If you find it, get it. The first one is absolutely brilliant. The second one would have been too, if the developer had been given enough time to actually finish the damned thing.

AFAIK, that particular bug is a problem with the game engine itself, which cannot be fixed without access to the source code. Since only Obsidian and LA have access to that, they are the only ones who can (legally) provide a fix. However, just about a month or two after the game's release, LA pretty much cut off all prospect of any future patches. Since LA is very rabid about protecting its IPs, none of the legitimate mod community wants to even try and touch that bug.

Look for the LucasArts "Star Wars: Best of PC" collection. It is a compilation package that includes KotOR 1, Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast, Battlefront, Republic Commando, Empire at War and a trial sub for Galaxies. It is pretty much the only way you can still find it new these days. Of course, with LA now on Steam, I'm sure it won't be long before we see the KotOR games available there and on other download services.

Right, that means no more KotOR 2 for me, ever.

Well, that's your loss, my friend. Despite its (significant) flaws, KotOR 2 is still a very good game and well worth playing through. If it were me, I'd just skip the swoop racing entirely and focus on the rest of game, since racing isn't a required part of the game at all, but maybe that's just me.

I'm sorry, I agree about the whole "great game" thing, but I'd be constantly pissed off at all the things done wrong with it, or not done at all. I know I was, the first time around, and it sounds like nothing has improved in the slightest.
LucasArts raped KotOR 2, pure and simple.

LA had a hand in KotOR2's current state but Obsidian wasn't exactly wise concerning some of their decisions.

Oh, certainly not. They should have never agreed to that deadline in the first place. But LucasArts is responsible for the decision to keep that deadline, no matter what state the game happened to be in at the time. That was a baaaad decision.

I just picked up KOTOR 1 on Half.com for $20, mint condition, with a manual. I have it for the XBOX and loved it, but my XBOX died and I haven't put together the scratch for an XBOX 360. And my 9 yo daughter has become a huge Star Wars fanatic, so I was hoping to play the game with her, with one of us on the keyboard and the other driving the mouse or some such.

From what I read at the time, the main thing that lucasarts did was cut 2-3 months off the development time & told obsidian to just deal with it.
Dude, get an xbox (assuming you don't have one) and find a copy of KOTOR2 on ebay. Its well worth it, controls perfectly and in the literallly dozens of times I've played the game, I've NEVER seen that swoop racing bug. Sure it lacks the modability of the PC version but the core game is the real draw here, not a mod that may well never come out

In mid-2004, LA moved the release date of the game up from April 2005 to December 2004, which cut a solid 4 months of development time off of Obsidian's originally agreed to schedule. Because of that change in plans, Obsidian was forced to rush some things, cut a lot of planned material and limit the quality testing time. After the game was released on PC, Obsidian made a patch for the game that would have corrected much of the flaws in the plot and broken side missions (possibly even corrected that swoop problem), but LA refused to release it. While it is possible that Obsidian may have bitten off more than they could chew, LA really screwed them and us over with their actions.

4 months? Damn even longer than I thought. I knew it was a stupid christmas release thing though. I mean who the fuck wouldn't buy a star wars game which was the sequel to one of the most popular games in the previous few years and widely tipped to be a game of the year simply because it wasn't christmas?
I mean I know they count on a lot of "ooh little johnny likes spaceships and he has one of those ex box things" sales by people who don't know any better but can't imagine that it would be so significant a profit centre as to risk company rep and product quality on.

Even with LA cutting time, there are some silly stuff that just shouldn't have been in the game, like how you are supposed to be the last Jedi who must look for the last four Jedi in hiding. And it was already stupid enough to have to look for the four star maps in the first game and have it repeated again here.
Yet no Carth, no Bastilla, no Mission: that was a lot of suck I did not miss.

OK, you have a problem with the basic gameplay/plot devices both games use? Take away the search for the star maps and the missing Jedi and both games completely lose the basis for the storyline and might as well not have a game at all. I totally understand having issues with the bugs, broken quests and lame ending, but something as basic as the core of the storyline, not so much.
As for the characters, I gotta agree with you there. KotOR2's characters are a significant improvement over the first game.

Yea anybody wanting to find a copy of either of the games will have much better luck with getting the xbox versions esp. since both were re released under Xbox's "Platinum Hits." Also it seems to me that the console version contains far fewer technical problems.
Man, the best part of playing evil was being able to kill Mission though I was always upset that they never let me beat Carth's skull in... oh well, i'll have to settle for leaving Kaiden to die in Mass Effect.

Indeed, it is that shallow.
Have you ever heard of the legendary concept of goof design? Having to look for four MacGuffins in the first KotOR wasn't already the most endearing of tasks, but having it repeated again just feels silly, especially when it has you look for the last four of your kind, of which you are already the last. Plus you can just gather them or kill them, it makes no difference.
Unless one is willing to sail the Seven Seas for the PC version.
At least you could kill Anomen or Aerie in BG2 as soon as you met them, or even mid-game.
Funny you mention killing Mission because I always believed it epitomises the evil path in this game: you play a petty dumb brute racketting people for their lunch money and end up killing an annoying teenager.