Star Wars game retrospective

[frogbeastegg]

Gametrailers.com has been running a star wars game retrospective.

Part IV is the best IMO, as it's dedicated to the X-Wing and TIE Fighter series. The first games I played, along with Prince of Persia and Lemmings. I'm sure the cutscenes didn't shudder along at such a low frame rate back then ... and I remember getting all excited about the idea that one day games might look as good as those cutscenes! Can anyone else spot what is wrong with the X-Wing and TIE Fighter footage shown there? Clue, look at it all closely. Answer below.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

That is not footage of the original games! It's the remade version Lucasarts did on the x-wing versus TIE fighter engine.

I played the super star wars SNES platformers (in part II) too. Great games, and so difficult!

The next one is supposed to be the strategy games. More nostalgia fodder; Supremacy/Rebellion (Europe/America) was one of the first strategy games I played extensively.

[Privateerkev]

Ah the micromanagement nightmare that was Rebellion...

It was a good game though and I still pop it in from time to time.

I'll have to check out those videos.

I remember the SNES star war games being absurdly hard.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Tie fighter was the first game I really played.

And I really played it.

[Kekvit Irae]

I love Rebellion

[drone]

X-Wing and Tie Fighter were awesome games at the time. My only complaints were the missions where they forced you to drive a pig like the Y-wing. Sooooo sloooow.

[Geoffrey S]

Dark Forces equals X-wing and Tie Fighter in my opinion. As with the flight sim games, it understood the role games should play in the Star Wars universe: presenting the unseen side of things, the sideshow to the war presented in the movies. Later games, such as Jedi Outcast, focus on being a powerful jedi or a major player in the wars, or create contrived interactions with major characters - but that makes no sense. Those kind of plots reek of bad fan fiction.

Dark Forces really felt like it fit in the Star Wars universe, in plot and in visuals. KotoR did get away with big epic plots, because it took place far earlier and pretty much anything goes.

[frogbeastegg]

There was something worse than the Y-Wing. The assault gunboat. :shudders: Slow, wallowing, rubbish weak lasers, tinfoil shields, and a big fat target.

Didn't like the missile boat much either; one puny laser and rubbish shields meant that dogfighting was a pain. I understood that it was supposed to rely on missiles for most of its killing, yet you simply could not pack enough of them.

Supremacy/Rebellion was a revelation to me back in the day. The few strategy games I'd played until then were turn based, and overall less complicated.

The empire was the side of choice. Cooler ships, cooler troopers, cooler interface, mostly cooler characters ... who didn't love building a fleet with a death star, several super star destroyers, and enough TIE defenders to destroy a solar system?

The AI was a bit ropey, and there were some nasty exploits. I used to stick captured enemy characters on a crappy transport ship and send it to the opposite side of the galaxy. Immediately on arriving I sent it back to the other side. That left the AI no chance at all to rescue them, and the characters couldn't generate their random escape events if they were in hyperspace.

[Geoffrey S]

That's the neat thing. I didn't dislike the Y-Wing because the controls were grotty or whatever - I disliked it as a ship to fly in. They really got the feel right for those ships. Only think they failed with the missile ship, felt completely out of place.

[frogbeastegg]

I dislike flying bombers. My love is reserved for the fast and agile ships. The Y-wing and co are supposed to be wallowing and cumbersome, and they did a good job coding that.

[drone]

Yes they did. Doesn't mean I have to like it though. I had forgotten about the gunboats, those were made of fail.

The first mission I ran with an A-Wing was sublime. "Where have you been all my life?" I used to run that A-Wing training mission, where 3 TIEs of different types would show up every couple of minutes. Loved setting rules and goals for that one.

[Geoffrey S]

Loved that thing about Tie Fighter where you start off in a backwater in a measly Tie Fighter, and through the campaign attract the attention of the emperor and his cronies, rising through the ranks and getting better ships all the time. I mean, really, try playing the first few missions again after getting the Tie Defender...!

[Privateerkev]

With Rebellion, did anyone else spend hours restarting the game so they got the perfect beginning setup?

With Alliance, I wouldn't play a game until I got it where the Headquarters started in the lower right corner of the map. That way, all of your characters can reach the same inner system pretty quick with Han's Falcon. Then, with all of the main characters in the same area, it was easy to recruit the rest and put them to work as agents. The Falcon was a major advantage to the Rebellion. The .5 hyperdrive made me use Han for all Agent transporting and missions.

With Empire, I wouldn't play a game until I got Darth Vader to start in the sector with Coruscant. I would simply focus on that sector and let the rest fall apart. With Darth and the Emperor recruiting on Coruscant, you can get all the characters fairly quickly and use them as agents. Then, when that sector is all green, just move on to Corellia. Repeat until you win.

