Cancelled Star Wars game finally playable more than 10 years later

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A Star Wars video game that was canceled before it could be sold is now available to play online, thanks to fans who painstakingly recreated it.

Star Wars: First Assault was intended to pave the way for a new generation of Star Wars games. It was a 16-player shooter, with Stormtroopers battling Rebels, and was designed to be tested on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 as a prelude to a complete reboot of the Battlefront series.

When Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012, it also led to the cancellation of First Assault the following April, even though the game was almost finished. It remained unreleased for over ten years until recently.

Modders bring Star Wars: First Assault back from the dead

A group of Star Wars Battlefront modders have completely recreated the game using code from its early technical beta and upgraded it with the Unreal Engine 5. They recently ran a first test on March 6th, making the files available an hour beforehand and then conducting an 8-versus-8 game to find any remaining problems. They’ve already planned another multiplayer session for March 14th.

More than an hour of gameplay is now online, showing off the Tatooine map and how weapons work. This footage originally appeared in a leaked beta clip from 2015. The development team is sharing updates and new files, including a configuration for the Xenia emulator to boost performance and find matches faster, on their official Discord server. It’s currently unknown how long this gameplay will be available.

If you’re interested in trying it out, you can download everything you need – the demo, the Xenia emulator for Xbox 360, and a special configuration file for the game – from the project’s Discord server.

First Assault was originally created for the Xbox 360, so to play it on PC, you’ll need to use an emulator called Xenia. The developers suggest using a controller because mouse support isn’t available.

Finding games currently takes a bit of effort, as players need to search for and join sessions themselves, but the developers are working on an update to make the process much easier.

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2026-03-11 20:18