THE MAKING OF STAR WARS STARFIGHTER & JEDI STARFIGHTER

CREATED TO TIE-IN WITH THE STAR WARS PREQUEL TRILOGY, STARFIGHTER AND JEDI STARFIGHTER BROUGHT THE SPIRIT OF EPISODE I AND II TO THE PLAYSTATION 2. DESIGNER TIM LONGO EXPLAINS HOW LUCASARTS CHANNELLED THE MOVIES WITH ITS MISSION-BASED COMBAT FLIGHT SIMS 

- RORY MILNE

Many of the earliest Star Wars games put you in the pilot’s seat of the spacecraft from the original movie trilogy, but the first of these that could be considered a combat flight sim was 1993’s Star Wars: X-Wing, and it led to a long-running series. These popular titles were developed by Totally Games, but the opportunities presented by the second Star Wars trilogy persuaded its publisher LucasArts to create a combat flight sim of its own, as designer Tim Longo remembers. “The Star Wars prequel movies were coming out, and LucasArts wanted to do a PC-based flight sim in the style of X-Wing and TIE Fighter,” Tim notes. “Daron Stinnett, the project lead, was taking inspiration from hardcore flight sims like Falcon 3.0, but then the PlayStation 2 came out, and it did so well that LucasArts refocussed the project around it. On the mission side, we looked at Wing Commander, and the X-Wing and TIE Fighter games, but we found ways to simplify the missions to make them more console friendly.”

Further inspiration came from LucasArts contemporary Factor 5, which started making its own Star Wars flight sim as Tim’s team began making theirs, which they had named Star Wars: Starfighter. “Rogue Squadron was built in tandem with Starfighter by Factor 5,” Tim explains.

“So it definitely influenced us. But we were focussing more on the cockpit feel, so Starfighter was more first-person than third-person. We also tried to make some of our missions more open with more options, whereas Rogue Squadron was more about the big battles, so Starfighter was a bit more tactical.”