You can complain about The Phantom Menace all you want, but the podrace scene remains one of the best visual spectacles in all the Star Wars movies. It spawned some wonderful toys too, but nothing that comes close to Alexis Dos Santos’ LEGO Mindstorms-powered tabletop pod racing game.
Using a functional Lego joystick, players steer Anakin’s podracer across the sands of Tatooine, dodging obstacles like broken pieces of spaceships that litter the planet. To make the game even more challenging, it uses a series of Lego conveyor belts that each move at different speeds so some obstacles come at you faster than others.
It also helps give the game some randomness, constantly changing what direction you can steer to avoid a crash.
Maybe we can convince Dos Santos to build a Death Star trench run version next.
[YouTube via The Brothers Brick]