Star Wars: Rogue Squadron

About Star Wars: Rogue Squadron

Star Wars: Rogue Squadron (1998) is Factor 5 and LucasArts' arcade flight game for the Nintendo 64 and PC, 16 missions of Luke Skywalker's X-wing pilots fighting the Empire between the first two films.

Star Wars: Rogue Squadron in Depth

Unlike the simulation-minded X-Wing series, this is fast arcade flight action seen from behind the craft, with a cockpit view available. Each of the 16 levels sets objectives in four kinds: search and destroy, reconnaissance, rescue and protect. Against TIE fighters, bombers and interceptors, walkers, turrets, tanks, probe droids and speeder bikes, the player flies the X-wing, A-wing, Y-wing, snowspeeder and V-wing, each with its own weapons, speed and handling. A level first has to be flown in a set craft but can then be replayed in any. Nine hidden power-ups permanently upgrade weapons or durability.

After each level the player's time, kills, accuracy, friendly craft saved and bonuses collected are measured against bronze, silver and gold benchmarks, and medals raise the player's rank and unlock secrets. These include bonus levels based on the films, Beggar's Canyon, the Death Star trench run and the Battle of Hoth, and extra craft such as the Millennium Falcon and a TIE interceptor. The story runs six months after the Battle of Yavin, with a final level six years after Return of the Jedi.

Making Star Wars: Rogue Squadron

After Shadows of the Empire, LucasArts planned a follow-up, and Factor 5 turned the terrain engine it was building for a sequel to Rescue on Fractalus! into a Star Wars game. Its focus on flight came from Shadows of the Empire's snowspeeder level at Hoth; the plan was to combine Fractalus's free roaming with the on-rails play of Atari's Star Wars arcade game. Factor 5 made the engine, the music and its own MOsys FX Surround sound drivers, which fit about 40 minutes each of speech and music, while LucasArts wrote the content. Late on, the team realised it had always been running the game with extra memory; it compressed the game to run on a standard console and persuaded Nintendo to sell the Expansion Pak, which raises the resolution from 320 × 240 to 640 × 480.

It was released for Nintendo 64 and Windows in December 1998, the first game in a three-game Star Wars deal with Nintendo. Critics praised its high-resolution visuals and sound but disliked its distance fog and lack of multiplayer, and it scored 85% on Metacritic. More than a million copies were sold worldwide by August 1999. Two GameCube sequels and Battle for Naboo followed.