STAR WARS™: TIE Fighter Special Edition

If you've ever played TIE Fighter then you won't need the sales pitch. If you haven't....well. You get to fly a TIE Fighter, shoot those green lasers and blow up rebel scum. If that doesn't have you sold already then I don't know what to say. I always hoped that this timeless classic would arrive here one day and now it has! I played this game endlessly back in the day, which for me was around 15 years ago now, and earlier. This game really defined my childhood as did the franchise as a whole. Space combat sims are largely a forgotten art, especially those that focus on pure combat and unpolluted by RPG aspects such as trading or whatever...who cares about that! You get to fly a TIE Fighter! That's more than enough! I jest, but really the pure unfettered SPACE COMBAT is what makes this game and the rest of the classic X-Wing series so good. So it appears you get two versions...the 1994 DOS version (playable with mouse!) and the later collector's edition featuring somewhat updated res, graphics and music. This latter version will require a joystick. I don't know how I used to do so well at the original with a mouse! It is tricky but can be mastered. Obviously the graphics, especially on the 94 version, are now hideously dated....but not without their charm! Of course, the gameplay is still what it was: challenging and entertaining! I can't help but think if this game received a modern overhaul it could be perhaps the greatest thing ever made. Of course that will probably never happen. Enjoy this relic from the golden age of Lucasarts. I see that X-Wing and X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter are also available. Those are brilliant too, but for me the best one will always be TIE Fighter. Now go crush some rebel scum!

The Collector's CD-ROM from 1995 is now an added entry so every version is now available, more importantly the best one is; the higher resolution, the added missions, the new voice acting for all dialogue, and the dynamic iMuse music system is still around (damn it, '98-version). You can also play this with a keyboard and mouse. This is still one of the finest games of all time and easily the best Star Wars game ever made. It's not as complex or dense as you'd perhaps expect from a combat flight sims, but there's still enough of a challenge; energy management between shields, engines and lasers is a genius design choice that keeps the game fresh to this day. So if you played it before or just considered getting it on GOG for the first time, now's definitely the time to do it. Join the Empire! (and secretly serve the Emperor's Inner Circle)

Awesome game - only downer is that the Special edition is Windows only. Any plans for a Mac port of this?

Oh how i missed and equally loathed that soundbite. I messaged my friend the other day just reminding him of actually how difficult this 20 year old game was, yes that's right this game is 20 years old as of this point in time. And it is still excellent. I remember buying this game in Blackpool, England while on holiday, in a white label classics box. I and my friend marvelled at the screen-shots and gasped when it said "talkie version" includes spoken mission text. WOW. we take this for granted now but this is what made it feel so in-depth. Im talking of course of the essential CD-ROM collectors editon, THE ONLY version you need. its a shame lucasarts never sprinkled that magic back on x-wing, running at TIE-Fighers resolution it would have been excellent. Thank you GOG for securing a classic for the future. thank you!

This game was amazing when it came out. I played every mission and found every secret sinking countless hours into this game. Unfortunately it's very old and the resolution is terrible. For a strategy game like master of orion this doesn't bother me as much, but on a flight sim/action game, I found tie fighter really hard to enjoy. Just my two cents, ymmv.