PC Gamer wrote a nice, lengthy feature article on one of the best space sims of all time, and possibly the best Star Wars game of all time:
On the X-wing predecessor
The presentation of TIE fighter
Launch and reception:
There are also a bunch of concept art and videos in the article. Highly recommended reading:
the game is currently on sale on GOG and if you download and extract the Enhanced Edition for the 1998 version, you'll get the original music and sound from the original release that was removed from the otherwise superior 98 edition.
Enjoy!
The DOS version of TIE Fighter hit stores in July of 1994, about 17 months after X-Wing, the first game in the series. It was immediately noteworthy for being the first-ever video game to let players assume the role of a rank-and-file TIE pilot in the Imperial Starfleet. For the first time, a Star Wars game let you be the bad guy. "It actually made you feel proud to fly a ship for the Empire," Darth Maul voice actor Sam Witwer told G4 back in 2012. "You actually have that twisted point of view, which is really fun."
Critics thought so, too. PC Gamer magazine's writers named it the year's best action game, and it probably only lost out on the overall game of the year award for one reason: id Software's Doom. But the mag did declare TIE Fighter "the best space-combat simulation ever created," and more than 25 years later, few Star Wars fans would argue otherwise.
On the X-wing predecessor
X-Wing was an innovative, first-person space-combat sim in which players took on the role of Keyan Farlander, a pilot for the Rebel Alliance. While it lacked the branching story structure of the similar Wing Commander series, it found depth and complexity in both its puzzle-like mission design and clever energy-management system. As Computer Gaming World put it in their June 1993 review, "Each ship is somewhat like a flying battery that supplies power at a slow but steady rate. This power can be directed to the engines, the lasers, or to the shields. Diverting power to one area reduces the amount available to the others."
To master X-Wing is to master this system. The game boasted LucasArts' patented iMUSE audio system, which could smoothly change music tracks to match the action, and 3D polygonal graphics—rudimentary today but impressive for the time. X-Wing's manual highly recommended an extra 512 kilobytes of expanded memory, which tells you something about the tech it was running on. Most importantly, though, it delivered a particular fantasy: Flying an X-wing into battle against the Empire's planet-killing superweapon, the Death Star.
"Every game that I had done since Battlehawks was evolving the engine without totally throwing it out and doing something new," Larry says. "There was always a foundation to build on. The graphics engine was rebuilt or replaced, and went from only bitmaps to bitmaps hybridized with 3D to X-Wing, which became 3D. Whole other sets of systems were already fleshed out and evolved, so that really reduced the risk."
In addition to Holland, X-Wing and TIE Fighter had only two other programmers: Peter Lincroft, who wrote the 3D "flight engine," and Ed Kilham, who was responsible for the cinematic engine that carried much of the narrative. Larry handled the AI programming for the games' mission builder.
Right away, based on the hard lessons he'd learned on Luftwaffe, Larry made a decision that shaped the entire X-Wing series: the first game would include only the Rebel Alliance's perspective. "I knew early on that I wanted to use the same dual perspective for the Star Wars material. But I didn't want to put it all in one game. That was crazy," he says. "This was going to be a game that had a lot more story in it, and more role-playing of an individual character—a Luke Skywalker type—as opposed to previous games that were more laboratories of history."
You can see Holland's "realistic" approach to making a Star Wars game even in X-Wing's manual, which is written as though you're a real rookie pilot joining the Rebellion. It describes one mode, called Historical Combat, as "recreations of actual encounters with Imperial Forces."
The presentation of TIE fighter
"TIE Fighter was our chance to do everything that we thought of but didn't get to do with X-Wing, from a function and an experience standpoint," Robin says. "Because I was so close to Larry, particularly, and the team—and new to the whole realm—what was really fascinating for me was to witness the creative process. And I know TIE Fighter was a real coup, because we were always playing with the good guys, and now we could take the point of view: Who was the good guy, really? That comes from Larry's background in anthropology, and wanting to see the different sides of things. I think it was an interesting move; it put something new into the Star Wars universe."
Another way TIE Fighter differs from X-Wing is in its branching, nonlinear structure. Along with a pair of mission designers, David Wessman and David Maxwell ("The two Daves," naturally), Larry arranged an overall narrative arc, a cast of characters, and the plot beats that needed to occur in each of the game's charming animated cinematics. Set in the aftermath of the Battle of Hoth, TIE Fighter shows the rebels scattering in search of a new base. Thrawn, meanwhile, hunts for an Admiral Zaarin, traitor to the Empire (one of the team's original characters), with appearances by the iconic Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine at key moments throughout.
Scenes are rendered with a mix of altered stills from the Star Wars films, new digital art and animation, and in-engine 3D events. In a video interview shot just a few weeks before TIE Fighter was finished, Holland said one of the big challenges with the game was fitting it onto floppies, rather than a CD. "The quantity of interactive, animated cutscenes we'd like to add had to be limited. The amount of digitized voice, sound effects had to be scaled back so we could shoehorn it onto five disks."
Launch and reception:
The full release of Star Wars: TIE Fighter launched in July of 1994 to almost universal acclaim. It won a number of industry awards, and, in May '97, PC Gamer named the "Collector's Edition" CD-ROM version of TIE Fighter, which had the more advanced graphics and sound Holland had wanted back in 1994, the greatest game ever made.
"A lot of people grew a lot working on these products; they learned a ton," says Robin Holland. "I'm really proud of our company. We have people telling us, still, that that was the best work experience they ever had. I think they got a really sweet amount of healthy mentoring. I know I brought something to the party because I wasn't just a gamer; I brought formality. Some people might have wished it didn't come, but if you're going to have a team work well together, you have to do that. You have to bring some formality and some ways that we're going to work together. Larry's really good at giving people a voice, and allowing them to express their ideas."
As the story goes, George Lucas was shown the packaging for TIE Fighter in a board meeting shortly after the game had come out and had started performing well financially and earning acclaim. Lucas picked up the box, examined the cover, and then turned it over to read the copy on the back. "'Imperial Navy'?" he said. "There's no navy in Star Wars." A moment later: "Well, I guess it doesn't matter."
There are also a bunch of concept art and videos in the article. Highly recommended reading:
the game is currently on sale on GOG and if you download and extract the Enhanced Edition for the 1998 version, you'll get the original music and sound from the original release that was removed from the otherwise superior 98 edition.
Enjoy!
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