A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…or at least a few years back on the N64, Rogue Squadron was introduced to the Nintendo community. Rogue Squadron was an innovative addition to the slew of Star Wars franchised games that came before it. Developed by Factor 5 and published by LucasArts, the Rogue Squadron series was destined to become a success.

The latest rendition of Rogue Squadron, Rebel Strike, can be best described as Rogue Squadron 2 with some really big new tricks. In fact, Rebel Strike even includes a multiplayer version of Rogue Squadron 2. While the same basic graphics are used for the menu interfaces in Rogue Squadrons 2 and 3, the in-game graphics engine has been greatly improved. Despite the improvements however, the graphics maintain the basic look and feel of the Rogue Squadron series; they simply look better.

Not all change is for the good however. The added “feature” of having missions outside the cockpit quickly gets dull as game play degrades to simple button mashing. The entire goal of the foot missions can best be described as “run fast, shoot a lot and hope you get lucky.” While the on-foot missions don't seriously detract from the game, it would have been even better had they just left them out or spent some more time to better the targeting system. The main annoyance comes when trying to earn better medals, as the foot missions become a block to doing so.


Anyone else see a problem with this?
On the other hand, the ground vehicle combat has emerged as an interesting and fun portion of the game. While still not as refined as the flight controls, the ground vehicles were easy enough to maneuver and the levels were mostly well made. It’s a whole lot of fun to finally be able to swing over to an AT-ST, jump in, and start blowing away herds of Storm troopers and any other AT-STs that might be unfortunate enough to find themselves on the other end of your blaster cannons and rocket launcher. Several levels do have obstacles, which get annoying to avoid, however overall the vehicular combat adds to the appeal of Rogue Squadron III.


The cockpit detail is an amazing improvement.
The final game element is the flight combat. As the trademark of the Rogue Squadron series, the flight system is wonderful. The controls are simple and fluid, the visuals are more amazing than ever and it is just generally fun to play. The only negative aspect of the flight system is the smaller size of power-ups in comparison to previous versions of Rogue Squadron. At high speeds, the upgrades go easily unnoticed the first several times through the game.


Bombs Away
While multiplayer combat has been added to Rebel Strike, I have been unable to play against anyone yet. However, the creative use of a GameBoy Advanced as a wing mate command interface in multiplayer allows a player to make wing mate commands without informing his opponents of what he is doing. This innovative idea is a definite improvement on any type of multiplayer vs. mode.


Who doesn't love cluster missles?
My personal favorite thing about Rebel Strike is the bonus features. There is nothing quite like being able to play the original Star Wars arcade game on the GameCube. Any die-hard Star Wars fan will appreciate the accuracy in the porting of the arcade classics. The arcade games and other bonus features are sure to provide significant added value to the game.