Star Wars: TIE Fighter

1001 Video Games

Star Wars: TIE Fighter appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Coruscant

The high-orbit view Coruscant as seen in the intro (when the Star Destroyers approach it), looks curiously faithful to how Coruscant looked in the prequel movies, which were filmed five years after the game.

However, the collector's CD-ROM enhanced intro cutscene, features a different view of Coruscant orbit, blue with clouds, totally unrelated to the appearance of the planet-wide city we know.

Demo

In an early coup for advergaming, TIE Fighter's demo dropped jaws when it opened with a brief ad for the then-new Dodge Neon automobile.

Manual

Included with the game was the shortstory The Stele Chronicles which follows the young Maarek Stele, a top notch swoop jockey who's home planet has been at civil war for decades. When The Empire arrives and declares martial law in the system Maarek see's his chance to join up with The Empire and become one of the greatest Imperial pilot's of all time...

The manual has been merged together with shortstory, meaning that you learn tactics and instructions on how to operate your fighter whilst Maarek Stele is being trained at the academy. In the Offical Strategy Guide to Tie Fighter you learn more about what happened to Maarek Stele.

References

• In one of the training missions, you're called upon to protect a "Star Tours" ship from attack, a reference to the popular ride at the Disney theme parks.
• Many of the 'pirate' ships (neither Rebel or Imperial) have cryptic names. It's worth checking what they say in reverse. For example, on Mission 1 of Battle 11, the pirate ship is called 'yrabrab". In reverse, this spells 'barbary', which was a Mediterranean coast base for pirates from the 16th-19th Century. In missions that involve 'space pirates', look at the names yourself and try to figure it out!
• In Battle 9, mission 6, there is a Nav-Bouy with the designation CRM-114. If it looks familar, it should. It's the designation of the decoding device in Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove: or, How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb.
• The creators were obviously quite fond of pop culture. In mission 1 of Battle 10, there is a buoy designated "MST-3K", aka the acronym for Mystery Science Theater 3000

Awards

• Computer Gaming World
  • July 1996 (Issue #144) – Introduced into the Hall of Fame
  • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) - #56 in the “150 Best Games of All Time” list* PC Gamer
  • April 2000 - #23 overall in the "All-Time Top 50 Games" poll
  • April 2005 - #13 in the "50 Best Games of All Time" list

Information also contributed by Apogee IV, Boston Low, Cameron Rhyne PCGamer77, Pseudo_Intellectual, Quackbal and WizardX