Boba Fett is a big fan favourite character. It’s actually crazy how much Star Wars fans like him. Introduced in an animated bit on the Holiday Special, Boba is probably the first EU character to be moved over into the official Star Wars canon.
There is a huge amount of backstory to Boba Fett in the old Expanded Universe. At one point, Boba was being whacked in so much EU stuff he was appearing in multiple places at once. For such a big universe, it’s funny how this one guy is apparently always schlepping about in the background.
The list of all Boba Fett video game appearances
What I thought would be fun would be to put all of Boba Fett’s video game appearances together into one timeline, to see where they work with the existing continuity. We’re not going to look at these in the order they were made, but we’re going to look at them in regards to the in-universe timeline.
Heads up, the dates you’ll see on screen will be referring to BBY and ABY. BBY stands for Before the Battle of Yavin, ABY is After.
Star Wars: Bounty Hunter
AGE: 0 | 32 BBY
We’ll be starting at the beginning, with Boba’s “birth” on Kamino. You could go further back to his conception. It’s shown at the end of Star Wars Bounty Hunter from 2002. Boba isn’t technically in it, he’s just a twinkle in Jango’s eye, but Bounty Hunter is a sick game and I will come back to it later.
Super Bombad Racing
32 BBY is the same year that Episode One is set, and as such is the year Super Bombad Racing is set. This is obviously an Episode One game, as the playable characters are kid Anakin, Darth Maul etc. Boba Fett is a cheat character, so couldn’t possibly be considered canon. Or could he? Perhaps it’s another Mandalorian, what if it was Jango Fett? I mean that’s got to be it, because time machines don’t really exist in Star Wars, so that’s the only conceivable way.
Star Wars Battlefront II (2005)
AGE: 20 | 12 BBY
The earliest actual game on Boba’s timeline is 2005’s Battlefront II. Boba is playable in every Battlefromt game, but only Battlefront II features him in the single player campaign. You get to play as Boba, leading a detachment of the 501st as they storm the cloning facility on Kamino. The mission sees Boba and his clone force trying to wipe out a second clone army being raised in secret by the Kaminoans. Kamino is always a sick map to play on that this is no different. I like to imagine how Boba would feel leading an army of clones of his dead dad to fight another army of clones of his dad, he himself being a clone of his dad. And people say the prequels make sense.
Boba Fett’s origin backstory was originally told in a short story in Tales of the Bounty Hunters and he also appears in The Paradise Snare. These books happen at the same time as Battlefront II. These books were written before (and officially superseded by) the Prequel Trilogy. But in 2018 Disney approached the author of that original short, Daniel Moran, to work his original story back into canon with a Boba Fett anthology film. Time will tell on that one.
Star Wars 1313
AGE: ~22 | 5-10 BBY
The next stop on the timeline would have been Star Wars 1313. According to excellent and reliable sources Jason Schreier and George Lucas, 1313 was going to be set on subterranean level 1313 of the planet Coruscant and star a young Boba Fett. The game would offer an expanded origin for Boba and explain the age-old mystery of why he painted his dad’s armour green. I was watching The Clone Wars cartoon recently and there are a bunch of episodes actually set on level 1313. It first appears in the season 2 finale and stars young Boba Fett. The episode aired in Spring 2010 and is set some ten years before the game would have been set. There was talk at the time of a planned live-action TV show called Star Wars Underworld, as well as this 1313 game. Both projects shared a lot of the same ideas, but Underworld ultimately ended up getting cancelled with its ideas getting amalgamated into 1313. My assumption with the Clone Wars connection is this was a deliberate effort to get the 1313 name out there, and lay the groundwork for both the game and the TV show. Boba would have been about 22 years old in 1313, but he had already made quite a name for himself as a ruthless bounty hunter.
AGE: 27 | 5 BBY The same year as 1313, a mercenary called Jodo Kast kills a Mandalorian bounty hunter and gets the idea of painting the armor to look like Boba Fett. Kast essentially becomes a Boba Fett impersonator, to trade off the reputation of the now-famous bounty hunter. Jodo Kast was originally created for the Star Wars roleplaying game, for players to fight a character similar to Boba Fett. But one who they could easily beat without ruining the canon. This will become important later as a lot of writers used this idea as a way to weasel Boba into their stories.
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
AGE: 31 | 1 BBY
If you haven’t heard of it, The Force Unleashed is a story set between Episode III and IV, and is about Darth Vader’s secret apprentice. Aside from the fact this game gets mentioned in nearly every YouTube video I make, Boba Fett does appear in both games. In the first one he’s a hologram projected by the training droid Proxy, as one of the training programs which Vader’s apprentice has to fight. In the second game it’s the actual Boba Fett. Vader hires Fett to to go to Cato Neimodia to capture Starkiller after he escapes. He ends up being a consistent and regular antagonist for the rest of the game. He’s voiced by the excellent Dee Bradley Baker, who was the voice of Captain Rex and Commander Cody in The Clone Wars show. DBB is de-facto the voice of the clones for me. The Force Unleashed 2 is a nice Boba Fett appearance, and the game’s story arc does some good work establishing Fett’s identity as a clone.
