Star Wars: TIE Fighter

Moby ID: 240
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Description official descriptions

You are a member of the Imperial Navy, eager to fight the Rebel Alliance and other scum to strengthen the rule of Darth Vader and the Emperor.

The follow up to X-Wing is a space combat simulation set in the Star Wars universe. There are 7 campaigns, taking in over 50 missions. You often have wingmen who can be given orders to help you out. The detailed storyline is driven by cutscenes. You will fly a variety of craft from the lowly Tie Fighter to the speedy Tie Interceptor to the high-powered Tie Advanced. On each of these, balancing engine/laser/shield ratios in real time is crucial to getting the most power and safety.

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Credits (DOS version)

76 People (66 developers, 10 thanks) · View all

Project Leader / Translation
Voice Production
Translation of Manual
Editor
Art Director
Production
Pre-Press
Story
Concepts
Original Art
3D Models
Layout and Design
Project Coordination and special assistance at LucasArts
Project Coordination and special assistance at Lucasfilm Ltd.
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 90% (based on 20 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 117 ratings with 14 reviews)

A superb flight-sim! A step up from X-Wing, an already great game.

The Good
I loved the ability to adjust the difficulty level. I also liked having the option of various goal levels so that you could survive the tough missions and rack up major points on the easy one.

The Bad
Like the X-Wing game, I thought the maze race was so-so. I may not have played that part enough to get the "full enjoyment" out of it. I'm not sure yet how I would have improved it, but it seemed awfully boring.

The Bottom Line
Despite being 6 years old, this game is still highly competitive with current games. It's definitely a classic worth replaying over and over again.

DOS · by Spectre (126) · 2000

Note to self: Buy a joystick

The Good
Action, action, action. And teamplay. That about sums it up. Just that feeling: dozens of ship around, fighting with each other, and you're one of them. NOT one against all, but a part of a team. You're not special, you just go out there and do your job - take out as many of the enemy's ships as you can, keep an eye on the special objectives and hope others are succesful in doing the same.

The combat itself is mostly a case of moving your joystick (or in my case, mouse) frantically around so that you get your chances of landing some hits on the evil (er) critter buzzing all around and trying to kill you. There is a bit more complicated thinking going on BEFORE you entire close combat - ie, when you approach your enemy you could try weakening him with some missiles, and you have to be really careful to dodge in the last moment before he hits you straight on with laser fire (killing you in seconds) - but once you're past that stage, it's just mindless fun, killing your controller of choice by whacking it about like crazy, trying to guess which way the enemy will go and then getting an immense feeling of satisfaction as after 2 minutes of chasing that elusive spot in your radar suddenly in 5 seconds you get 5 hits in and lower his shields to 10%. And before he gets the shields back, second-guess his move, get on his tail, equalize speeds and blow the sucker out of the sky. Then mutter to yourself: "one down, three to go", or something of that nature, and get on to the next one. If that doesn't speak FUN in very large letters to you, then you probably haven't tried it yet.

Teamplay is, to be honest, probably not that important a STRATEGIC element in the game, but for entertainment value, no Wing Commander dramatics can stand close. You've got your dopey Y-wings all sorted out? There's your wingman battling a wily A-wing 2 k's off - so switch to missiles, get your target fixed and help him out (missiles are only good for middle-distance fighting, when you're up close and personal it's lasers only). Or perhaps it's a routine clean-up mission, four of you against some X-wings and A-wings: throw out all your missiles on the A-wings, move in, engage the X-wings, bang bang, your teammate's lowered his shields to nothing, you do the rest - then you return the favor, leaving some poor X-Wing roaming about on no shields and 50% damage so that one of your wingmen gets an easy kill. Or perhaps you have your base ship with it's heavy laser fire in this mission, and can draw your enemies in towards it's range and watch them being burned alive in all the lovely beautiful GREEN (that's your allied color) laser fire. In short, winning in this game is a total blast (on losing, read the Bad section).

And another thing which makes this game different from WC (that's Wing Commander not Warcraft) is the general mission design: three words, Matter of Fact. No soap opera going on here - exactly like the actual mission gameplay, the grand plot is just the Evil Empire getting on with its evil business. Settle a civil war, destroy a rebel outpost, defend the building of your own outpost in order to battle space piracy. And it all goes about slowly, one engagement after another as you gradually take the conflict in your hands, or as your outpost is gradually constructed, or as you gradually move in on the rebel's location. Realism rather than drama, and WC fans will probably be bored but for me, it just adds to the immersion effect. Not to mention the schematic mission briefings, the weathered old pilot with his wise (and practically useful) words of advice, the emperor's agent with his "special tasks" and the stars and secret tatoos you get for it all. No big deal as far as rewards go (certainly not if compared with FMV cutscenes) but that's what this game is about - not the loud pomp of saving the galaxy, but the quiet satisfaction of killing 8 Y-wings in one mission.

The Bad
Well, the flipside of the coin is that though the winning totally kicks ass, the losing is REALLY REALLY irritating. Your ship is just as vulnerable as all the others, so if you have a stroke of bad luck (enemy getting on your tail), within 5 seconds the mission might be over for you. And you have to replay it from the start. This is okay with the fun missions - I don't really mind going out against all those hordes of Rebel small craft cannon fodder one more time - but if the mission we're talking about is one of those buggeries with a "twist" in it, then it gets really annoying. The "twist" I'm talking about here is generally along these lines: you have a weakling ship to watch out for WHILE you're battling an armada of enemy ships, or you have big huge enemy ships that kill you in approximately 0.005 seconds time if you don't watch out or hammer them out with missiles right from the start (which isn't very easy to do). Or, most absolutely worst of all, you have a field of about 20 floating mines which are nearly impossible to target and which continously fire lasers at you. And I'm talking NORMAL DIFFICULTY here! If that's normal difficulty, then who needs enemies?

The Bottom Line
Splashes of laser fire on an X-Wing's warm twisting wet body. The crossfires turning blood red on the enemy battle cruiser. You shields down to nothing and suddenly the screen turning green from allied fire. If dated (though servicable) graphics don't bug you, those are the things you'll be eating and drinking and having sex with for the next two or three full days after buying this game. Good luck.

DOS · by Alex Man (31) · 2002

Star Wars combat at it's best

The Good
The fact that it's Star Wars means that you will wan to play this, only the difference is that you get to play as the Empire, that means instead of X-Wings, you can now play as a Tie Fighter!. There are planty of missions that will keep you busy, also the film room mode that allowed you to view your mission like a mini movie (a rather good feature in X-Wing) is also in this game.

The Bad
The missions can get a bit on the hard side and there are too many controls, but then that's the problem with flight games.

The Bottom Line
If you like Star Wars, and flight games, then you will really want to check this out

DOS · by Grant McLellan (584) · 2001

[ View all 14 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Developer information MrFlibble (18144) Feb 13, 2013
Star Wars: TIE Fighter tuxu tuxu (2) Jun 18, 2008

Trivia

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

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Droog.

Additional contributors: Trixter, William Shawn McDonie, Adam Baratz, Patrick Bregger, darkpilot, FatherJack.

Game added August 21, 1999. Last modified January 24, 2024.