Star Wars: Bounty Hunter

. Star Wars: Bounty Hunter is an action-adventure game played from a third-person perspective. Players control Jango Fett, who has access to a wide array of weapons in the game, including his trademark blaster pistols, a flamethrower, poison darts, and jetpack-mounted missiles. They can use Jango's jetpack to fly and reach areas that are otherwise inaccessible, but it quickly runs out of fuel, which recharges automatically when the jetpack is not used; using the flamethrower also burns the jetpack's fuel. Additionally, Jango can use the scanner built into his helmet to identify individuals and see if they have a bounty on their head. He can then capture the individuals in question either dead, or alive, by immobilizing them with his whipcord thrower. When using the scanner, the game switches to a first-person perspective. In-game, Jango can make use of his acrobatic abilities, somersaulting, and jumping to the side to backflipping to avoid enemies. He automatically targets enemies, and holding a certain button allows Jango to move around an enemy while keeping them targeted. If the player is using Jango's blaster pistols, up to two enemies can be targeted at the same time. There are also many pickups, powerups, and items to help along the way. Completing levels and capturing bounty targets rewards the player with credits, which can be used to unlock concept art. Each level has a secret feather, which unlock cards from the Star Wars Trading Card Game by Wizards of the Coast; if all feathers are found, bonus footage is unlocked. After every level, pages of the comic Open Seasons are unlocked for viewing, and after completing chapters, "blooper reels" for the cutscenes in that chapter are unlocked. ==Plot==

Ten years before Attack of the Clones and shortly after the Battle of Naboo, the Sith Lord Darth Sidious orders his apprentice, Darth Tyranus, to eliminate his former pupil-turned-Dark Jedi and current leader of the Bando Gora crime syndicate, Komari Vosa, before she becomes a threat to his future plans. Meanwhile, Jango Fett captures gangster Meeko Ghintee after a long pursuit on the Outland Station, and turns him in for the bounty on his head. Upon returning to his Toydarian friend Rozatta, he is contracted by Tyranus with killing Vosa for 5,000,000 Republic credits. To find Vosa, Jango investigates the Bando Gora's distribution ring of addictive "death sticks" and captures death stick dealer Jervis Gloom on Coruscant, who reveals his source to be a gangster named Groff Haugg. While investigating Haugg's processing plant, Jango runs into his longtime rival, Montross, who is also hunting Vosa and has killed Haugg via carbonite freezing after interrogating him for Vosa's whereabouts. Following a brief fight, Montross leaves to find Vosa, while Jango infiltrates the penthouse of Twi'lek Senator Connus Trell, who is also involved in the death stick trafficking ring. Trell tells Jango to seek the Dug crime lord Sebolto on Malastare before being thrown to his death. After escaping from a Republic gunship, Jango learns that Sebolto has put a 50,000 credits bounty on the head of his former employee Bendix Fust, who is incarcerated at the asteroid prison Oovo IV. Believing that capturing Fust will allow him to get close to Sebolto, Jango infiltrates the prison, but finds that another bounty hunter, Zam Wesell, has beaten him to Fust. The two are forced to work together to escape from Oovo IV with Fust, and stage a riot to create a distraction. After Jango's beloved ship, ''Jaster's Legacy, is destroyed, he, Wesell, and Fust escape in another vessel, which Jango dubs Slave I''. Meanwhile, Montross finds that Haugg gave him a false lead, but hears of the Oovo IV riot and, realizing it was Jango's doing, decides to follow him. Jango delivers Fust to Sebolto on Malastare, but the crime lord quickly deduces Jango's true intentions and attempts to flee, only to fall to his death down a pipe leading into his death stick factory. Jango enters the factory and finds some Bando Gora members guarding a ship with Huttese markings on it, hinting at the Hutts' involvement in the death stick distribution ring. Montross ambushes Jango again, taunting him over his adoptive father's, Jaster Mereel, death, and the disastrous Battle of Galidraan, where Jango's Mandalorian forces were slain by a Jedi ambush. Jango is defeated, but escapes with Wesell's help. On Tatooine, while Wesell goes to question Gardulla the Hutt, Jango impresses Jabba by killing Longo Two-Guns and his gang. After learning from Jabba about Gardulla's involvement with the Bando Gora, Jango travels to her castle, but is captured after an imprisoned Wesell, whom he left in her cell to avoid sounding the alarm, compromises his position. Quickly escaping, he confronts Gardulla and feeds her to her pet Krayt dragon, which he then kills. Leaving Wesell behind, Jango continues his search for Vosa alone, only for Montross to attack Rozatta's station in an attempt to hinder him. Jango arrives to find a dying Rozatta, who gives him a guidance device to help him track Vosa and asks him to find something to live for besides money. Jango journeys to Bogden's moon Kohlma, the Bando Gora's secret headquarters, where he finds Montross waiting for him in front of Vosa's citadel. Jango defeats Montross and leaves him to be killed by the Bando Gora, refusing to give him a warrior's death. As he enters the citadel, Jango is captured and tortured by Vosa, until Wesell suddenly arrives to rescue him, getting herself injured in the process. After finally defeating Vosa, Darth Tyranus arrives and chokes her to death, before explaining to a stunned Jango that the bounty was merely a test to find someone worthy of becoming the genetic template for a clone army, and that Jango passed it. The bounty hunter agrees to be cloned but, in addition to his monetary reward, demands that he get to keep one unmodified clone for himself (thus honoring Rozatta's final wish). The game ends with Jango carrying the wounded Wesell to Slave I, while telling her not to push her luck when she asks to split the reward 50/50. ==Development and release==

