Star Wars, Star Wars, Star bloody sodding Wars. It's still everywhere, even though it's supposed to have finished and Lucas is supposed to be firmly locked in his ranch rolling about on his vast piles of money while dressed as Jar Jar sodding Binks.

But no, he just can't leave it alone. Sodding sod. There's the upcoming not-a-movie movie, the TV series (The Wire crossed with Star Wars?! Yes please, thanks) and the new videogame The Force Unleashed all on the horizon, and it's unlikely that things will slow down any time soon.

But what does all this talk do? Well, it reminds us of all the Star Wars crap we've had rammed down our throats for three decades. Specifically, it reminds us of Star Wars videogames and how mixed a bag they've managed to be over the years. Some have been that good that you can't help but immediately fornicate with the disc/cartridge/arcade machine (risky as the latter may be, with it being a public situation), whereas many more have been so bad it makes you wish Hitler had won.

Nevertheless, in our endless quest to list the tits off everything, here we present our definitive, mega ultra, never-to-be-questioned top five best and worst Star Wars games ever. Now you may think this list has been done a thousand times before all over the internerd and, well, you're right. But shut up, because this time hecklerspray is talking and you better damn well listen.

IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER (except for Teras Kasi, which is the worst game ever made, ever)…

BEST

1. Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR)

So it's a stodgy traditional RPG based on some Dungeons and Dragons rules with only semi-real time combat. So what? You get to design your own Jedi and lightsaber and can follow the path of the Dark Side (or Light if you're a pansy), choking every bugger in the universe into submission, stealing from helpless peasants and not helping old people across the road. Take THAT, Yoda! It's just a shame that the sequel, though just as playable as the first, was ultimately an unfinished mess.

2. The X Wing series (including Tie Fighter!)


Do you remember the 90s? Do you? DO YOU?! Ah, good. When PCs were something of a luxury and we could visit our rich friend's house to play on X-Wing. You were a Rebel pilot, fighting the good fight for freedom in the galaxy. Then they went and brought out Tie Fighter, where you were an utter bastard, crushing the Rebellion. Brillo. The series went on with a few more spin offs, culminating in X-Wing Alliance, a game in which you participated in the attack on the second Death Star in the Millennium Falcon. Damn, we need to go and find our joystick…

3. The Dark Forces/Jedi Knight series


The original Dark Forces game was a solid affair, though written off by many as a simple Doom clone with Stormtroopers. Which, to be fair, it was. By the time the sequel rolled around things changed to the point that involuntary erections were caused the world over. Starting off as a non-Jedi pleb, a short time into the game you received a lightsaber and training in the force. From then on the game went from 'alright' to 'oh dear christ I just chopped his arm off then threw ten of his mates down a chasm USING MY MIND'.

The further sequels weren't as mindblowing as number two, but all of them provided a laugh. And one even provided the real Lando Calrissian! The real one! Though to be fair he probably does do pretty much anything for money these days.

4. The Super series


Super Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi were classics back in the 16-bit days of the SNES, and a bona fide reason why Nintendo's console shat all over the Mega Drive, quality-wise (ah, re-opening age old arguments).

Taking place in the world of the original trilogy, the games saw players fighting through hordes of baddies, aliens, shockingly aggressive indigenous life and AT-ATs. Highlight of the series has to go to Empire – the Hoth defence level is the stuff of legend, and the continue screen where Yoda asks 'Try Again?' only to state "Try not, do, or do not. There is no try" when you press 'yes' (the pedantic little shit) are two immortal highlights of a fantastic series.

5. The Rogue Squadron series


Let's be honest here, the first game wasn't amazing. It was good, entertaining at the very least, but it came across as shockingly mediocre in comparison to fellow N64 title Shadows of the Empire.

Then came Rogue Squadron II, and all mediocrity gave way to one of the best Star Wars experiences ever committed to the world of interactive entertainment. Even though it was fucking hard. A release title on the Gamecube, Rogue Leader was more than just a great game – it was a stunning technical achievement, created in about three days from base materials like wool, ear wax and a kidnapped puppy. The third in the series, Rebel Strike, was pretty much more of the same but added a co-operative mode for the missions of Rogue Leader. Star Bar!