According to Dan Wasson, project leader for the Krome’s version of The Force Unleashed on the Wii, The Force Unleashed was intended to cross over with the aforementioned Underworld TV series. Sam Witwer, who plays Starkiller in The Force Unleashed (and is a slight obsession of mine) hinted in an interview that he was going to be involved in the Underworld TV show. So here are three events starring Boba Fett all crossing over at roughly the same time. That’s kinda tight and as Clone Wars is still canon, I feel like it canonises TFU personally.
Star Wars: Empire at War
We have our first potential timeline discrepancy here. During the run-up to A New Hope in the campaign of 2006’s Empire at War, Vader hires Boba Fett to go to the planet Ilum. He’s tasked with attacking an outpost belonging to the Black Sun Syndicate, who are supplying the rebels with weapons. This in itself isn’t so much of a problem. It’s established pretty early on that Fett is basically Vader’s lackey – the character was initially conceived as being such. So him chipping all over the galaxy running errands for Vader isn’t totally inconceivable, providing he’s got the time to do it.
Star Wars: Lethal Alliance
But Boba also appears in Lethal Alliance, another game made in 2006. Boba’s appearance in Lethal Alliance is also in the same time period as that level in Empire at War! This time, Boba is shown to be working alongside Black Sun, attacking rebel agent Rianna Saren as she works to disrupt Black Sun supply lines. Working for and against a criminal organisation who are in turn working for and against both sides in the Galactic war? This is either some Game of Thrones level intrigue, or the teams at Petroglyph and Ubisoft weren’t aware of the other using Boba Fett at the exact same time. I’ve got my Get Out of Jail Free card, though. One of those appearances could realistically be Jodo Kast, posing as Boba Fett. YES!
There’s honestly about 15 books set in this time period too, all using Boba Fett to some degree. The run up to the Battle of Yavin is a very popular period for Star Wars writers apparently.
Star Wars (NES)
AGE: 32 | 0 BBY (ANH)
I think the only game set during the first film with a potential Boba is 1991’s Star Wars for the NES. Looking at those enemy sprites, these are clearly Mandalorians. The manual lists them all as Boba Fett. But there’s more than one and they’re defeated a bit too easily. So I’ve decided to justify this. According to the new timeline, Mandalore was annexed by the Empire at the end of the Clone Wars, so these could actually be Imperial Supercommandos, or maybe Mandalorian mercenaries working for the Empire. I’m going to call these the Rando Mandos. And they are now my OC.
Battlefront: Renegade Squadrom
AGE: 32 | 0.5 ABY
Renegade Squadron, for the PSP was released as a sister game to Battlefront II. Where Battlefront II is about the 501st Stormtrooper legion, this game is about Renegade Squadron, a dirty-dozen style crack team of Rebel troopers. A few months after the destruction of the Death Star, The Empire puts a bounty out for Admiral Ackbar, which our man Boba collects. Renegade Squadron are deployed to spring Ackbar out of prison, which they do, but in doing so end up leading Boba to their base on Boz Pity. TBF this is fine. Jobbing, no real conflicts.
Masters of Teras Kasi
AGE: 33 | 1 ABY
Masters of Teras Kasi – This ropey fighting game for the PS1 is set after the destruction of the Death Star, but is has Han Solo in it, so it has to be pre-Empire. Not only is Boba in Masters of Teras Kasi as a playable character, but the events of the game are tied into other bits of continuity. TIE Fighter, The Old Republic and even the prequel Trilogy tie into this game. It actually manages to make sense from a continuity standpoint. The game is pony, but Jodo Kast is also present as a cheeky palette swap, so that’s pretty cool.
Star Wars: Dark Forces
AGE: 34 | 2 ABY
The first time I saw Boba Fett in a video game was in Star Wars Dark Forces back in 1995. He’s shown in a cutscene after Kyle Katarn has blown up an Imperial facility and stolen secret imperial codes. Vader’s like “Right I’ve had enough of this clown wrecking our plans, I’ll get my man Boba on the job”. Boba Fett then turns up as a surprise end of level boss and he’s a tough cookie. Flying about the place launching rockets, he’s partly hard to hit because looking up and down in these old DOS FOS games requires a dedicated button press. It’s a rock hard boss fight and I punched the air when I finally took him down.
X-Wing Alliance
AGE: 35 | 3 ABY
I love a cheeky fan service callout and 1999’s X-Wing Alliance crams in so many it makes me crazy happy. During the weapons lesson on Mission 2, you can spot Slave I before it jets off, presumably heading to Bespin on Vader’s orders?
Boba Fett is in every video game based on Empire Strikes Back
Obviously Boba Fett is in every game based on ESB. Super Empire is one of my favourites. An absolutely quality game. I love the palette for the Cloud City level in this game, it’s amazing the SNES pulled this off back in 1993. Of course Cloud City appears in a load of other games like Empire Strikes Back for the NES, Flight of the Falcon on the GBA and Rogue Squadron III for the GameCube. Then of course there’s Lego. We’re gonna call this Matty’s law:
If you make a list of games on the internet, the chances of mentioning Lego just increases over time.
