As previously covered in PatMan Picks, Shadows Of the Empire was a great and overly ambitious launch title for the N64. I enjoyed it because of its amazing game play variety and its impact at that time of gaming history. But Star Wars fans had even more to enjoy in the N64’s future.The truth is Rouge Squadron was a superior title in terms of both visuals and audio and while it did not have a variety of gameplay elements, what it did have it did better than any Star Wars game before it. Not following in the footsteps of SOTE, Rogue Squadron focused on only one aspect of game play. It focused entirely on ship combat, and refined it considerably when compared to the ship combat levels in SOTE. In SOTE there was always an annoying invisible wall, preventing you from further exploring the environment. In Rogue Squadron , however, a much larger game play space was created along with more enemies to engage, more weapons to use and objectives to follow. The result was a very fun space shooter with a combination of arcade action and mission objectives to follow. I remember enjoying the great Star Wars locations and classic Star Wars ships in this title. While a superior Rouge Squadron game would appear as a sequel on the Gamecube, it was this first one that impacted me the most as a gamer. Sadly the developers of this great franchise have been disbanded and Lucas Arts plans for an XBOX 360 HD Rogue Squadron have been canceled. But N64 fans will always have this great Star Wars title to remember.

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