WORST

1. Masters of Teras Kasi


Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahaha haha hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha ha ha! Annnnnd breathe. What in the Salacious Crumb's name were they thinking? Probably: "I know lads, let's make a game like Tekken and Soul Blade, but let's comically make it as if we're all too monged up on spazz-o-drugs to actually, y'know, make it playable in any way, shape or form."

That has to be the reason. There can be no other justification for this utter abortion of a game being released – that's released as in 'actually released for the buying public to part with their cash on'. The mind searches for reason in many things in life – many – but Masters of Teras Kasi is one of those things that the human brain will surely never understand, like Paris Hilton's ability to keep being mentioned by real people or why said 'real' people insist on buying The Sun/Daily Mail/insert name of the rag you hate here. Awful, awful, awful and awful – not even worth tracking down for comedy value. THERE IS NONE.

2. All of the games directly based on Episodes I-III


Episode One had a good tie-in with the Racer game – honestly – but seemingly every other game based on the movies of Episode I, II and III were doggy dirt of the highest order. Specifically, those based directly on the movies, where you were in control of Obi Wan and the like.

How could they make such a generic, boring mess of being in control of jedi characters? Easy, by making Star Wars: The Phantom Menace on the PlayStation, Star Wars: Attack of the Clones on the Game Boy Advance and Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith on the PS2, Xbox and others. Broken, boring, rushed and derivative, the only pluses were the fact that you could imagine taking control of Mace Windu and killing the snot out of everything instead. Though really that's either none of these games or just a completely different game, thus nullifying the need to pick up any of these titles. Win!

3. Star Wars: Galaxies


A Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG to the cool kids), Galaxies started out as the idea that made Star Wars fans wet. You would live a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away and could live out all of your dirtiest Star Wars fantasies. If you fancied yourself as a Boba Fett wannabe, you could be a bounty hunter. If you wanted to follow the path of Luke and co. by becoming a Jedi then… well… you could, technically, but it took quite a long time.

We're talking days of real time in the game, dozens and dozens of hours of play to get there. In the end about two people got there, but then couldn't actually do anything as if they'd got themselves killed, which they likely would, their characters would be lost forever.

Then the game received some updates which totally changed everything, meaning more or less anyone could become a Jedi with the minimum of effort. The people that had made the effort in the first place were, shockingly enough, annoyed. It was something of a broken mess when it was released and they fixed it, but George Lucas must have got involved somewhere because then came the endless sodding tinkering that we all know and love Georgey boy for, and the game was left a broken husk, deserted by all and left to rot in the big online graveyard in the sky.

4. Rebel Assault I and II


Do you remember the days when full motion video was vogue? When every single CD-based game had to have some no-talent assclown 'acting' his or her way through some sets that looked like the local special school had knocked them up on a particularly haphazard Sunday afternoon? Well, all of this looked like Oscar-worthy material when you put it next to the 'games' of the Rebel Assault series.

Pre-videoed footage scrolled along as you slowly moved your crappy cursor around to try and shoot Tie Fighters/Stormtroopers and the like through numerous levels of mind-destroying garbage. You had no control, though in the sequel they added the illusion of control, and each mission was punctuated with some of the worst sub-amateur Star Wars spin off tosh the world has ever seen. We wholeheartedly blame the Mega CD for making these kind of 'games' fashionable. For about a week.

5. Star Wars: Obi Wan

What better way to celebrate the launch of a new console than by bringing out a Star Wars game to coincide with the release? Well, until Rogue Leader came out with the Gamecube we would have gone with: "anything is a better way to celebrate the launch of a new console than by bringing out a Star Wars game to coincide with the release, even cancer." This is how bad Obi Wan made our insides feel.

Like they were being ravaged by one of man's most fearsome enemies. It wasn't literally killing us though, so score one to Obi Wan. But that is the only one it will ever, ever get. As is the case with many awful Star Wars games it was rushed, buggy and controlled as if designed by an idiot savant with no hands, minus the 'savant' aspect. Then Rogue Leader came out as a launch title a couple of months later and we all promptly forgot about this turd that had been force-fed to the early Xbox adopters. Well, most of us did. Some can never forget.

It actually dawned on us when writing this that there are far more good Star Wars games than we remember. We tried lumping entire series into one entry, but that didn't create enough room, so instead we ruthlessly culled a number of titles from the list. Including Lego Star Wars, which still hurts (it can be secret entry number six on the best-o-list, hush down). And that's that – the 'spray has spoken.

[story by Ian Dransfield]