Pewpewpew!

In the most recent issue of PC Gamer, there was a short preview of an upcoming space flight sim called Naumachia.  The gist of the developers’ introduction to their game was that they felt space flight sims have become a little too heavy on the RPG elements (like EVE Online), and as a result the shoot-’em-up seat-of-your-pants dogfights that should be the bread ‘n butter of any type of flight sim have long been neglected.  Following this statement, the author of the article wrote, “TIE Fighter fans rejoice.”  Upon reading those four magical words, I felt an excitement I haven’t known in over a decade (dare I say, a presence I’ve not felt since…).  Naturally I had to take a closer look.

I headed over to the game’s website and was greeted by the following video:

Looks pretty solid, right?  Add various flyable ships, customized loadouts, issuing orders to capital ships, 16-player multiplayer, a ranking system to upgrade hardware and AI, and realistic physics and it sounds like a must-try.  Next I made a quick jump over to the “FAQ” page to continue investigating.  Aside from the release date being listed as “Yesterday,” we learn that it’s a free game, but to access all the features, you’ll have to pay for a “cheap” license.  So it’s free to try.  Awesome.  Then, a couple bullet points later, I see it asked if the game will support joysticks and other peripherals, to which the answer is, “Yes, we’ll add support for joysticks or other controllers, maybe TrackIR too. The game due to its nature however is developed around keyboard&mouse interface.”  Hmm…

If you watched the video, you can see that the ships are able to take advantage of zero gravity maneuvering, giving the pilot the ability to strafe and move in all directions.  If this is designed to be used with a mouse and keyboard instead of a joystick and throttle, isn’t it really just a zero gravity first person shooter a la Shattered Horizon?  Why has the once great genre been shunned to the outskirts of the gaming landscape?

For my money, the X-Wing and TIE Fighter series were the best space flight sims ever.  If you’re about my age (24) or older, you probably agree with me, or at least know where I’m coming from.  If you’re younger than that, you likely have no idea what you missed.  Here are the standout titles from my memory of space flight sims.

Star Wars: X-Wing — 1993

Stay on target…

Even though I played X-Wing after TIE Fighter, this is what got the party started.  An evolution of the game engine that powered LucasArts’ classic Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, X-Wing was helmed by early flight sim great Lawrence Holland and featured fully 3-D ship models — a big step up over the previously employed sprites.  It was also among the first non-adventure games to use the LucasArts-developed iMUSE interactive music system which allowed the music to change dynamically depending on what was going on at any particular moment.  Having access to the Star Wars catalog of music, this gave the game a truly epic and immersive feel the likes of which hadn’t been seen before.  And let’s face it: what kid (or adult) who watched Star Wars didn’t immediately want to climb into an X-Wing and dog fight over the surface of the Death Star?

Star Wars: TIE Fighter — 1994

Shields are a luxury for an Empire pilot

As I mentioned above, this was actually the title that introduced me to the series.  It was a near-religious experience.  I could go on about how great the story was or how cool it was to play as the bad guys or how tense it was to fly a ship with no shields and only a pair of crappy little lasers into a giant dogfight, but I don’t need to.  It’s all been said before.  TIE Fighter ranks comfortably among the best games ever made — not just PC games; I’m talking about any platform, dead or alive.  It was #1 on PC Gamer’s Top 50 Games of All Time in 1997 and was #3 as recently as 2007 (though as a sign of the times, it’s slipped to #73 on their current Top 100 list).  Gamespot has it on their list of Greatest Games of All Time, and, though they’ve been phoning in their PC coverage as of late, IGN ranked it in their top 5 in 2007 and 2009 (it actually moved up from #3 to #2 between those years).

In my opinion, TIE Fighter was a better introduction to the series if only because it eased you into the complex controls which really made this a simulator and not the arcade-style experience you get with a lot of space sims.  In the screenshot above (which is actually from the Special Edition release with better graphics than the original), you can see the the shield and hull integrity display on the bottom left.  To the left of that, and mirrored on the far right, are, from left to right, the power indicators for lasers, shields, tractor beam and engines.  As the pilot, you had to prioritize the power and recharge levels for each of these systems.  For example, the pilot above has full power being sent to his lasers, which halves the engine power and recharge rate of the ship’s shields.  This means his guns will pack a bigger punch for extended firing (those four green bars across the top indicated the strength of each of the ship’s lasers), but his ship moves slower and his shields won’t recharge at the maximum rate in the event of laser hits.  This was all made more complicated if you sustained any sort of damage.  Your ship’s systems could be knocked out separately, meaning you could lose your shields, engines, sensors, targeting computer, ejection system, weapons, or flight controls individually or in any combination, depending on how hard you were hit.  Then you’d have to enter a screen where you set repair priorities.  Did you lose your engines and your shields?  Better figure out whether you want to take evasive action or sit there and soak up damage until you can start moving again.  And you’d better decide before that bogey comes around for another pass.

