Nintendo consoles according to readers. As they say in Britain, the Fourth of May will be – wait…
Liberation from Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker back in 2019, it may have ‘ended’ Star Wars as we’ve known it for the previous four-some decades, but all it really did was tie a bow on the cinematic tales of the Skywalker clan and the nine-film saga that began in 1977. After all, Star Wars they never actually disappeared.
The streaming platform Disney+ has all movies in 4K, plus series like The Mandalorian, The Boba Fett book, Obi-Wan, Ahsoka, and a host of other TV projects, not forgetting new trilogies, spin-off movies, games, and more in the works. Yes, that galaxy far, far away will attack you through all media a long time the time to come.
The franchise has a rich history with video games, with plenty of Star Wars games to play on the Switch. Below we look back at the night every Star Wars game on Nintendo systems in the West, ranked from worst to best by you, dear readers.
To keep things tidy, in cases where the same game has been released on multiple platforms, we’ve decided to mention the smaller of the two – always the portable version – in the second entry. Remember, the ranked list below is governed by the user rating of each game in our database, meaning that the ranking is dynamic and subject to change in real time, even after release. To rate any game on the list of 10 below, registered Nintendo Life users can simply tap a ‘star’, assign it a personal rating and refresh the page to see the changes reflected.
So come with us on a journey to the galaxy fa—oh you know the rest. We’re starting from the bottom, so be careful that Sila is not strong with many of these…
An isometric platformer that takes place between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, you control the grumpy young Skywalker in this hard-hitting action game. Considering the platform it’s on, the game looks and sounds okay. Plus it’s boring, repetitive and so slow. Anakin, you’re breaking our hearts.
With passable animation and sound (especially given the system) and boring, picky platforming, Star Wars: Jedi Power Battles falls into the sadly familiar pattern of portable Star Wars games. It’s not as hateful as some, and it’s a bit faster than the New Droid Army, but it’s a similar story. Maybe developer HotGen was trying to faithfully capture the excitement The Phantom Menacecommercial disputes, in which case the work is done. Some might call the non-canon blue lightsaber wielded by Mace Windu on the cover inexcusable, but we were too bored to care.
You have to remember that even though Yoda is a beloved character, this game came out before we ever saw him wield a lightsaber in arguably the best scene in Attack of the clones. Despite the name, in Yoda Stories you control Luke Skywalker in a top-down adventure as he cuts snakes in two with his lightsaber. How bad it can be that be?…
Very bad indeed, it turned out. ‘Calm’ is too generous a word, and the whole match is a technical disgrace. It’s tempting to blame the hardware, but then you look at Link’s Awakening and see what could have been. Link wake this up it is not. Pud, plain and simple.
Anyone who has only ever played Star Wars games on a Game Boy deserves your pity. Retro Nintendo portables had a lot going for them, but high midichlorine content wasn’t one of them.
Flight of the Falcon is one of the worst Star Wars games ever because it has Han Solo and the Millennium Falcon on the cover — two of the coolest things in the Star Wars universe — and tarnishes their good names. As with all terrible Star Wars games, the iconography tricks you into thinking ‘ah, that can’t be that bad!’, but our review conclusion sums it up perfectly: “Flight of the Falcon is a very bad game. As such, you shouldn’t be playing it. No matter how cool the screenshots look, no matter how promising the premise sounds, just remember that the Force is not with this one in any way, shape, or form.”
He, wow boogieyou deserved better.
Perhaps fittingly, the weakest movie in the saga got one of the weakest Star Wars games ever. Normally, we would hedge such a statement with a ‘maybe’, but Episode II unmissable underpants in parts (aside from Mace Windu’s general jerking off and that Yoda bite at the end — we remember liking that quite a bit).
The tie-in GBA game is a solid side-scrolling beat ’em up that lacks the artistic flair that even the dullest Star Wars games bring to the table. Rude, crude and irritating, indeed.
Another quick one to tick the ‘boring’ and ‘repetitive’ boxes, if you thought the isometric adventures on the GBA were hard on the eyes, Obi-Wan’s Adventures brings that style of play back to the console generation in an ‘adventure’ set simultaneously against the events of Episode 1 It’s not terriblereally ugly and completely pedestrian.
This is a real shame. The irony is that Aspyr did a good job remastering the visuals in both games here, and we enjoyed seeing the results. But the reality is that these games often feel old, are extremely buggy, and play online is easy. This should have been a slam dunk. Instead, playing Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection made us sad. If Aspyr can iron out a bunch of technical issues (and upgrades are slowly coming), this might be worth picking up on Switch one day. However, until that happens, playing this makes you want to go home and rethink your life.
A relatively tongue-in-cheek 8-bit platformer where you play as a young Skywalker fighting your way through variations of locations from the movie, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back couldn’t be more average. For kids who desperately wanted to play as the hero Luke, it was acceptable filler, but no more.
A Game Boy version also exists, but if you want to play through the saga’s best film in video game form, you’re much better off picking up the 16-bit ‘Super’ iteration. Indeed, LucasArts didn’t even bother with 8-bit Return of the Jedi — the developer simply skipped generations and started over with Super Star Wars on the SNES.
Ubisoft side scroller, Star Wars Trilogy: Apprentice of the Force for sure looked impressive. It used the same engine as the console port of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, with smooth animation and 3D style character models. Giving you the chance to relive the original trilogy in 2004, the bland gameplay has once again ruined it. Totally vanilla, utterly irresistible, but it could have been worse.
Another Ubisoft entry, Star Wars: Lethal Alliance put a Twi’lek named Rianna on the cover, which is about the most exciting thing this third-person shooter can do. Ditching lightsabers for blasters, the story features new and old characters (including Kyle Katarn) and involves stealing the Death Star plans before Rogue One arrived to erase the canon. Along with the obligatory touchscreen shenanigans because DSnot awful by any means, just in general.
Star Wars deserves better, right?
Angry Birds — do you remember them? This Star Wars crossover is also out for the Wii and 3DS, and while the comedy mash-up may not be to everyone’s taste, it’s still fun to waste a little time. It suffered from being massively overrated on consoles, but the core Angry Birds game is as fun as ever, except this one had pig-faced TIE Fighters. What’s not to like?