I have actually saved both of those setups so I wouldn't have to spend a whole saturday restarting my campaigns.

[lars573]

Hating sims of any kind means I must disagree. Part 5 will be best as it features the RTS games.

[frogbeastegg]

Loved that thing about Tie Fighter where you start off in a backwater in a measly Tie Fighter, and through the campaign attract the attention of the emperor and his cronies, rising through the ranks and getting better ships all the time. I mean, really, try playing the first few missions again after getting the Tie Defender...!

I played the campaign many times, and I always had problems going back to the unshielded ships. Ah yes ...

Intrepid froggy levels off for a head on pass at a pathetic Z-95 headhunter, calm and confident. She's done this a thousand times. Hold the trigger down for four seconds and the Z-95 will be no more than a fireball in the void. It's showing off, yes. Unneccesarily taking damage to luxuriate in how awesome the Imperial navy's finest ships are. These rebels don't deserve the respect of a proper dogfight. The distance closes, the targeting box lights up, and the exchange of fire begins. But what's this - instead of the hiss of shields taking fire froggy hears the wrenching splutter of hull damage! Her sensors blow out, her targeting computer smashes. One second later she glumly watches her TIE Fighter pinwheel through its death throws. Ooops.

With Rebellion, did anyone else spend hours restarting the game so they got the perfect beginning setup?

I don't remember noticing that the setups varied. I suppose I must have, decided it didn't matter, and then forgot all about in in the years since I played.

Part 5 will be best as it features the RTS games.

Wish I could agree. I found the strategy games to be overall a bad bunch. Supremacy was the only one I liked. The one I'm waiting for is the FPS one; dark forces, jedi knight, and mysteries of the sith.




All the reviews I saw of Supremacy said the rebels were the easier side, and the empire had a far harder campaign. Did anyone else find that? I always had more trouble playing the rebels. Their starting ships were rubbish, and it took a long time to research and build up to the point where I could stand up to the empire without requiring overwhelming numbers.

[drone]

I played the campaign many times, and I always had problems going back to the unshielded ships. Ah yes ...

Intrepid froggy levels off for a head on pass at a pathetic Z-95 headhunter, calm and confident. She's done this a thousand times. Hold the trigger down for four seconds and the Z-95 will be no more than a fireball in the void. It's showing off, yes. Unneccesarily taking damage to luxuriate in how awesome the Imperial navy's finest ships are. These rebels don't deserve the respect of a proper dogfight. The distance closes, the targeting box lights up, and the exchange of fire begins. But what's this - instead of the hiss of shields taking fire froggy hears the wrenching splutter of hull damage! Her sensors blow out, her targeting computer smashes. One second later she glumly watches her TIE Fighter pinwheel through its death throws. Ooops.

Breathe on those TIEs wrong, and they would come apart. One of my biggest problem was collisions in a dog-fight. Spinning around and looping like crazy trying to track a rebel fighter and BAM!, a wingman zips in front and takes both of us out. Somewhat satisfying from the rebel standpoint, you'd hear a thunk and your front shield disappeared, but at least you knew some poor imperial was sucking vacuum.

X-Wing Quiz: The final objective of the mission is complete. Your shields are down, but you have used your wounded ship well. The enemy TIEs are swarming around, and you hit the hyperspace key. The number of seconds it takes for your ship to orient itself into the right facing and escape the pounding is:
a. Random
b. Indirectly proportional to the usefulness of your wingmen.
c. Directly proportional to the number of TIEs in your vicinity.
d. Exponentially proportional to the number of times you have retried this mission.
e. Sorry, there appears to be a star destroyer in your way. Please move several kilometers to the side and try again. We apologize for the 10 seconds of laser fire you took while we were figuring this out.

[frogbeastegg]

f. 1/2 a second longer than it takes for the mass of enemies to shoot you to bits.

[Martok]

All the reviews I saw of Supremacy said the rebels were the easier side, and the empire had a far harder campaign. Did anyone else find that? I always had more trouble playing the rebels. Their starting ships were rubbish, and it took a long time to research and build up to the point where I could stand up to the empire without requiring overwhelming numbers.

While I didn't play Rebellion/Supremacy for long before giving up on it -- you may recall I've previously stated that the interface was simply too frustrating for me -- I have to agree with you that I found the Empire was generally easier than the Alliance. The Imperial vessels were just that much better than their Rebel counterparts, especially with regards to their capital ships. I'll take Star Destroyers over MonCal star cruisers any day!

[Kekvit Irae]

While I didn't play Rebellion/Supremacy for long before giving up on it -- you may recall I've previously stated that the interface was simply too frustrating for me -- I have to agree with you that I found the Empire was generally easier than the Alliance. The Imperial vessels were just that much better than their Rebel counterparts, especially with regards to their capital ships. I'll take Star Destroyers over MonCal star cruisers any day!

