Yes, that’s right: your character is called Rookie One, and is as bland a hero as you could hope to encounter, although you do at least have a choice of male/female characterisation. Some of the main heroes have also been erased from existence in order to shoehorn in Rebel Assault’s own cast: in this story, it’s not Luke Skywalker who blows up the Death Star, with some assistance at the end from Han Solo, it’s Rookie One and some grumpy old Commander who takes you on a training mission in the early levels. It’s a retelling, of sorts, of the first film, in that it all ends with the first Death Star run, albeit with some strange detours along the way, including to scenes from The Empire Strikes Back – in fact, I’m not entirely sure the chronology of the story, as it’s set out here, makes total sense. This is about as far as I got when I first owned the game – if you don’t find the right route, it goes on for bloody ages. If you just wanted to pretend you were in the movies, blasting indiscriminately while shouting, “They’re coming in too fast!” then Rebel Assault was for you.
Plus, you had to do proper stuff like balance your shields and lasers. And even in that intro, the MIDI rendition of the John Williams score was a little bit of a disappointment, while in the game itself, although the graphics were of course proper 3D and everything, they couldn’t ever look exactly like they were straight out of the film. That’s fair enough: I mean, X-Wing was all very well, but on a very superficial level the action failed to live up to the promise of that great introduction sequence.
Coincidentally, that was also the time when there was a fashion for making full use of the storage capabilities of CD-based systems, and Rebel Assault was an opportunity for the license to be exploited in the context of a lightweight multimedia showcase. It sort of belongs in the same category as the dreaded MegaRace in that (as I pointed out in a somewhat grumpy write-up) it’s basically a load of video clips playing with some sprites dancing around on top to give the illusion that they are in fact part of the same world and that the two things knotted together somehow add up to a game-like experience.īut, on the other hand: it’s Star Wars! Which at the time of writing is now generally acknowledged as good again, although I doubt the franchise will ever quite recover the same level of untouchable magic as it had for those of a certain age in the pre- Phantom Menace world of the early-mid 90s.
#5 – Create a shortcut to ROGUE SQUADRON.Rebel Assault isn’t, perhaps, the most fondly remembered Star Wars game, and it has been mocked in passing by many – including me, on this website. #4 – Right Click ROGUE SQUADRON.EXE and go to properties and then to compatibility and turn off compatibility mode #3 – Run ROGUE SQUADRON.EXE (you will have very slow menus) go to settings and joystick settings and set defaults (all button areas should populate) #2 – Right Click ROGUE SQUADRON.EXE and go to properties and then to compatibility and set to Win 95 #1 – Open ROGUE.EXE and select D3D and controller (I use Xbox One controller) I have tested on two computers with excellent results. I have played 6 missions now and no crashing, joystick is working, game runs smooth. Go to your installation folder and complete these steps. I tried nGlide but it would crash after every mission and the game didn't look as good (unless I used nGlide tool to increase resolution).
No Joystick, black screen after intro, laggy menus, choppy controls, camera zoom, etc.