Boba Fett has lived on in the hearts of Star Wars fans around the globe despite only having around six minutes of screen time in the original trilogy and meeting a somewhat embarrassing end in Return of the Jedi. But thanks to a new Disney+ show, Boba's back, and he seems to be living up to the monumental expectations fans have been putting on the character for almost three decades.
While Boba may not have had much screen time in all the years prior to his comeback, he's had plenty of exposition on video game screens. With a history in the video game landscape stretching back to the early 1990s, Boba Fett is a staple of just about any popular Star Wars video game entry, whether he's using his iconic weaponry to blast the player, or the player's using that weaponry themselves to take on their opponents.
Battling Boba Fett As a Boss
For the first decade of his life in video games, Boba Fett would only appear as an end-of-stage boss, acting as just an average road block on the protagonists' way to stopping the Empire's reign over the galaxy. Boba's first video game appearance was in the Nintendo Entertainment System's Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, which released in 1992 and saw players fight their way through the major events of the movie.
Boba appears on Cloud City, where the player has to avoid his bombing runs while shooting at his jetpack. Once defeated, Boba flees in his ship, the Slave 1 (recently renamed to "The Firespray,") where the player hunts them down in their X-Wing. The game looks a little primitive by today's standards, but all of the classic elements are there, and surprisingly, not a lot has changed since this first video game appearance.
Boba returned to video games just a year later in 1993's Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, a difficult, arcade-like run-and-gun. The fight plays out very similarly to the NES predecessor, with Boba using his jetpack to rain fire down on the player, before eventually making his escape on Slave 1. This time, though, the player is forced to fight the ship on the ground, which makes it much tougher to avoid its attacks.
The bounty hunter makes his first 3D appearance in Star Wars: Dark Forces, a 1995 FPS "Doom-clone" in which players control fan-favorite Legends character, Kyle Katarn. As Katarn, players are tasked with stealing the Death Star plans (before Rogue One made it cool,) but Boba has a few thermal detonators to throw at the player before they go saving the galaxy.
The 1996 cult classic Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire saw Boba's next appearance as a stage boss. After hunting down fellow bounty hunter legend IG-88, the player character, Dash Rendar, discovers that Boba is hiding out on the Imperial-occupied moon of Gall. After being given a jetpack to even the odds, the player faces off against Boba and all of his associated tricks and gadgets. In what seems to be a defining feature of these fights, Boba once again hops into Slave 1, and attempts to escape before being grounded by the player.
After a brief appearance in the Star Wars Trilogy arcade game, Boba cropped up in the Dark Forces/Jedi Knight sequel, Jedi Academy. Here, Boba is found on Ord Mantell and yet again uses his EE-3 blaster, wrist rockets, and flamethrower to put a stop to the player, before making his escape and jetpacking out of the arena.
Boba's next video game appearance was slightly different, taking place entirely in the air. The somewhat maligned and very difficult Star Wars: Flight of the Falcon is a Game Boy Advance game that sees players take control of the Millenium Falcon through some of the original trilogy's major space battles. The mission in question sees players hunt down Boba in his Slave 1, chasing him through the crowded skies of Cloud City. Boba uses his ship's iconic seismic charges and fires backwards towards the player, which keen-eyed viewers will have noticed in Season 2 of The Mandalorian.
In his most recent boss fight, Boba fights Force Unleashed protagonist Galen Marek/Starkiller in a post-game DLC that takes place in an alternate timeline. Starkiller kills Boba pretty easily, finishing him off in a QTE cutscene that sees Starkiller throwing a wrist rocket back in his face.
Playing As the Legendary Bounty Hunter
While Boba Fett has appeared in a vast number of games as an antagonist, his list of playable appearances is surprisingly quite short. He first appeared as a playable character in Star Wars: Masters of Teras Kasi, widely considered to be the worst Star Wars video game of all time. This fighter allows players to take control of the bounty hunter, using his various weapons to try and take down iconic opponents like Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Thok, and Hoar, everyone's favorite Gamorrean Guard/Tusken Raider duo.
Boba appeared in the odd Star Wars: Demolitions game, which played similarly to Twisted Metal, but with Star Wars vehicles. Boba doesn't have a vehicle in this game, as he instead just flies around on his jetpack, which looks really strange when compared to the various tanks, walkers, and speeders zooming through the map.
Another game considered to be one of the franchise's worst, Star Wars: Super Bombad Racing allowed gamers to play as Boba by entering a cheat code. This Mario Kart knock-off is pretty awful, from its lackluster items to its confusing track layouts to its off-putting visual design.
Thankfully, the Battlefront games are there to save Boba from a lifetime of terrible Star Wars games. Boba has been playable in every Battlefront since the second one, with every appearance having essentially the same abilities: wrist rockets, his EE-3 triple-burst blaster, jetpack, and sometimes his radar or additional explosives. Generally speaking, the Battlefront series offers the best playable version of the character. He's often voiced by Temeura Morrison, his abilities feel satisfying to use, and he looks exactly as he should.
That's not to say that there aren't other solid playable appearances for Boba, though. The LEGO Star Wars games do a decent job at making the character an exciting unlockable, with his LEGO Star Wars II, The Complete Saga, and The Force Awakens appearances giving players a character with a jetpack and explosives, which is fairly rare. And no matter how the game turns out in the end, Boba is sure to be a great addition to LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga.
One of Boba's last appearances as a playable character was in Disney Infinity 3.0, the company's final attempt to make the toys-to-life genre appeal to the average gamer. Despite the lack of commercial success following the game's release, the Boba Fett character pack was actually quite substantial, giving players all of his aforementioned weapons and gadgets, as well as a flyable Slave 1. With the character also added to Fortnite's item shop this month, it seems likely that he will appear in more video games going forward.