Star Wars: Rogue Squadron

This was my favorite Star Wars game growing up in the 90s, even moreso than "Shadows of the Empire" from 1996.

After hearing so much positive feedback for the Battle of Hoth level in Shadows of the Empire in 1996, Lucasarts decided to utilize its gameplay and formula to create an action/arcade style game centered around piloting a starfighter in battle instead of another third person or first-person shooter, like "Shadows of the Empire" or "Dark Forces" respectively.

You control Luke Skywalker from the cockpit of a selection of five vehicles: X-Wing, Y-Wing, A-Wing, V-Wing, and Snowspeeder. There are also three bonus vehicles: the Millenium Falcon, an N1 Naboo Starfighter, and a TIE Interceptor. All the craft have differing weapons, speed, acceleration, and deflector shield strength. The flight controls were smooth and easy to manage, and you could collect bonus powerups to improve the capabilities of your ship.

There were 16 missions based primarily on the "Star Wars: X-wing - Rogue Squadron" comic series, while two of them are based on the Battles of Hoth and Yavin from the films. The missions were split into different segments with four possible objectives: search and destroy, recon, defense, and rescue. Throughout them, you'll battle a variety of Imperial forces, like TIE fighters, walkers, probe droids, and turrets.

"Rouge Squadron" was one of the systems first games to use the expansion pack, and it did wonders for the game, because it looked amazing for the time. You would see dimming/brightening engines of your fighter, smoke and fiery debris from explosions, and sparks and dust clouds from laser fire impacts. The landscapes were huge and well-textured, like Hoth's snowy fields or the Death Stars long, metal trench, and the structures, from Tatoonies homesteads to Corellias skyscrapers look great too, although the distance fog limited your field of vision.

The sounds and music were spectacular Star Wars classics, like laser fire, starfighter engines, and the metallic clanking of walker joints. The voice acting is pretty good; Bob Bergen pulls off a good Luke Skywalker while Neil Ross plays Han Solo. The soundtrack was a nice remix of John Williams legendary Star Wars music and some original tunes from Chris Huelsbeck that captured the spirit of the films.

Overall, this was a great game that solidified the Star Wars franchise's popularity in the gaming community. Sure, the graphics are quite dated today, but the gameplay still holds up surprisingly well and I found it more enjoyable than the sequels released in the 2000s. You don't even need an old N64 to play it. Try it out on Steam and see how you like it.

Star Wars: Rogue Squadron takes place between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes back (except for some bonus levels). Each of the game's 15 regular missions requires Rogue Squadron, an elite group of rebel pilots, to complete a unique task. Goals in a mission include guarding supplies, destroying tibanna gas, and raiding an Imperial space port. You can fly X-Wings, Y-Wings, A-Wings, V-Wings, Snowspeeders, and, with cheats, a Naboo Starfighter, an AT-ST, a car, the Millennium Falcon, or a Tie Interceptor (my favorite).

Rogue Squadron does have some advantages. All of the starfighters have their own, unique abilities and different speeds. Also, there is an immense variety in the levels; no two levels are the same.

However, Rogue Squadron has many, many problems. First of all, multiplayer is mysteriously missing. Perhaps the biggest problem in the game is that you can never see anything that is not immediately in front of you. Any object that is not extremely close to your ship is invisible. At-Ats and mountains will suddenly appear right in front of you. Also, the lasers that you fire take forever to reach any target. You can typically fire at least five shots before any reach their target. This results in the lowering of your accuracy because you'll fire more shots than you need to hit targets, and the extra shots will be counted as misses. Also, there is never any way to identify who is who during the missions. If you see another friendly ship, it could be any member of Rogue Squadron. Finally, the medals are rather hard to earn. You can get a bronze, silver, or gold metal during each level. To earn a medal, you must have completed the mission quickly, destroyed nearly every enemy, have high accuracy, find a powerup, and protect most of the allies. These are way too many requirements; it's simply not fun to try to fulfill them all.

Still, it's almost worth earning the medals because they unlock the bonus levels. The three bonus levels are a lot more fun than the regular levels, and the best is the Death Star Trench.

StarFox 64 is basically what Star Wars: Rogue Squadron should have been. It corrects just about all of the problems in Rogue Squadron. Overall, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron is fun for a little while but is too heavily flawed.

Star Wars has seen MANY video game adaptations through the years and Rogue Squadron is among the very best the franchise has to offer. It's fast-paced, the dogfights are ridiculously immersive and it feels JUST like the movies. Sure it's difficult to complete the levels and gain all the medals for the levels, but it's worth the effort. The gratification is the same as getting a star in Super Mario 64. This was a boundary-pusher for the Nintendo 64 back in the '90s and it's still loved among gamers and Star Wars like myself.

Rogue Squadron gets 4.5/5 stars.

Without a doubt, the best flight game with the best action ever! Plus Its got the most classic theme of all--->star wars!!!!

The voices,sounds,graphics, and control is so slammin" it aint funny. But just watch out, continuous play could damage your thumb!

Still this is one hot item!!!

Rogue Squadron was originally launched in N64 in 1998(The best N64 year, because of Ocarina of Time, Turok 2...). It had good graphics, great dubbing and pure ACTION! There are more than 15 missions.With this, the Replay factor goes to infinite! In each mission you can earn a Bonus Item(Such as Advanced laser, Advanced Shields and others) and a Medal.It can be Gold, Silver or Bronze. The amount of medals you collect will give you a pilot job, such as Lieutenant, Cadet, Trainee and many others. And there was many starships.There was X-Wing, Millennium Falcon, V-Wing(???), Y-Wing, Snowspeeder and A-Wing.You could even earn two secret crafts, the N-1 and the TIE Interceptor.You could even use passcodes to play in an AT-ST course, or transform the V-Wing into a Cadillac! Curiosity:This game was even launched to PC in 1999.