With the outrage over Dancing Han Solo*, one would think there has never been a bad Star  Wars game to grace the market. Lucasfilm has sold out for a quick buck, you say. Oh you silly fans. If that’s the measure for selling out (whatever that means), Lucasfilm sold out years ago. Star Wars has a long and storied history of shoddy video game tie-ins pushed out the door to make some scratch.

*I don’t care what any of you say, Dancing!Han is the best thing to happen to the fandom in the last decade.

Star Wars: Rebel Assault II: The Hidden Empire: Death by Colons was a horrible mashup of bad full-motion video, clunky game mechanics, on-the-rails dullness, and difficulty curves designed by a sadist. If the horrid acting didn’t make you cringe to the point of turning it off, the bizarre spikes in difficulty at random moments would make you rage quit. Rebel Assault II hearkens back to a day when every game developer on the planet thought that unskilled actors and a green screen were the key to creating a big hit. Rather than, you know, actual gameplay value.

There was a period where fighting games were the thing to hastily put in a company’s gaming portfolio. In fairness, there were some great titles back in the 90s that fit into this genre. Street Fighter, Mortal Combat. And then there was Masters of Teras Kasi, the inevitable Star Wars fighting game. The characters were so unbalanced it removed any sort of value from multiplayer. Single player featured bad AI that was either entirely too easy or entirely too difficult.

Here’s the thought process behind Super Bombad Racing. Mario Kart is super popular and pretty much prints money for Nintendo. Star Wars is super popular and pretty much prints money for Lucasfilm. Kids love both. This is a surefire blockbuster! Whoops.

The popularity of Cartoon Network’s The Clone Wars led to media spin offs in the form of video games. Some were good, such as the always entertaining Lego games. Others were not. Exhibit A: The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes. When you create a platform game, it’s important for the interface and controls to be intuitive to the player so you don’t wind up face-down at the bottom of a cliff every thirty seconds. Someone forgot to keep that in mind when designing this game, which scored a 46% at Metacritic.