When I really think about all this, I’m amazed that, at 9 or 10 years old, I was able to learn all of these controls to the point where they became second nature.  Hell, these days I have a hard enough time remembering what button I have to push to cock my machine guns in Rise of Flight…

Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter – 1997

That’s no moo — oh, wait.  Yeah, that’s probably a moon.

X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter was essentially a multiplayer-only title at release.  It included a skirmish mode which could be played singleplayer, but there was no story until an expansion pack was released.  It was mostly a technological update of the series as it included, according to Wookieepedia:

CD audio soundtrack, high resolutions, texture mapping to the ship models of the in-flight game engine, 3dfx support and a sophisticated pilot and mission selection system which tracks the points and awards the player accomplishments.

The game engine was completely rewritten. In the previous two games, the player’s craft was at the center of the game grid (at coordinates 0, 0, 0) and the position of all other items was stored relative to the player craft. “Movement” of the player craft therefore meant that the relative position of all other items was altered. This approach was only possible in single player mode, however, and had to be abandoned for a multiplayer game.

I personally didn’t have a whole lot of experience with this one, but it’s important because of the features it introduced which would be included in the next release.  And despite a rather luke warm initial reception, it appears as though there’s still a strong tight-knit community keeping the game alive.

Wing Commander: Prophecy – 1997

Although they were contemporaries to the Star Wars sims, I never played a Wing Commander game until 1997′s Prophecy.  Apparently the gameplay didn’t have much of an impact on me because the only thing I clearly remember about the game was that it had Luke Skywalker and Biff from Back to the Future in the full motion video cutscenes.  A little more research reveals that it also featured porn star Ginger Allen.

Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance — 1999


Alliance was probably the game in the series which occupied most of my time.  This wasn’t because of the story mode — though it did have a decent one to go along with the 50+ mission campaign, culminating in the player participating in the Battle of Endor.

Where the last in the Star Wars sim series really shined was in its multiplayer and skirmish modes.  I have some great memories of teaming up to take on an Imperial fleet, complete with multiple Star Destroyers and fighters, as well as just some plain old every-man-for-himself dogfights.  Creating a skirmish was quick and easy, with a bunch of options for number and type of enemy and friendly craft involved, environment, primary and secondary objectives and more.

To top it off, Alliance came with over 20 flyable ships right out of the box.  One of which Antilles remembers quite well:

The Planetary Fighter

Remember all that stuff about having to manage your ship’s system recharges?  Well I discovered that the above Planetary Fighter (sometimes referred to as Planetary Defender), while not an impressive craft on the surface, with only two lasers and not much (if anything) in the way of missile or torpedo options, became an implement of immeasurable joy to yours truly when all power was diverted from lasers and shields to the engines.  I was un-catchable, not to mention un-lock-on-able since I would dart in and out of view in the blink of an eye.  Granted, I was little more than a minor inconvenience to the other players.  Clearly I had to figure out how to become a greater inconvenience.

Enter: countermeasures.

When an enemy got on your tail and you couldn’t shake him, we somehow discovered that a flare, when colliding with said pursuing enemy, caused him to go cartwheeling off into space, much like the way Darth Vader finds himself doing his best tumbleweed impression at the end of A New Hope.  This was a source of endless pleasure for me, surpassed only by the time I deployed a space bomb into an unsuspecting Antilles as he trailed me a little too closely.

I think a big part of why the Star Wars sims stand out for me personally (aside from the fact that they were great games) was that I was already very familiar with and invested in the universe and back story.  The draw of a space combat game is that, unlike conventional flight simulators, the developer has the ability to create new worlds and new stories without the constraints of historical accuracy.  This also means that the developer is responsible for providing the player with all necessary “history” of their created universe, and that can be painfully boring.  The Star Wars universe is probably the most accessible simply because of its never-ending presence in popular culture over the past three decades.

There’s no reason for LucasArts to have not released another in the X-Wing/TIE Fighter series other than the fact that consoles are the big market today, and these games just plain wouldn’t work on a console.  The basic flight controls would be fine of course, but managing all the combat systems, the repair priorities, wingman commands, target acquisition, etc. would have to be watered down to the point where it would be laughable.  And there, I’ve dashed my own hopes in one fell swoop, for I would most likely avoid a multi-platform release like the plague just for these reasons.

But wait!  What about LucasArts’ new-found commitment to their classic PC back catalog?  There’s good news!

…Maybe!

In August of 2009, G4 had a follow-up interview with LucasArts president Darrell Rodriguez after The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition and Tales of Monkey Island were released.  When asked about a possible return of the X-Wing and TIE Fighter series, Rodriguez answered, “We don’t have any announcements now, but stay tuned.  We will soon…..”

Ohhhhh lordy.  Even if this just means a re-release made compatible with XP/Vista/7 (and maybe OS X?), it would be awesome.  Awesomely awesome.  We’re talking degrees of awesome beyond words.  At the other end of the spectrum, if it’s a multi-platform release, it would be shit.  But I can’t help but imagine a reworked TIE Fighter with updated graphics, TrackIR support and more than 8-player multiplayer.  A guy can dream can’t he?