What is Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds?

Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds is a real-time strategy game developed by Ensemble Studios and LucasArts, and released in 2001. The game is set in the Star Wars universe and allows players to control and command armies of iconic Star Wars characters and units in battles across various planets.

The game features six different civilizations, each with unique units, buildings, and technologies. Players can choose to play as the Galactic Empire, Rebel Alliance, Trade Federation, Wookiees, Gungans, or the Royal Naboo. Each civilization has its own campaign, which follows a storyline based on events from the Star Wars movies.

Players can also create their own custom scenarios and maps using the game's level editor. The game includes a multiplayer mode that allows players to battle against each other online or on a local network.

The gameplay of Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds is similar to other real-time strategy games, with players gathering resources, building structures, and training units to defeat their enemies. The game features a variety of combat units, including infantry, vehicles, and air units, each with unique strengths and weaknesses.

One unique feature of the game is the ability to use Jedi and Sith characters as hero units, which can use special abilities such as Force powers to turn the tide of battle.

Overall, Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds is a fun and engaging real-time strategy game that offers fans of the Star Wars universe the chance to lead their favorite armies into battle across a variety of planets and scenarios.

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We've all fantasized about taking part in the great saga of galactic turmoil that is Star Wars, Perhaps you dream of leaping into a TIE fighter or building a powerful army of Jedi masters. With Galactic Battlegrounds, Star Wars fans can finally join the faction of their choice to take a place in interstellar history — or just kick some galactic butt.

Galactic Battlegrounds offers six races from which to choose: Rebels, Gungans, Trade Federation, Galactic Empire, Wookies (rawrrrr), and the oppressed Royal Naboo, though there's no single-player campaign for the latter. Each race has unique units and building styles, and while they’re fairly balanced overall, they excel and lag in different areas, so you’ll need to learn different strategies for each.

At the core of Galactic Battlegrounds is a wealth of units (groups of characters of a specific class, such as warriors or farmers) — over 500 of them, divided among the six races, plus all the heroes and villains that make the Star Wars universe unique.

The units are just one facet of the game’s massive array of specialization. Each race features a staggering panoply of warriors — including foot soldiers, strike mechs, Jedi, transports, artillery, and units that specialize in destroying buildings — along with a number of counterunits specifically engineered to battle them all. These options provide the fodder for a range of deep strategies.

They also take micromanagement (a hallmark of the real-time strategy genre) to unprecedented new levels — you have to keep track of four separate resources (Carbon, Food, Ore, and Nova Crystals) to build a unit.

While we’re on the subject of units, one minor complaint: Why can’t Jedi deflect enemy fire with their light sabers?

The singleplayer campaigns are interesting, covering aspects of the Star Wars story line that the films hint at but leave unexplored (such as the Trade Federation’s occupation of Naboo and the Gungan’s civil unification). Once you’ve completed those, take to the Internet and battle your friends online. The game offers an impressive range of multiplayer options, including economic and cultural victories for those who prefer nonviolent resolution of conflict, and a special deathmatch mode that starts off all players with hordes of resources and full technological development.

If that isn’t enough. Galactic Battlegrounds worked fine with almost all the player-created levels we downloaded from the Internet...; just make sure not to download a mission that requires the Clone Campaigns expansion (unless you’ve got the expansion pack— it should be available at Aspyr’s Web site by the time you read this). Our only major complaint: Despite the cross-platform-networkable Age of Empires engine at its core, you can’t network the Mac version of Galactic Battlegrounds with the PC one.

This is one of those rare movie-based games that’s both fun on its own terms and true to the original. Fans of either real-time strategy games or Star Wars should snap up this title — but expect a bit of a learning curve if you aren’t already a StarCraft expert.

Pizor, Rich. (November 2002). Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds. MacAddict. (pg. 42).

Download Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds for Mac

Architecture

IBM PowerPC

System Requirements

From Mac OS 8.6 up to Mac OS 10.5

Compatibility notes

• Mac OS 8.6 / OS X 10.1 or higher
• G3 333 Mhz or higher
• 8 MB VRAM (ATI Rage Pro or Nvidia GeForce 2)
• 64 MB RAM

Emulating this? It could probably run under: SheepShaver