In Rogue Squadron, you picked a ship at the beginning of the level, and you were stuck with it until you finished, or were killed. In Battle of Naboo many of the levels contain hangars, where you can trade in whatever ship or boat you happen to be using for a different one. This is a nice feature, but not particularly useful, since most of the missions are so frantic that you don’t want to bother spending all the time it takes to switch ships.

There is one more thing about the levels that I should mention, and that should get most Star Wars fans drooling on their keyboards; Battle of Naboo features the only thing that was missing from Rogue Squadron: levels that take place entirely in space. Yes, the space battles that practically symbolize the Star Wars series are included in the game. And while the idea is novel, I have to tell you that the levels aren’t any better than anything else.

The graphics in Battle for Naboo are very good, but not updated any from Rogue Squadron. However, the fogging effect that was found throughout RS has been cleared up some in its sequel. Other than that, there are lots of cool effects and plenty of good textures; and everything is very well detailed.

Rogue Squadron was a benchmark title in terms of sound. Despite the N64’s limitations in terms of sound capabilities and lack of space on its cartridges, it featured more speech and better sounding music than almost any game on any system; and it was certainly better sounding than any other N64 game. Factor 5 and LucasArts managed to cram that much music and speech onto an N64 cartridge due to some revolutionary compression techniques. Because of all this, expectations for Battle for Naboo’s sound were very high. I’m happy to say that this game delivers. It features just as much, and perhaps more, speech than Rogue Squadron did; and its music is incredibly well done (especially the near perfect translation of "Duel of the Fates," one of the songs from the movie). That’s to say nothing of the stellar sound effects. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that this is the best sounding N64 game there is.

Unfortunately, Battle for Naboo does not feature any multiplayer. However, there are more than fifteen missions, a medal system that will keep you playing if you like the game, and tons of codes that unlock all sorts of interesting things. And best of all, unlike most games these days, there is some actual challenge to Battle of Naboo. It is not overly difficult, but you will definitely not beat every mission the first time you play it. All this should keep you playing Battle for Naboo for at least a few weeks, assuming you don’t get any more games before then.

• Incredible sound and great graphics
• Storyline that is actually better than the one in the movie this game is based on
• Great controls and balanced gameplay make for great fun