Mr.Duck on 7/10/2006 at 06:15

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I've been a console gamer for as far back as I can remember (probably since I was 3 - 5 years old, give or take on those years). The first consoles -I- remember having was the Intellivision and the Atari (If I'd have to guess, I'd be willing to bet the 2600).

My development as a console gamer has been ever since constant and growing, currently owing all last-gen (since the next-gen starts with the 360 and continues with the Wii and PS3) systems (Xbox, Gamecube and Playstation 2, though the Dreamcast does deserve mentioning even if it died too earlym in my opinion). Though I have owned the following consoles, in no particular order: NES, Turbografx-16, Super NES, Genesis, Saturn, Nintendo 64, Playstation and a Gameboy. All have brought me endless joy, and now with emulators and backwards compatibility, these have sprung forth new life to many of these oldschool games, and I am a happy man because of it (and now with the thing I hear that with Wii you'll be able to purchase the oldschool NES and SuperNES games like Xbox 360 Live Arcade, woah...).

But this thread isn't about oldschool/newschool console gaming.

This thread's about PC gaming, oldschool, the kickass-through-the-roof kind :cool:

My PC-gamer career (I am both an avid console and PC gamer) started a few years later from my console career, although the beggining were, ironically, more blurry in detail. I do remember Alley Cat in one of my sisters' PC (do -not- ask me what model, for I have no clue), with the old big-ass cardboard-like floppies and shit.

I will not bore you with the details of -all- the many woes and sufferings I toiled over the years with customizing the setups of most PC games, not meeting requirements, not being tech-savvy to use DOS properly and what-not mingly fuck'emall. Needless to say, my PC gamer abit took some time to kickstart properly, I had the odd game here and there, but not what you could consider a decent collection. I, as most youngings wanted to have the new-flavor-of-the-month (I would like to say, in my defense, that I always had a pretty decent taste in gaming, so v.few games have I owned that I've considered shit) with the cool graphics and such.

But over the last 5 - 8 years or so a little worm has been growing inside of me. The virtual nostalgia worm for great oldschool games.

Virtual in the sense that many of these oldschool games I never played, or played so little, but with Internet growing and the world turning into a smaller place. Legal, or illegal, access to such gems has grown more accesible over the years. I've played gems way past the time they were made when already 3d graphics ruled supreme and found them to be most captivating and fun (to name a few: X-Com UFO, Jagged Alliance 2, System Shock, etc.). You could say I have a very long backlog list of PC games to finish. Some have higher priority than others to be played.

TIE Fighter was on my list, but not really in the Top 5 to look out for. Yet I had heard many great things about this game over the years, and after playing X-Wing Alliance (and feeling a -bit- dissapointed at it after playing the still-awesome FreeSpace2), I had heard so many oogling and drooling over this game, even more than the entire Wing Commander series, which I did knew were revered as gold. So I managed to get myself a copy of the Collector's Edition CD-ROM (TIE 95).

What can I say?

I am a proud member of the Imperial Fleet, and loving every second of it.
There is something LOVINGLY outdated about the graphics and interface that you just -can't- resist to love, and yet this game was -way- ahead of it's time in graphics, design and execution. I'm still pretty much nibbling at the tip of the iceberg, but already I can tell I'm for one helluva ride.

So, I was wondering, whom else around you here had played this gem of a game and if you could share stories about those glorius days fighting for the Emperor :D.

Ah, I dabble on and on, I know...but, somehow, this thread's not only about praising TIE Fighter, but about praising -all- great oldschool PC games.

Cheers.

PS- The luck part of the thread's title -really- involved luck, not in finding the game, but in finding an old wingman extreme joystick with 4 buttons and a POV -still- working -perfectly- after -all- these years hidden inside a closet (it was from one of my brothers', he bought it for Wing Commander III). So, I have me a free joystick, huzzah!

bob_doe_nz on 7/10/2006 at 07:19

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Gameplay wise, its still the same, just using the XWVT engine and using CD audio instead of audio files.

Gone are the scenes where, you enter the fighter craft as well as exiting it, showing all your battle damage. :(

Some of the cinematics where you change tour of duties are now crappily made and shorter.

Jonesy on 7/10/2006 at 13:42

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TIE 95 (and all collector's editions thereof) work perfectly in XP so long as you don't enable 3d hardware as your driver in the game. If you do, it will crash once you try to load a level. To fix that you need a patch- (http://www.lucasfiles.com/index.php?action=file&id=653)

Mr.Duck on 7/10/2006 at 17:45

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Speaking of the Expansions (I think my edition then is not the OMFG uber-edition since I don't recall cinematics of me getting in and out of my TIE, still, it's a blast :)), how do you know you have'em?, you continue playing the original campaign until the expansion appears or it should be noted somewhere?, if yes, then, whoopsie...:D

Briareos H on 8/10/2006 at 01:10

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There's some confusion about naming here. If I recall, these are the different versions of TIE Fighter :


* Standard disk version.
* Collector's edition : all original content and expansion + new levels and modified cinematics. (I had this one)
* ?? Re-released Collector's edition ? This one is tricky : there are packs over the net which include exactly the same content as above but with a TIE95.EXE ... I don't recall any TIE95.EXE in my original Collector's edition so either it's a re-release or a file added to the warezy version (or bad memory :confused:). In any way, I'm not sure what it does and if it's the same or not as the following one.
* Part of the X-Wing collector series or the X-Wing trilogy : modified version of the X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter engine, same differences as stated by the review I linked to and bob_doe_nz, ie : (a bit crappy) redbook audio music, modified (once again) cinematics, ... executable is also named Tie95.exe and the game is indeed known as 'Tie95'.