I had this for the N64 years ago, and am pleased to find that the PC version is nearly as good, though it's a bit harder to pull off moves like barrel rolls without the convenient closely-spaced buttons of a controller. If you're expecting something along the lines of X-Wing or TIE Fighter, you might be disappointed- this game is largely ground-based rather than in outer space, there's no intrigue or inspecting containers or taking apart capital ships pieces by piece- you just blow stuff up real good, and occasionally protect your Rebel allies from enemy fighters. That said, blowing stuff up is actually a lot of fun!
This game has a lot of good points- a decent variety of craft to choose from, bonus unlockable levels and vehicles, hidden upgrades to your shields and weapons to be collected, and a range of environments and objectives that manages to stay interesting and exciting. Getting gold medals on all missions is a difficult but fair challenge, the game has decent voice acting (though some lines are used a bit too often), and the graphics were very good in their day- spectacular in terms of the N64, and certainly enough to keep the game enjoyable even today.
So what are the bad points? The worst one is the draw distance, which is far shorter than it should be, to the point where tripping an AT-AT walker will lead to it vanishing in fog when the camera zooms out slightly in the short cutscene that's triggered. It's annoying not seeing things until you're almost on top of them, and this isn't a problem I remember in the N64 version. Second, there's a bug where the default camera doesn't lock onto your craft and it will zoom out infinitely- easily fixed by switching camera angles as soon as the missions starts, but a pain if you don't realize what's going on. Lastly... well, there are RIGHT ANGLES in the freaking Death Star trench, but I guess we can chalk that one up to an alternate history version of events, sort of like Rebel Assault. ;)
