I’m one of many gamers for whom TIE Fighter has a special meaning. It is still the only PC game I’ve ever been fully addicted to…I would come home after school and often play the game for six hours straight, stopping only for dinner and finally bedtime. Obviously a brief description is in order for those of you unfamiliar with the game, as it was released quite a long time ago. TIE Fighter was the sequel to the popular LucasArts space flight sim X-Wing, but you took the role of a rookie pilot on the Empire’s side. In addition to the vastly different story perspective (and the whole new lineup of playable craft that comes with that shift), TIE Fighter featured much better graphics and significantly expanded gameplay over its predecessor.

It was really the type of game that can only be done on a PC…micromanagement control over each ship’s internal systems was extensive. The HUD featured a highly innovative targeting system that let you cycle through every known ship in that mission; after targeting a craft, be it friend or foe, you would see it highlighted in your view, and the HUD would display shield, hull, speed, and relative distance information about that object. Each ship’s power supply could be apportioned in various ways among the propulsion, shield, and weapons systems. Selectable craft included:

TIE Fighters - no shield, usually no missiles, two lasers

TIE Interceptors - fast, four lasers, no shield, usually no missiles

TIE Bombers – slow, two lasers, no shield but a tough hull, lots of missiles

Imperial Gunboat – slow, two lasers, few missiles, shields, ion cannons, hyperdrive

TIE Advanced – fast, four lasers, shields, few missiles, hyperdrive

TIE Defender – fast, six lasers, lots of missiles, shields, tractor beam, hyperdrive

Missile Boat – slow, one laser, shields, TONS of missiles, tractor beam, scramjet engine

Note that the Defender and Missile Boat were designed exclusively for the game, as far as I know, and were found mainly in the game’s expansion pack. They were so powerful that the online sequel, X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, had to leave them out for balance reasons. (An interesting side-note: my familiarity with flying the TIE craft helped me learn to follow and kill them more easily in Rogue Leader…cool. Bombers fly slowly, close to their targets, and make wide turns. Interceptors stay in tight formations, make wild turns, and like to catch their targets in cross-fire. I was very pleased to find Rogue Leader so accurate in its AI routines for these ships.)

TIE Fighter’s mission design would probably seem very alien to fans of the Rogue Squadron series. I believe the game had several dozen missions, with a few dozen more in the expansion pack. Each one could have as few as two mission objectives or as many as fifty. There were three tiers of objectives: the primary ones had to be completed in order to pass the mission. Secondary objectives were also shown, and completing them would get you promoted. Bonus objectives were hidden until completed, and finishing them would advance you through the Emperor’s secret society…your rank was signified with a tattoo on your forearm etched by Palpatine’s electricity.

Okay, enough about the old game! Obviously, I mean for TIE Fighter 2 to be on the GameCube, and that means a lot of adaptations to the console style of gameplay and also the controller. I see it as an amalgamation of elements from the original TIE Fighter and Factor 5’s Rogue Leader…my two favorite Star Wars games of all time. If I were in an unusually objective mood, I’d probably admit that TIE Fighter could have used a little less simulation, and Rogue Leader could have been a little less arcadey.

We’ll start the compromises with mission design. Rogue Leader obviously shows Factor 5’s penchant for laboriously complex environments and lavish cutscenes…I propose combining those elements with TIE Fighter’s more numerous objectives per mission. And yes, there would be multiple missions per environment. TIE Fighter 2 could span the entire original trilogy, thus allowing for a few film/mission crossovers. The rest of the missions could be written from scratch with no guilt, since the films present very little of the Empire’s side of the story. Obvious choices for the movie-based missions include the original Death Star battle, chasing the Millenium Falcon into an asteroid field, and the Battle of Endor. Hey, just because the Empire lost a fight doesn’t mean it can’t work as a mission.

Next up is control. We’ll start with the current Rogue Leader controls and modify from there. Orientation control via the Control Stick would be mostly unchanged from Rogue Leader, except that craft need to pitch just as easily as they yaw in space; the current setup is fine for planetary missions. The mostly useless roll function would be thrown out, and Z would instead switch among firing modes, adding tons of strategy to the use of craft with multiple lasers. Rogue Leader’s firing mode selection was based on time; it worked better in TIE Fighter, where you could set an Interceptor to shoot one, two, or four lasers at a time, and your laser energy banks would simply deplete faster with the higher settings. The D-Pad can keep its job for controlling wingmen, but the silly “Flee” command would be scrapped, and the other commands would have sub-menus where appropriate. For instance, let’s say Right is “Attack”. Pressing Right on the D-Pad would open up the wingman attack menu, where you can then hit Up to have them attack your current target, Right to attack the nearest hostile craft (as in, nearest to each wingman), Down to attack the nearest hostile capital ship’s gun turrets, and Left to go back to the main wingman menu. Other main sections of wingman commands might include Form, with sub-commands being various different formations, and Defend, in which wingmen would fly alongside a target craft and attack any enemies that approach it.

Most Imperial craft don’t have the kind of targeting computers that Rebel ships do, but in case the nicer ones like Defenders do, turning that function on can easily be combined with the other viewpoint button. In other words, hit X once to go into the cockpit view, hit it again to bring up the targeting computer, and hit it once more to return to third-person view. That frees up Y to control the HUD’s targeting system, which is present in all Imperial craft and would have to be shown on both normal and cockpit views, because of its importance. I think the easiest way to use TIE Fighter’s complex targeting controls on the GameCube controller is to single out the most useful functions – Next Target, Previous Target, and Nearest Target. So, for Next Target tap Y, for Nearest Target hold Y for one second, and for Previous Target hold Y and press A. Missiles, torpedoes, bombs, and ion cannons could remain mapped to B, although some of the extremely large torpedoes and space-to-space bombs (for blowing up capital ships) should require much longer lock-on times than missiles. Throttle control would simply use the current Rogue Leader approach…I think they would work perfectly fine for this compromised gameplay. Since no Imperial craft have S-foils to lock or unlock, the R-trigger’s click could serve to match your speed with the current target’s speed, one of the more useful throttle controls in the PC game. Finally, a hyperdrive function has to be enabled for craft with such technology, and I see no reason that it can’t simply be accessed through the Pause menu. (A hyperdrive allows you to end the mission whenever you’re ready, which is important when you have secondary and bonus missions that you may want to attempt after the main goals are finished. Craft without hyperdrives must dock with a capital ship, like a frigate or Star Destroyer, in order to end the mission.)

All that’s left is mission and level design, which I’m afraid are beyond my expertise. Although I’m sure there are issues that I’ve glazed over in regards to combining two very different types of gameplay, this basic skeleton should work pretty well. The beauty of this compromise is that the game can still be played Rogue Leader style if you’re extremely skilled, but it’s really to the player’s advantage to use the strategic elements taken from TIE Fighter. A very deep targeting system and expanded wingman controls open up many new strategies, and the mission structure ensures that you’ll have many opportunities to try different things and see what works best in different situations. The whole new lineup of Imperial craft means TIE Fighter 2 would feel completely different to people who are getting a bit jaded with using Rebel ships in every game, and of course, the whole attitude of the story would be refreshing as hell. It’s fun to be bad. The more extensive set of missions, each with lots of optional objectives, means that this game would have a lot more “lastability” than Factor 5’s previous shooters. The medal system could be easily integrated with secondary and bonus objectives, eliminating the need to require players to play flawlessly in order to see bonus missions. Speaking of bonus missions…how about a Hoth redux in which you control an AT-AT walker? I’m sure plenty of Star Wars fans would like to climb into an AT-ST and shoot up Ewoks on Endor’s forest moon as well.

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