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 masterpiece of the space-sim genre.

The Good
There is a good deal to like about TIE Fighter. First of all, of course, is a chance to fly for the Empire in all of its technologically advanced starfighters. All the elements that made X-Wing so great are there and there are several improvements. The graphics are excellent, the sound appropriate, and the famed Williams soundtrack is, of course, there to accompany you for the ride. The missions are exciting and interesting, with multiple goals to accomplish. You can get through the game by accomplishing only the main goals of the missions, as assigned to you by your commanding officer, but there are also hidden goals, often assigned to you by a secret agent of the Emperor. The dogfighting action is great and the new variety of weapondry makes it even better, adding such goodies as space-bombs and rockets. The Tour of Duty is the best of this game. Though there are "simulator" missions, like X-Wing´s "Historical Missions", this time around most of them are simple training exercises and not too challenging, though there are some real nutcrackers there. The final nice feature and a great improvement over X-Wing is the ability to back-up your pilot´s illustrious career, just in case you get blasted to kingdom come in the next mission.

The Bad
Can´t think of anything in particular, except that joystick support for the Gravis Blackhawk is horrid (it kept jumping to the side when I was trying to get a good bead). It works great with a Sidewinder, however.

The Bottom Line
A great space-sim set in the inspiring stage of the Star Wars universe.

DOS · by Steelysama (82) · 2000

Great game that lived up to my expectations.

The Good
* Newtonian story line [the game push the story to you as hard as you push the game], ability to join the inner circle.

  • On top of getting the mission accomplished message the player gets to receive medals for extraordinary fits in battle.

  • The GFX and GUI are adequate to the time of it's conception.

  • The player get to fly a wide variety of crafts.

  • Enemy deployment noted in Intel reports plays a key role in craft armament phase.

  • Different locations for each of the chapters adds to the games richness.

  • the ability to change chapters even with out finishing them first decrease frustration level, the player can get back to a hard mission later on.

  • GOOD old Star Wars music.

    The Bad
    * No personalization to the character accept for the different medals the player receives.

  • No personalization to the player's craft, in real life pilots and army vets usually know that "your weapon is a part of your body" and that your craft is your weapon. Tie fighter takes the least personalized "Oh-spawn-already!" approach.

  • Good OLD Star Wars music.

    The Bottom Line
    To make a long story short: Tie fighter was created in times when GFX weren't enough to make a real impact on sales since there was no real ability to have complexed graphics. The story line got the job done and let the player feel like he wasn't the bad guy even if he flew for the empire, unless of course you wanted to run secret errands for the emperor and be accepted in to the ranks of the dark society of the Imperial intelligence, that's a whole lot different story... I've been playing PC\console games for well over 20 years now and to my humble opinion is that lucasarts really maxed out their investment on this game. I personally hope that lucasarts will remember us joystick people and will make a "Freelancer\Parkan II\X3:reunion"-ish style game ;) Tie Fighter gives you the thrills of a good flight sim while involving you in a story line that takes you on a too well traveled though shady path. Two thumbs up, WAY UP!

[...and these are just few words of this great lucasarts game]

DOS · by tuxu tuxu (2) · 2008

A game that makes you wonder - did George Lucas skip on movie starring you?

The Good
The game itself is simple - you fly around with your high-tech spacecraft and destroy others. However the best part of the game is the constant challenge. Disintegrating "bad guys" is not enough. You must protect cargo vessels from enemies and so on, similarly to some other space sims, but sometimes it is needed to defend a disabled enemy from your own of being destroyed. And there is of course, awesome variety of vessels for you to fly. Starting with the original Tie Fighters, Bombers and Interceptors, later come the Advanceds and Defenders (in the Defender of the Empire expansion pack). And besides the Ties there are Assault Gunboat with its superior successor Missile boat. The story is linear - your success in the game is in no way affecting the story. But in the story there are some great cinematic sequences that remind you all of the Star Wars movies.

The Bad
Besides everything there are some lackings in the game. You can not choose ship for your mission and sometimes not even the weaponry. If you deliberately fail a mission (to eliminate Darth Vader or the Emperor) you are forced to refly the mission. Although the game does not require a joystick, it is almost impossible to fly without one. Keyboard is too slow for even fine aiming and mouse...well, after first week of playing, half of my mouse pad was stuck under my mouse.

The Bottom Line
It is worth playing if you like space sims of Star Wars trilogy. However, it is not free for downloading and when you need to invest some of your hard-earned money into it, you would probably prefer newer versions of the game, maybe X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter.

DOS · by tige kala (4) · 2003

[ 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.