Matty’s Law, 2020
Boba is playable in I think all the Lego Star Wars games, and you guessed it, he’s a boss on the Cloud City level. The absolute cream of the crop though is Kinect Star Wars. I mentioned this when I did my video about Han Solo appearances, the Cloud City dance-off absolutely kills me. Respect to Terminal Reality, they got Dee Bradley Baker in to voice the Fettster, so you know this is a legit appearance.
Star Wars Demolition
Now we come to Demolition. This is exactly the kind of stupid idiocy I live for. Writing articles for other nerds on the internet, Figuring out when in the continuity novelty kart racing games happen so I can pretend this gives my article some kind of credence. The game is set during the reign of Jabba the Hutt, so that gives us an end point. Wade Vox’s speeder is Luke’s old speeder which he sold during the first film, so that means Demolition has to be set during the original trilogy. Based on most of the character appearances it seems to be set between Empire and Jedi. I put this out on Twitter and my mates at Eleven 17 said the same thing, so here we go.
Shadows of the Empire
AGE: 35 | 3.5 ABY
Moving on a tiny bit to Boba Fett’s appearance in Shadows of the Empire. Shadows was set in the year between Empire and Jedi, with the computer game telling the story of my favourite, Dash Rendar. Boba Fett is a boss about halfway through the game, right after Dash gets the jetpack. The Boba Fett boss fight is a jetpack boss battle and yes, it’s about as wicked as it sounds. In honesty this is mentally hard, especially in the N64 version’s third person mode. Once you beat Boba, you have another boss fight immediately, against Boba in Slave I! You’re fighting Boba Fett after all, so it needs to be hard. Apart from the janky controls making it harder than it should be, this is a solid Boba Fett appearance and probably my second favourite on the list. And I just can’t not love Dash Rendar.
All the games based on Return of the Jedi
AGE: 36 | 4 ABY
Just as with Empire, Boba Fett is in all the computer game adaptations of Return of the Jedi. And they’re all pretty much the Jabba’s Barge scene. We’ve got Super Return of the Jedi on the SNES, Return of the Jedi for the Game Boy, Star Wars Trilogy for the Game Boy Advance as well as the obligatory LEGO level.
Star Wars Trilogy Arcade
I mentioned in my article about the history of the battle of Hoth that I’d completely missed out Trilogy Arcade. This was a light gun game which jumped between Time Crisis style shooting sections and rail shooter space battles. There were also first person lightsaber fights, which is excellent! There’s a Luke vs Boba Fett fight on Jabba’s Barge, which fits the timeline about a perfectly as you could hope and has a pretty sick Sarlacc ending.
Jedi Adventure (Tiger R-Zone)
Going by the sticker, we can see Luke off the Return of the Jedi poster. There’s no way you could mistake those flowing locks. The packaging for the game also says you’re Jedi Knight Luke, rescuing Han from Jabba the Hutt. So that’s the R-Zone in canon. Plus Boba Fett is on the sticker. So guess who’s got two thumbs and is stupid enough to buy an R-Zone and this game just to put this game on a listicle article? And all Boba Fett does is pop up every now and then.
And with that, here ends the official Boba Fett timeline. The official canon says that after Jedi Adventure on the R-Zone, Boba Fell fell into the Great Pit of Carkoon and that was it for the galaxy’s greatest bounty hunter. But we know better, right nerds? And there’s one last game which canonises this for us.
Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy
AGE: 46 | 14 ABY
Jedi Academy is probably my favourite appearance of Boba Fett in a computer game. On the Ord Mantell level, Jaden has to blow up a load of weapon crates and for some reason I forget, he’s on Boba Fett’s radar. It’s sort of a boss level, apart from Boba can’t be killed. Once he takes enough damage, Boba rockets off to heal up. I like to think it’s like those scenes in Predator and Predator 2. He’s off giving himself a hyperspray or something and then once he’s healed up, he’s back into the fight. This is a perfect use of the character. Boba is this constant menace throughout the whole level, exactly what you want from Boba Fett. It’s not as well-realised, but I feel like this is a forerunner to games Friday the 13th or Alien Isolation in that you have this constant looming threat that can only really be avoided, instead of beaten in a straight fight. If Boba Fett was to be put in a single player game in the future, this is how I’d want to see him realised. An unstoppable machine motivated by forces you just don’t understand. And the only way to win is to get out of his way.
At that, we’re all out of Boba Fett appearances in single player video games. We could say that Boba did die at the end of RotJ, but there’s TONS of books etc which tell his story after he escapes from the Sarlacc. I reckon there’s conservatively 300 pieces of media with Boba in, and the later books about old man Fett are absolutely wicked.
Before we wrap this little journey up, I want to revisit Bounty Hunter. Because Bounty Hunter is the Boba Fett game I always wanted. It’s by far the best Boba Fett experience on the list and the closest we’ve ever got to an actual standalone Boba Fett game. I wish there was a texture pack for the emulators, leaving everything else alone but just changing the colour of Jango’s armour to Boba’s. It would be the perfect Boba Fett game then.
