With the announcement that Wonder Woman 1984 director, Patty Jenkins, is working on a Star Wars: Rogue Squadron movie for 2023, Star Wars fans will undoubtedly begin revisiting the stories of the famous X-Wing squadron in anticipation. If fans want to experience those stories, the Rogue Squadron videogame trilogy is the best, since they rank as three of the finest Star Wars games ever made.
While the games – Rogue Squadron, Rogue Leader, and Rebel Strike – are a little bit hard to get hold of now, they still boast incredible missions from across the Star Wars classic trilogy. Especially as they include fantastic recreations of the famous battles of the saga. It’s not just the good guys that players get to control, either.
Prisoners Of The Maw (Rogue Leader)
The Maw is a fascinating location in Star Wars, which moved from the old Expanded Universe to proper continuity thanks to Solo: A Star Wars Story. It’s a region of unstable space near Kessel surrounded by black holes, with only a narrow area of safe space between.
In this spectacular mission, the player is tasked with a prison break from the very-secure facility in the Maw Cluster. After surviving the nearby asteroid field, suddenly a gigantic rippling void covers the screen. It’s a cloaking field covering the entire prison. Shut it down, bomb the asteroid facility, free the prisoners, and escape. Thrilling stuff.
Prisons Of Kessel (Rogue Squadron)
Set on the red planet, Kessel, which is famous for its space mines and runs, is this two-part mission (which can be found basically at the middle point of the N64 original Rogue Squadron).
Wedge Antilles was captured on Kile II and it’s the player’s job to rescue him and other Rebel prisoners from the detention facility on Kessel. Flying through canyons, taking out shield generators, and protecting transports, while Imperial AT-STs and TIE fighters swarm in. All thrilling stuff, and it gets even more exciting as the mission progresses.
Revenge Of The Empire (Rebel Strike)
It’s easy to forget that after the Alliance’s destruction of the first Death Star, the Empire isn’t dead and Darth Vader is still aware that the Rebel base is on Yavin IV. In the first mission of Rogue Squadron III, the only game in the series with on-foot sections, players get to see the Rebels escaping from Yavin in the same way as on Hoth.
With swarms of TIEs to hold off, Imperial Walkers to destroy outside the base, and Luke Skywalker fighting Stormtroopers raiding the temple itself, this was an incredible start to the final Rogue Squadron game.
Blockade On Chandrila (Rogue Squadron)
One of the best missions of the original Rogue Squadron is wonderful because it takes place across two different landscapes: firstly a lush green countryside, then over a stylish cityscape. The people of Chandrila have openly defied the Empire, and the Empire is going to make them pay for it.
It begins with the protection of a supply train from swarms of TIEs, with the whole of Rogue Squadron up against them. When the train reaches its destination, the player has to repel an all-out ground and air assault on a massive city. A truly epic mission and it ran on a Nintendo 64!
Revenge On Yavin (Rogue Leader)
The one tragedy of the otherwise fantastic Rogue Squadron series is that fans never got a TIE Fighter-style spin-off from the Empire’s point of view. This secret level from Rogue Leader is a chance to let off steam and eliminate ‘the Rebel scum’ as Darth Vader in his TIE fighter.
It’s essentially the same as Rebel Strike‘s “Revenge of the Empire” mission except it’s from the Empire’s side as it invades Yavin IV, and Vader tries to stop the Rebels from escaping. It’s a short, easy mission, but it’s always fun to play as the bad guy for a change. Cathartic, too.
Raid On Bespin (Rogue Leader)
Ever wonder what happened to the Bespin Mining Facility after it was taken over by the Empire? Rogue Leader answers that question in a mission that sets up the fall of the Empire on Endor, and is also one of the biggest and most impressive missions in the series by its pure scale.
The Alliance needs the facility’s Tibanna gas to help the assault on Endor, and the Squadron must secure the platforms without blowing them up. Easier said than done. Then the mission takes an incredible turn by having the player fly right up and into the huge Cloud City itself.
Death Star Attack (Rogue Leader)
The opening mission of Rogue Squadron II was an epic recreation of one of the tensest battles in cinema history. Sitting in Luke Skywalker’s X-Wing during the Battle of Yavin, players were tasked with clearing the skies around the first Death Star before plunging down into the infamous Trench Run.
Avoiding obstacles and blaster fire while staying on target was hard enough, but then Darth Vader swoops in and tries to shoot the player down. After the Millennium Falcon distracts Vader long enough, players are asked to turn off the targeting computer and use the Force to blow up the Death Star with a single shot. Tense on screen, even more so when it’s in the player’s hands.
Raid At Bakura (Rebel Strike)
Rebel Strike introduces the idea of dual campaigns, and the opening mission for Wedge Antilles is yet another daring prison break. This one is set on a space station, with the player given access to the powerful (but awkward to fly) B-Wing fighters for the first time.
Players, as Wedge, have to avoid TIE fighters swarming them and the turbo-laser batteries of the station in order to ion blast prisoner transports. They then protect the disabled ships as the Alliance intercepts them.
It’s a truly hectic but exciting mission to kick off Wedge’s campaign and ends with players commandeering a TIE Bomber, laying waste to the facility on Bakura’s surface. And the good news is, there’s not a single on-foot section.
The Battle Of Hoth (Rogue Leader)
Arguably the most famous battle of the Star Wars saga, the Rebel Alliance’s desperate flight from the ice-world of Hoth has featured in all of the Rogue Squadron games and even appeared in the series’ spiritual prequel Shadows of the Empire.
While Rebel Strike focused too much on the on-foot sections, Rogue Leader‘s focus on the Snowspeeder versus Imperial Walker assault, where gamers have the ability to wrap tow cables around AT-AT legs. This is just one of the reasons why the mission easily the best Hoth level in the series.
The Battle Of Endor (Rogue Leader)
By far the most visually impressive, exciting, and terrifying mission in the Rogue Squadron series, Rogue Leader featured an epic space battle, with the entire Rebel armada facing off against thousands of TIEs.
The player is then tasked with taking down an entire Star Destroyer with only a tiny X-Wing. And all the while, the skull-like Death Star II just hangs in the background, occasionally vaporizing entire starships. A breathless battle from start to finish, before the final mission sends the player into the heart of the space station to finish off the Empire once and for all.
