George Lucas' games company LucasArts Entertainment is to produce a series of games for the Sega Dreamcast platform. First off will be Star Wars: Episode 1 Racer, a game derived from the pod race sequence in The Phantom Menace, which is already available for PC and Nintendo. The Sega version will be released this spring.

LucasArts is committed to delivering further games to Sega, but has not revealed how many, nor whether its next one will make it into stores before the key Christmas sales period.

The LucasArts move - and the recent signing of Eidos to produce a version of Tomb Raider The Last Revelation - is expected to give Dreamcast a significant boost. Although the 128-bit Dreamcast is claimed to be ten times faster than Nintendo's 64-bit N64 and 15 times faster than Sony's Playstation, sales of the Sega platform trail the other consoles.

The new version of Racer, which boasts sound effects and excerpts from the Phantom Menace soundtrack, will allow players to make use of the Sega platform's Internet capabilities and post high scores on the Sega Dreamcast Network.