But Bulwarks > SSDs in a head-on fight. Plus, when I'm playing Alliance, I always target the enemy shipyards first so they don't have a chance to build a Death Star.

[Martok]

But Bulwarks > SSDs in a head-on fight.

SSD's look way cooler, though.

Plus, when I'm playing Alliance, I always target the enemy shipyards first so they don't have a chance to build a Death Star.

I never did get around to building any Death Stars. Aside from the considerable resources necessary to construct them, I admittedly have never cared for superweapons -- they just don't feel very sporting to me. (Not a proper attitude for a Sith Lord, I know, but....eh.)

[discovery1]

But Bulwarks > SSDs in a head-on fight. Plus, when I'm playing Alliance, I always target the enemy shipyards first so they don't have a chance to build a Death Star.

Meh, the key thing to do is to send sabatours after all the construction yards you don't plan on taking for yourself. helps slow down the other side alot. Indeed once I edited the game so that the rebels did not have one with their HQ, ruined the game since the rebels never got off the ground.

[Kekvit Irae]

I never did get around to building any Death Stars. Aside from the considerable resources necessary to construct them, I admittedly have never cared for superweapons -- they just don't feel very sporting to me. (Not a proper attitude for a Sith Lord, I know, but....eh.)

When facing a fleet of Mon Cal's and Frigates, it helps to have a Death Star on your side to instantly destroy one capital ship of your choice at the start of battle (especially one that has a whole bunch of Alliance officers on it).
I take one planet in a controlled sector and convert it to nothing but two level2 Shields and the rest into shipyards. You'll be able to make the Death Star much more quickly with 10-12 shipyards in a single system.

[Privateerkev]

Battles in Rebellion were frustrating until you got a gravity well projector.

The AI would just run for any reason.

[Spino]

Great retrospective! However I think it would have been better served if they did the entire series in chronological order as opposed to dealing with consoles and PC games seperately.

Episode IV brings back such wonderful memories. I was in heaven when the modding community came out with powerful mission editors for the X-Wing and Tie Fighter games. I loved creating massive fleet on fleet brawls sporting mutiple cruisers & frigates and hordes of fighters. I would set waypoints for the heavies and frigates so they would pass within firing range of each other. Man, there's was nothing like the feeling of chasing an enemy fighter along the hull of a heavy cruiser while massive ship to ship salvoes are firing all around you.

I'm rather surprised Lucasarts hasn't seen fit to bring this series into the modern era. With the horsepower of 3D cards the potential for high resolution, epic scale carnage is unbelievable. Yes, I know about SW: Battlefront 1 & 2 but they were weak substitutes for the real thing. Ship to ship combat in the 3rd person? Blasphemy!

To their credit the modders who created the Galactic Conquest mod for Battlefield 1942 did a phenomenal job of recreating the thrill of ship to ship combat in the X-Wing & Tie Fighter series. Pity it never got the attention it deserved but it was damn fun while it lasted.

[Geoffrey S]

Anyone played First Strike? What I've seen looks very impressive.

http://www.moddb.com/mods/6512/first-strike

[Vladimir]

Wow. Rebellion, TIE fighter, Force Commander, all great games.

The rebels in Rebellion were super easy to win with, just spam Y-wings. That's right, the same death traps in TIE Fighter will win you easy battles against the empire. While the empire had the leadership/supress revolt exploit the rebels were taking out your star destroyers in the opening game and using Han Solo to sabatage everything in sight.

TIE Fighter: It's never felt so good to work for the bad guys.

[Timsup2nothin]

Back in the day they lost me at X-Wing vs TIE Fighter...I was happy playing TIE Fighter until....jeez...I dunno...maybe I moved and couldn't get a good spot for the joystick and it just faded away...

If you can believe it, not very long ago I did the research on making TIE Fighter run on a modern box, but couldn't make it work. You need the CD-ROM version, and I had the old five floppy original.

So, question: Is there anything in the long line since that has the old TIE Fighter quality that will run on a modern box? I suppose I could track down a surviving copy of the CD somewhere, but that strikes me as somewhat extreme on the nostalgia front.

[Bob the Insane]

X-Wing Quiz: The final objective of the mission is complete. Your shields are down, but you have used your wounded ship well. The enemy TIEs are swarming around, and you hit the hyperspace key. The number of seconds it takes for your ship to orient itself into the right facing and escape the pounding is:

g: As I recall the exit was in a specific direction and as long as you where pointed pretty much in the right direction it was pretty quick, otherwise yoiu had to wait through the whole orintating your self thing first...

[Sarathos]

One over gross noobish question here, but what is the Star Wars retrospective?

[Kekvit Irae]

Did you click the link in the first post and watch the videos?

[Sarathos]

Yeah, they didn't really work but I shall try them again.