Star Wars would have to be one of the most successful and well-known movies ever. It is followed by millions of people around the world like a cult. Not only were the first three movies so successful that they were re-released and digitally enhanced again to show that they could be even better when the technology was supplied. Even now the series continues with the prequels to the first three movies being created. These new movies explain to us what and how things came to be in the previous three movies.

There have been many games based on the Star Wars universe. They mainly consisted of first person shooters and flight simulators, which were directly aimed at recreating the flight scenes seen in the movies. An example would be X-wing vs. Tie Fighter which itself had three incarnations which all were very good at the time. One game that was different though was first seen on the Nintendo 64 console. The game was called Star Wars Shadows of the Empire and it mixed three different genres, First person Shooter, flight simulator and racing into one game. Because it was one of the first generation games for the console it was unable to push the limits of the Nintendo 64s hardware and there was not as successful as would have hoped.

Thus here in lies a new element to the Star Wars universe. Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds is a real time strategy game based on the well-known and trusted Age of Empires game engine. I would have thought that a real time strategy game based on the Star Wars universe would have come out a lot sooner seeing that it has the perfect setting, the right amount of different races and a large fan following.

Age of Empires is one of the most renowned real time strategy games. In its time it was able to everything you would want from an RTS (real time strategy) game. It had great graphics back then, a large technology tree, plenty of different races to play as and a great multiplayer gaming experience. I found myself loosing many sleepless night playing online against friends and even more nights playing the single player campaigns. Even though age of empires is a great game, or should I say was a great game, I dont think it was the best idea to release a new game based on a gaming engine that is over a couple of years old.