May The Fourth Be With You!

If you are a Star Wars fan like me, then may the force be with you. If you are not, then I am afraid that the revenge of the fifth is not far away.

Star Wars puns aside, I wanted to revisit a long-forgotten treasure on this day. Star Wars Math: Jabba’s Game Galaxy is a video game that launched for Windows and Mac in the year 2000.

It was a math-based educational video game aimed at children and developed by Lucas Learning. As far as the system requirements were concerned, the game was meant to run on computer systems with 32 Megabytes of RAM (Random Access Memory) at a resolution of 640 x 480 pixels.

It is now 2024 and I am writing this essay on a computer that features 64 Gigabytes of RAM — a whopping 2000 times what this game requires! If we keep up this rate of technological progress, we might get to meet Jabba the Hutt in real life soon!

Without getting sidetracked too much though, let us get into the nuts and bolts of this video game.

The Lore

Jabba’s Game Galaxy is set in the world of the Phantom Menace featuring characters from the Planet Tatoonie. The journey begins as your ship gets damaged in an encounter with an asteroid field and you land for repairs in Tatoonie.

You make your way to Watto, the junk dealer’s shop. Recall that nine-year-old Anakin used to work here as a slave.

Watto is voiced by the same voice actor from the movie, Andy Secombe, and offers to sell you parts to repair your ship in exchange for Wupiupi credits (I did not make that up). You, of course, don’t have any credits at your disposal.

So, Watto recommends that you pay a visit to Jabba’s Game Plaza, where you can play some games and earn credits to repair your spaceship.

Fun and Games with Math

Jabba’s Game Plaza is just a ‘click-to-choose’ map of minigames. You could pick and choose any of these minigames and play them as often as you like. The game is designed such that you would need to do multiple runs to repair your spaceship.

There are four minigames in total (to go with the theme of “May the Fourth”) featuring Teemto Pagalies (a pod-racer from the epic Tatoonie pod race), Ratts Tyrell (another pod-racer), Sebulba (Anakin’s main rival in the pod race), and Jabba, the Hutt himself.

Now, all of these characters speak English in the video game, as opposed to Huttese in the movie. Ratts is voiced by Terry McGovern, Teemto by Michael Sorich, Sebulba by Lewis MacLeod, and Jabba, well, by himself. Just kidding; Jabba is voiced by Clint Bajakian.

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Each of these characters offers its own minigame, with simple objectives that involve basic arithmetic and logic. I must say that these are fundamentally games first, and math puzzles second.

The minigames also offer hints and clues to help younger children if they get stuck. Once you earn enough Wupiupi credits to repair your spaceship, you get to play a minigame called ‘Space Junk’ which feels like Galaga with math tacked onto it. Beyond this, there’s not much to the game.

Nostalgia Vs. Reality: Am I Wearing Rose-tinted Glasses?

I’m not here to judge whether Star Wars Math: Jabba’s Game Galaxy is a good game or a bad one. Parts of it are well made, and parts of it are annoying. Like many games of the bygone era, it comes with its unique quirks and bright moments.

What I strongly feel about the game, though, is that it has heart. Not only does it use the franchise’s popularity to encourage math to young children, but it strategically chooses characters from the pod race, any child’s favourite part of the movie (admittedly, mine too).

Furthermore, the production is lacking in no way either. All the characters have been voiced by actors who either played the respective characters in the movie or are proven artists.

In today’s world, where children are being targeted by video game publishers via loot boxes and ‘pay-to-win’ gimmicks, educational video games feel like a rarity. When you consider huge franchises like Star Wars, this seems to be the case even more so.

I might be blinded by rose-tinted glasses here. But Star Wars Math: Jabba’s Game Galaxy reminds me of a time when even big franchises made an effort to use their popularity to promote and support children’s education.

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Further reading that might interest you: 

• Did God Create The Universe?
• Mathematics Vs. Physics: What Makes Them So Different?
• Do Numbers Really Exist Out There?

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