This tech demo offers a glimpse at a Star Wars fighting game that was in development on the original Xbox at Studio Gigante, the defunct company co-founded by Robomodo president Josh Tsui.

The footage comes from an "in engine [sic] tech demo," according to Tsui, and consists of two rounds of a fight between Darth Maul, the antagonist of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, and Anakin Skywalker. Fighting action in the game appears to take place in a 3D space instead of a 2D plane.

The game runs into the same problem that plagues all games involving lightsaber combat — namely, that a lightsaber's beam should be capable of cutting right through just about anything except another lightsaber.

Studio Gigante, which Tsui co-founded in 1999 as Studio Freestyle, developed Tao Feng: Fist of the Lotus and WWE WrestleMania 21 on the Xbox. Tsui told Polygon last fall that the company was pitching the above prototype for a Star Wars fighting game, as well as one based on Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill films, to publishers when it was forced to close in July 2005. Before starting Studio Gigante, Tsui worked on a number of Mortal Kombat and sports titles at Midway.