Development of Star Wars: Bounty Hunter began when LucasArts was asked to make an Episode II-based game which featured the character Jango Fett. In March 2001, game design documents were presented, and development began shortly after. The PlayStation 2 and GameCube versions of the game have different custom in-house graphics engines, each designed specifically to take advantage of the two platforms' unique strengths and work around their unique limitations, but the core game engine is identical. In the PS2 version, the developers took advantage of both vector unit (VU) chips to drive the graphics to maximum performance. The DMA bandwidth was taken advantage of to use a high number of textures. There is full-screen antialiasing and texture mip mapping support. The second VU1 chip was used to handle all the character skinning and VU0 to handle all the skeletal animation transforms. Which enabled dozens of characters to be on-screen without bogging down the frame rate. 10 individually optimized rendering loops were used on VU1 to speed up the rendering process. Their PS2 graphics engine could move 10,000,000 triangles per second, and adding the gameplay, collision, logic, textures, sound would go down accordingly to around 30,000 to 50,000 triangles per frame, all at an average frame rate of 30 frames per second. In-game cinematics were created by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), and marked the first collaboration between LucasArts and ILM. Composer Jeremy Soule wrote music for the game, including both cutscenes and gameplay. The characters Jango Fett and Komari Vosa have their own leitmotifs. Production began in November 2000 when LucasArts was asked to make a game based on Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones featuring Jango Fett. The game design proposal was presented in March 2001, and development started soon after. Jon Knoles revealed in an interview that they wanted to develop Jango into the ideal action-based video game character and that he was to be exciting to watch and fun to play. Secondly, LucasArts wanted to develop a story that fleshed out Fett's character more fully than in Attack of the Clones, while at the same time remaining true to the spirit of his character as seen in the film. It was imperative to not dull the game with a slow story and leaden script; as such, their goal was to work a fine balance between backstory, narrative, and action-packed gameplay. Knoles said Jango Fett was developed to be an extension of the player's will, the ideal vessel through which the player could live out the fantasy of being the galaxy's most dangerous bounty hunter. His movement and animation blending system was designed to automatically react to other world objects and to never be unable to use his weapons or devices in any situation. The jetpack was originally designed to be used in areas specifically designed for its use. When the team got it working, they changed their minds and implemented a rechargeable timer on it so the player could use it anywhere for a limited time. At the most, the crew was over fifty people that were working on the game, excluding Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). Concept artists looked to the team's favorite graphic novels for inspiration and the concept artwork by Ralph McQuarrie, Doug Chiang, Joe Johnston, and others who worked on the Star Wars films. Knoles said LucasArts and ILM learned a great deal from their cooperation, which allowed ILM to try new methods for creating scenes, as well as new tools and techniques. LucasArts provided ILM with models, textures, and a storyboarded script, and then applied their cinematic expertise in adapting the script into dynamic and visually stunning films. The sound designers of LucasArts and the sound designers at Skywalker Sound worked together to create the game soundtrack. Skywalker Sound made sounds directly for game animations and events, and created foley sounds. and in Europe on December 6. It was released for the GameCube in North America on December 5, and in Europe the following year on February 7. In June 2024, Lucasfilm Games announced a remaster of Star Wars: Bounty Hunter developed by Aspyr, set for release on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S on August 1, 2024. The remastered version boasts improved environmental texture quality, lighting effects and the addition of a flashlight for navigating the darker areas of the game, as well as the ability to start a new playthrough as Boba Fett upon reaching a 100% completion save file in reference to an easter egg that didn't materialize in the original game. The PS5 version also implements several DualSense controller features such as utilizing the adaptive triggers for additional impact on Jango's weapons, mapping his radio communication to the integrated speaker on the controller, and using the lightbar embedded within the touchpad for visually indicating health status. ==Reception==

Bounty Hunter received mixed reviews on Metacritic. PlayStation Official Magazine complimented the core shooting and production values but criticized its repetitive nature. IGN praised the graphics, sound, length and level designs, but they criticized the implementation of the bounty hunting system. In the end, however, they found the game to be one of the better Star Wars tie-in games. GameSpot was less impressed. They found the technical issues of the game to be too significant, including issues with the camera, clipping, and collision detection. They also criticized the graphics and the overall gameplay, concluding that it has "all the basic ingredients needed" but "falls flat in the execution". ==Notes==