Star Wars spinoff strikes back

By Russell Baillie

Star Wars Rogue Squadron

Lucasarts

Nintendo 64


To be cynical, here lies one of the real reasons George Lucas returned to his Star Wars franchise with "prequels" rather than extending the original trilogy.

Life after Return of the Jedi has gone on, not on the big screen, but in the merchandise galaxy - in the realms of books, comics, toys and games like this.

By going back in time with his forthcoming Phantom Menace and subsequent chapters which lead to the original Star Wars, Lucas allows the spin-offs of his trilogy to continue.

The series has always lent itself to video gaming, right from the old sit-in arcade flight sim of the 80s which allowed you to attack the Death Star, all primitively rendered in texture-free glowing green vector graphics (it was one of the games that got me addicted to this stuff).

Now, you can take your pick of Star Wars-related video game titles ranging from light sabre face-offs to the likes of Rogue Squadron, the latest combat flight sim.

This one takes place between Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back.

You are Luke Skywalker, newly-appointed leader of the squadron given a series of missions against Imperial Forces.

Which means you start off by defending the old Tatoonie home town, Mos Eisely, and move through the increasingly tricky assignments, whether its escorting convoys, rescuing downed rebel ships, raiding bases on far-flung planets and one-on-one dogfights with Imperial aces.

Each mission comes with a choice of rebel fighters - the X-wing, A-Wing, Y-wing and so on through the alphabet - with a chance of piloting the perennial Millennium Falcon on certain missions.

So it's got Star Wars lore and hardware to boot.

Fortunately, it's also a real whizzbang flying game, easy to pick-up but highly responsive and tactically demanding.

Graphically it's not the greatest, especially if set on the in-cockpit view mode which shrinks the vital radar to illegibility.

However, the landscape textures do become markedly richer with a N64 Expansion Pak.

The sound also leaves something to be desired (R2D2's vocab hasn't expanded much) but that doesn't stop its frenetic sense of dogfight excitement.

In its own way, this game is as addictive as that aforementioned arcade predecessor. With enough time spent on this, you may suffer from resonant voices in your head with some recommendations about use of that force stuff.