The Past and Times of Yore: Star Wars Rogue Squadron 3D, Arcade Starfighting at it's Finest

Release date: December 7th 1998
Genre: Action, shooter
Publisher: LucasArts
Developer: LucasArts, Factor 5
Platforms: Nintendo 64, Microsoft Windows
Modes: Single-player

Continuing on my crusade of all Star Wars space combat games I moved on from the PC games to the console, or though technically I’ll be going back to PC ones at some point. I finished Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire not too long ago so that's two down of the 4 Star Wars Games on the Nintendo 64, the other two being set in the prequel years. I have always been more of a fan of the Jedi lightsaberin’ rather than space combat so when I saw Star Wars: Rogue Squadron 3D with its simplistic controls and gameplay and arcadey feel I was interested to give it a go. I had previously purchased the game on GOG.com and decided to play on PC rather then the Nintendo 64 version mainly so I could use my joystick. When I booted it up and saw that excellent intro with the LucasArts and Factor 5 logo I was really impressed. I’ve always liked the Lucasarts and other logo intros especially in the Jedi games but this one was something else: You see a Rebel Snowspeeder speeding its way through what looks like a shallow canyon on Hoth and firing on some AT-PTs and TIE Fighters but then the camera pans out and you see that it’s the Lucas Arts Logo made into mountains resembling Hoth, then in the next scene you see an X-Wing flying through what looks like the Death Star trench avoiding the lasers then shooting a torpedo then it pans out and you see it’s the Factor 5 Logo before exploding, I don’t know why it’s just so good, they just don’t make things like that anymore.


The amazing intro sequence

The story to Rogue Squadren is set during the war between the Galactic Empire and the Rebel Alliance six months after the Battle of Yavin, you fly as good old Luke Skywalker with his buddy Wedge Antilles as you fight the empire across a number of different planets some known and some new and run into some familiar faces voices along the way as all you can see is the ships as there are no cutscenes in the game just voice acting. It’s somewhat fun playing games that take place in the interim of the movies as you get to see what events happen between them, some bits that I enjoyed were rescuing Wedge and the defection and recruitment of imperial pilot Kasan Moor. The game culminates (sort of) with the battle against the antagonist Moff Kohl Seerdon which I unfortunately couldn’t finish but felt that was enough. Oddly there was only one last mission after that on the Mon Calamari world of Dac, set after the Battle of Endor where you played as Wedge.

Liberation of Gerrard V

When completing missions you are giving a rating and receive bronze, silver or gold ratings, with gold ratings unlocking the secret missions which I won’t spoil but are from famous battles in the movies, you can also unlock new craft via codes. Starting the game I had a bit of a slowness issue with the main menu but managed to fix that. You start off with creating your pilot then you view the intro for the mission and then you get to select a craft! It’s pretty cool the way the camera swings around the docking bay when selecting a craft as it makes you look forward to when you can access the others. Starting off with the trusty X-Wing  I unfortunately had some trouble trying to use different controllers with the game, the times I tried to use my joystick it just didn’t work, which kinda sucked as it’s probably be the ideal controller and my gamepad didn’t work either, then I tried with the mouse but that was less then ideal. Then I remembered I could fly and shoot perfectly well with the keyboard in the Battlefield series so I just did that and it worked fine though aiming is a bit of a bother, I was getting pretty bad hit ratios at the end but it got better. You see your objectives in your briefing so you basically just fly around following your radar which very helpfully points to the next objective.

A few levels of gameplay, I only noticed now but for some reason the CPU controlled vehicles look like buzzing flies, was it always like that? I can't remember.

Most of the time you are flying around destroying things, escorting things, locating things, or defending things and while most of the attacking is done with lasers you also have things like proton torpedoes, concussion missiles, ion cannons and space bombs to play with and you can also upgrade them by finding various powerups hidden throughout the map. There is a default craft for every mission and most of the time you are using the X-Wing but I did enjoy using the Y-Wing with its increased shields. You did use the T-47 Snow/Airspeeder and V-Wing Airspeeder a lot and they were a bit hit and miss, I came to dislike doing that damn grappling hook AT-AT takedown as the way it as set up was that the camera angle changes making it kind of hard to see how far away you are from the AT-AT and how close to turn but then again it’d be just as hard in third person I spose. There were also some secret vehicles like the Naboo N-1 Starighter and of the course the Millennium Falcon and also a Chevy Buick for some weird reason as it was just a V-Wing with a different model but it looked hilarious especially the “cockpit” view.

Eeyurgh this was difficult

As you’d expect the game is packed with Star Wars, ships, locations, terminology and quotes, there even cameo’s from other well-known characters. You blast away while listening to what is happening around you with occasional cutscenes of events in the battle. You get a finite number of lives depending on your difficulty, on easy it’s usually about 3, usually I just died to stupid things like crashing into things I’m shooting at and not slowing down though the trick was to put on the brakes while you were zero’ing in on an enemy so you don’t surge toward them so fast. I mostly played in third person view but cockpit view was sometimes fun and useful especially when trying to dodge things. The graphics were pretty good for the N64 though it’s difficult to judge by today’s standards, distance fog featured heavily in the game as the N64 just wasn’t powerful enough, while it was nothing compared to Superman 64’s level of fog it was still noticeable but otherwise it was good enough. Like Battlefield 1942 the main menu was stuck in 800x600 through the resolution went up to 1280x960 there didn't seem to be any way to make it higher so I just settled with that.

The distance fog was particularly visible in some levels

The music and sounds were pretty spot on to what you would expect from a Star Wars game, all official sound and licenced soundtrack and everything, the voice acting was pretty good too. I swear it sounds so much like the actual actors, do they keep doing this voice acting stuff forever? Or is there like a recording archive that all these spin-off games and toys and other things refer to, but then again there is stuff that is relevant to the game so I dunno, did good old Harry Ford do a couple of lines of voice acting for this game? Surely not.

The search for the Nonnah, I quite enjoyed this level

There really isn’t much more to it, you just fly around and blast things and try not to get blasted yourself, it does get more difficult in the later levels and there are many more dangers including more of those pesky missile towers that are quite dangerous, there was only a few missions where I struggled but I got through it, as I mentioned before I didn’t end up finishing the game, I may go back and have another crack at it but really I’ve had enough, it’s been like Star Wars overload for a while but I’m up to the last one which is X-Wing Alliance. Well the last one of the Star Wars games I have, technically I haven’t played X-Wing yet but It’s pretty damn old and maybe I will when I want something very retro. Of course the next iteration was Rogue Squadron II on the GameCube which I remember seeing all that time ago, I don’t think I’ve ever played the Gamecube actually, it wasn’t really that popular. So to sum up if you want a Star Wars Space shooter and don’t want it to be all technical or you’ve been playing X-Wing or Tie-Fighter and want something a bit simpler like me then Rogue Squadron is the way to go.

JD

Original 1998 Trailer

One more pass…