Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is as polarizing as it is fascinating. The last major production by LucasArts that didn’t end in failure, it stands as an uneven, wildly ambitious attempt at bridging the gap between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. It was built on in-house tech, harnessing advanced physics, destruction, and automated animations to bring the world of Star Wars to life like never before. Yet while the main game on PS3 and Xbox 360 struggled to achieve this goal, another port by Krome Studios went above and beyond it, delivering on features cut from the home release as well as exclusive content. Where did this marvelous, outstanding port land?
Why, the PSP of course.
It goes without saying that you just don’t expect a game of this scale on thePSP. Immense draw distances of starships engaged in fleet battles; hundreds of soldiers fighting it out over the beaches of Kashyyyk - it’s all here. This isn’t even getting into the astounding poly count of the character models, which only takes a minor aesthetic hit from the PS2 version. All the extra duels and cut story beats from the LucasArts version? Here. A litany of costumes and additional powers? Yep. Breakable objects and physics? Absolutely! All of this running at a blisteringly smooth frame rate, even with in-engine cutscenes.
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This gets wilder when you consider some of the technical aspects. Krome’s Adelaide studio managed to cram the entirety of a home console game into a single gigabyte. Not to mention this is the only version with four-player multiplayer, as well as additional voice lines and unique environments exclusive to several bonus modes. The audio quality suffers next to no loss in compression, far exceeding several other PSP ports at the time. The only real compromise that hinders the fun is the facial animation tech, or the lack thereof. Characters might be jaw-droppingly detailed for PSP models, but their eyes are a lifeless void that would’ve benefited from even a hint of emotion.
Yet those dead fish-eyed models are worth enduring for those aforementioned bonus modes. Sony secured a deal with LucasArts for exclusive content on the PSP port and made out like bandits. Not only did a glimmer of the cut multiplayer from LucasArts' version survive on PSP, but three other fantastic modes were included: Historic Missions, Order 66, and Force Duel. Made with the PSP’s handheld nature in mind, each mode offered high replay value in bite-sized adventures.
Historic Missions were the aspect most heavily advertised - a series of five scenarios letting you relive key moments of the Prequels and Original Trilogy, amped up with Starkiller’s Force powers at your disposal. Decimate Jabba’s sail barge as Luke, wreck Dooku’s army on Geonosis, show Vader’s true power on Bespin, do the same as Anakin when facing down Dooku aboard the Invisible Hand, and in the most dramatic turn, have Obi-Wan be even more brutal than ever to Anakin during their climactic duel on Mustafar. Featuring a mix of film audio and sound-alikes, they’re fun five-minute trials that push you to play faster than even the main game. This turns out to be merely a warm-up though, given what comes next in Order 66.
If there’s one thing I think most can agree on, it’s that the PS2 version of The Force Unleashed could’ve used a horde mode where you could just rip and tear into enemies across a handful of physics-heavy arenas. Clearly Krome felt the same, as Order 66 uses both existing and PSP exclusive arenas for you to dispatch twenty-two waves of opponents. They go so far as to include a section from Vader’s research ship, the only known level to be cut from Krome’s take on the campaign.
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As if this all weren’t enough, then you have Force Duel - a boss-rush gauntlet that has you facing both famous and obscure Jedi and Sith from across the franchise. The duels manage to go even harder than most of those in the main campaign, with the grand finale featuring you against Vader, Luke, and Palpatine. Several fights introduce additional stage hazards as well, which clever players can turn in their favor.
The final stroke of brilliance is that every mode rewards you with something. Historic Missions, character skins, multiplayer maps - beating everything has a tangible benefit. It’s just a shame that unless you had a PSP, you probably never knew this content existed. I am relieved to say that it’s still available on PS Vita and that fan efforts to emulate it have worked wonderfully, demonstrating even the multiplayer can work once again.
Krome’s work on The Force Unleashed is nothing short of wizardry, being one of the few games to truly deliver a home console experience in the palm of your hand over a decade before the Nintendo Switch. Such an astonishing achievement of handheld porting is worth remembering, even if it’s as hidden as the tale of Darth Plagueis the Wise.
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