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Star Wars: TIE Fighter (view source)

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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 ''[[Star 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.
 
The main protagonist of TIE Fighter was Maarek Steele (though he was never named as such in the game; his name comes from the [[All There in the Manual|supplemental guidebook]] that came with first run editions of the game) who started out as an anonymous pilot but would rise through the ranks with distinction over the course of the game's events. What separated TIE Fighter from X-Wing in particular was its rather involving story and campaign, which not only pitted the player against the Rebels (and certain traitorous Imperials) but also explained the motivations behind the actions of the Empire and its enemies and gave significant insight into many key characters of the Star Wars universe, including Thrawn (a major story thread of the game is how Thrawn was promoted from Vice Admiral to Grand Admiral). The game also presented optional "secondary" mission goals which, when completed, would earn the player additional rank.
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Another notable feature of the original issue was the "iMuse" system (no, it doesn't have anything to do with iMacs or iPods) which dynamically changed the background music based upon the player's actions. The background music itself was notable for being comprised of original scores by the Totally Games! crew. Sadly, the iMuse feature was dropped in the X-Wing Collector Series box-set rerelease, replaced by high-fidelity scores from the original trilogy, though the soundtrack's still quite good.
 
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.
 
Despite its age, you'll ''still'' see this game often in top 5 lists of best ''[[Star Wars]]''-themed games ever, and often across other related "best of" lists too.
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[[Category:Simulation Game]]
[[Category:Licensed Game]]
[[Category:TIE Fighter]]▼
[[Category:Video Game]]
[[Category:Star Wars Expanded Universe]]
▲[[Category:TIE Fighter{{PAGENAME}}]]
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