STAR WARS™: TIE Fighter Special Edition

Back when this game was out, I was already sick of Star Wars. Sure the franchise was great, but why on earth did we always have to be the good guys, and usually follow the movies? Then this game came out. Holy sh... This time we are a pilot of the Empire, in a story that does not follow the movies too closely. Or at all. Instead, the story is something about a new batch of TIE-ships being developed, so you have to protect them. Sounds boring? It's not. First of all, the X-Wing wimps have shields. The TIE Fighters don't. That means one hit can kill you. But why would you get hit? Unlike the Alliance, you're flying with two wingmen, and focuses on speed and manouverability over get-hit-a-lot. Later in the game, you get to fly slow TIE Bombers and blow up capital ships, TIE Interceptors and so on, and even the brand new TIE Defenders you get to defend a lot in the early games. Each ship feels like a big improvement over the others, so you feel some actual progression here, rather than moving from an A-Wing to X-Wing to Y-Bother. NOTE: I played this a lot with a flghtstick back in the days, and I don't recommend trying to play with just a mouse and keyboard. A gamepad might (hopefully) work, but I haven't tried it.

As soon as I saw Tie Fighter was out on GOG, I had to buy it. So I did. Then I worried. I have many fond memories of playing this game and really immersing myself in the Star Wars universe. What if I revisited that world and found that, 20 years later, the experience is hollow and lacking? With these thoughts in mind, I installed and took that chance of ruining some childhood memories. Though the graphics haven't aged well, the game's core is still intact! It's just fun! It's fun to fly a mission in a Tie Fighter, Tie Bomber, Tie Advanced, Gun Boat, Tie Defender, Missile Boat, etc. It's fun to dogfight Rebel ships. It's fun to defend a platform. It's fun to serve the Emperor and move up the secret society. The game is just plain fun. It's hard and you fail missions. But you fly again and again until you achieve success. Even the failure is fun. Some absolutes: joystick and key stroke reference card (even though you can just hit esc and see the key commands, it helps to have them).

This may be the greatest game I've ever played. The freedom of movement, the exceptional dogfighting, and the completely unforgiving difficulty (as soon as you collide with one of your own wingmen in an unshielded craft a 40 minutes into a mission and have to restart, you'll see what I mean), all make this an intense experience worthy of the admiration of anyone who's ever thought of the Luke Skywalker as a terrorist.

The game is perfect, but as others have said this does not include the expansions. I am not sure why. I would be happy to buy them if offered, but they aren't there. I have played through once and I am going to do it again to try to get all of the secondary and bonus objectives. There is a glitch though. If you hit the keys too many times the game no longer recognizes the keyboard. Which means that you cant exit the game since to do that you have to hit the escape key. Its not a huge issue but it is there.

Both X-Wing and Tie-Fighter were my favorite games growing up. I played and beat every part of them and still own the original versions on disk. But now I own a iMac and it seems many of my favorite games from the 90's are not being released for the Mac. Some one please fix this!