As the
new season of Andor
features an unexpected callback to the best
Star Wars
game of the 90s, GameCentral reminisces about the golden age of PC gaming.
Being a Star Wars fan is an emotionally and intellectually exhausting experience. The franchise will be 50 years old in a couple of years and in that time it’s seen some of the most acclaimed and influential movies of all time, and some of the most reviled. Hardcore Star Wars fans have a reputation for extreme intolerance of anything they don’t consider to be in keeping with the series’ tone, but as the franchise expands, and the number of artistically indefensible movies and TV series stack up, many fans have retreated into an increasingly unhinged toxicity.
As a fan since the original trilogy there is, to me, a world of difference between ‘proper’ Star Wars, aka the first three films, and everything else. The main contrast between being a fan in the 80s and now (other than the lack of internet) is that back in the day everything connected to Star Wars seemed amazing. Not just the films but the
toys
, the comics, the books, the duvets, the lunchboxes, and… the
video games
.
Nowadays that quality is spread much more thinly and while some of the above is purely nostalgia speaking (I suspect, in reality, the duvet covers were probably very unremarkable, from a textile point of view), Star Wars has been responsible for
many classic video games over the years
. I’m going to make the argument that 1994’s TIE Fighter is the best of these; a largely forgotten game nowadays, but one which was recently referenced in the only unequivocally great live action production of the
Disney
era: the TV show Andor.
Atari’s first Star Wars arcade game was a milestone in 3D gaming, regardless of whether it was a licensed product or not, while 1993’s Rebel Assault was another groundbreaking use of technology, in its exploitation of full motion video, streamed directly from a CD-ROM.
To this day,
Knights Of The Old Republic
remains arguably BioWare’s best work, and one of the greatest Western role-players of all-time. There have been many other great games too, from Jedi Knight to the ongoing
Star Wars Jedi trilogy
, that while not milestones in gaming are high quality titles in their own right.
But my favourite is definitely Star Wars: TIE Fighter on PC. In fact, I’d regard it as one of my favourite games of all-time.
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