Star Wars: Bounty Hunter, originally released in 2002 for the PlayStation 2 and GameCube, is finally coming to PC. Aspyr Media announced today that an updated version of the game is set to arrive on August 1.
2002 was the year of Attack of the Clones, the film that made an instant Star Wars star of Jango Fett, father to Boba and "Prime Clone of the Grand Army of the Republic." (Star Wars fans just can't get enough of the Fett fam.) Appropriately, Star Wars: Bounty Hunter follows his adventures in the time before Attack of the Clones, and actually sets up the events that lead to his genetic template being used to create a clone army.
I never played Star Wars: Bounty Hunter myself, but reviews from back in the day cited on Mobygames seem middling. It sounds like a perfectly serviceable third-person shooter, whose deeper merit depends largely on how much of a Star Wars fan you are.
That presumably hasn't changed, although 20-plus years of nostalgia may make players of the new version a little more forgiving; if nothing else, it at least promises to look better, thanks to "visual enhancements, improved environmental textures, new dynamic lighting effects, and a new flashlight tool" that will illuminate areas of the game that were a little too dark in the original.
There's also a nice little Easter egg that ties back to the original release. As explained on the PlayStation Blog, Star Wars: Bounty Hunter contained a low-resolution message written in Aurebesh, a common Star Wars language: "Cash in all bounties to play as Boba." The message was real, but the feature was never implemented. The updated version of the game finally gets the job done: After completing the campaign, a newly-added Boba Fett skin will unlock for future playthroughs.
Aspyr's recent track record has some Star Wars fans a little apprehensive about this one. The studio did a great job with Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered, but the Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection was an absolute train wreck. Aspyr was also reportedly pulled off the KOTOR remake in 2022 after showing off a vertical slice demo to Lucasfilm and Sony executives that, to put it mildly, did not go well.
Which side of that divide Star Wars: Bounty Hunter comes down on remains to be seen, but we'll find out soon enough: It's set to launch on August 1 and will be available for PC on Steam.
