Star Wars: TIE Fighter: Difference between revisions

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'''''TIE Fighter''''' is a PC game first launched in 1994, with various expansion packs and collector's editions being released as late as 1997.

The history of the game itself goes back to the early 1990s, when [[Lucas ArtsLucasArts]] approached game developer Lawrence Holland and his studio, Totally Games!, to develop a series of games for the publisher. The first games were actually WWII flight simulators including ''Battlehawks 1942'' and perhaps Holland's best known non-franchise game, ''[[Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe]]''. These games became instant classics, and in the meantime Holland was working on a 3D rendering engine specifically for flight sims, something that back in 1992 was revolutionary.

This prompted [[Lucas ArtsLucasArts]] and Holland to develop a flight (or rather space) sim game using both this engine and the ''[[Star Wars]]'' license, and ''[[XStar Wars: X-Wing]]'' was the result. A year later, Holland got working on a sequel. Rather than being a direct sequel chronicling the Rebel Alliance and their starfighter squadrons after the Battle of Hoth (which is where X-Wing left off), the game would put the pilot in the ranks of the Rebel's greatest enemies, the Galactic Empire, by putting them in the seat of one of the Empire's greatest symbols of military might, the TIE Fighter.

Since flying around in an unshielded TIE Fighter when the other guys have much faster and better shielded craft wasn't much fun, the game also introduced a number of new craft for the Imperials to fly around in. The "Assault Gunboat," invented for X-Wing to give the player a more challenging foe, was reintroduced in TIE Fighter to provide him with a craft that actually could be able to attack capital ships without dying all the time. Also introduced was the "TIE Advanced" or "TIE Avenger" which was an improved production version of Darth Vader's TIE from ''A New Hope'' (it also had shields and a hyperdrive like the Assault Gunboat), the TIE Defender (a starfighter which [[Game Breaker|pretty much defines the term "broken"]]) and the Missile Boat (which [[Up to Eleven|manages to outdo even the TIE Defender in terms of being broken]] - [[One-Man Army|you can take out entire fleets with one.]] And it is awesome).

The market life of this game was extended numerous times through various expansions and "collector's editions." This was particularly annoying as [[Lucas ArtsLucasArts]] and Totally Games! clearly anticipated expansion packs from the beginning, ''since they left the campaign story of the original release of the game blatantly incomplete.'' The first expansion, "Defender of the Empire" added the TIE Defender and its associated campaign missions - by the way, even after installing Defender of the Empire, many players were annoyed when it was found that ''they '''still''' left the campaign story incomplete because those money grubbing bastards were going to force yet more expansion packs!'' The ''final'' "expansion pack" was abandoned in favor of releasing the "Collector's CD" edition in 1995 which not only ('''finally''') included a '''finished''' campaign story, but upped the in-game resolution to 640x480 (though no changes were made to the graphics engine itself) as well as updated speech and voice acting. Of course, understandably, original purchasers of the first game were ''very'' annoyed since in order to actually complete the campaign, they had to buy the game all over again. And then they had the nerve to rerelease it ''again'' in the X-Wing Collector Series, this time stripping it of the iMuse music technology in favour of the Williams scores. Fortunately all was forgiven because in the end, ''TIE Fighter'' turned out to be just that damn good.

* [[A-Team Firing]]: Based on how the AI works, stopping the craft is an effective method of avoiding enemy fire from X-Wings and Z-95 Headhunters, on par with erratic maneuvering. Y-Wings or other craft that shoots from the cockpit will still hit.

* [[Classic Video Game "Screw YousYou"s]]: TIE Fighters have two laser cannons, no other weapons, no shields, no hyperdrive, and essentially six hit points. Enemy TIE Fighters in the expansion have shields.

* [[Collision Damage]]: A surprisingly effective weapon against other, weaker fighters, by the way. However, it is toned down a lot in this version.

* [[Death Is a Slap on The Wrist]]: When the player's character dies (a rare event in of itself, actually) or is captured, it shows a cutscene with the charater's demise. While ''[[XStar Wars: X-Wing]]'' allowed you to continue by reviving your pilot and resetting the score, ''TIE Fighter'' allows an automatic backup and restore to bring you back without penalty. If you want, you can disable the automatic backup and try the game without dying.

* [[Death of a Thousand Cuts]]: In this game, you now have the option to take out turrets on capital ships, rendering them defenseless. Likewise, you can use Ion cannons to quickly disable large capital ships. The result in either case allows you to destroy the largest of ships using lasers.

* [["No Warping" Zone]]: Interdictors prevent ships from using the [[Hyperspace Escape]], while having other ships destroy the intended targets. An allied interdictor is used across multiple missions to prevent enemy capital ships from escaping, while a few missions later, another interdictor prevents you from escaping.

* [[Plot Armor]]: The original versions had invulnerable capital ships that needed to survive for a future mission. Thus, you can't kill Harkov's final Imperial Star Destroyer until [[Fake Longevity|a few missions pass]].

* [[Protection Mission]]: In one mission, your wingmen are destroyed more quickly than the platform you're defending. When just one wingman is left, he asks how the two of us can stop all these ships.

* [[Revenue Enhancing Devices]]: Played up straight and ultimately is itself a result of revenue enhancing devices of the Star Wars merchandising empire.

** Also, the Missile Boat has the SLAM system, which doubles your speed by consuming your stored laser energy. If you redirect all power to engines, you'll still be coasting above maximum speed for a while.

* [[What the Hell, Player?]]: In one of the missions, if you're fairly clever, you can [[Off the Rails|disable and destroy your own command ship]], a small Corellian Corvette. If you ''succeed,'' though, the ''Imperial freaking Star Destroyer [[Meaningful Name|Badi Dea]]'' shows up and starts [[Curb Stomp Battle|launching fighters]]. However, if you survive the retaliatory waves, and have not yet completed your mission goals, you'll only receive the mission failure debriefing by the officer and get to try again.