Star Wars: TIE Fighter

After having run this club for almost 10 years now, sometimes we worry we might run out of good games to feature. Not that we only want to cover the best or most famous games, but we wouldn't want to feel like we're scraping the barrel either. Anyway, this fear is entirely unwarranted, because even after all this time an absolute gem such as 1994's Star Wars: TIE Fighter is available for us to talk about. This game offers a very enticing premise over Star Wars: X-Wing, its predecessor from a year earlier: instead of the hero, now you're the bad guy! Or are you? Maybe the Empire just wants peace and stability for all and Darth Vader isn't such a bad guy after all. That's certainly what they tell a lowly TIE Fighter pilot such as yourselves anyway...

Sadly our co-host Florian ("rnlf") had to skip this episode due to an injury that left him unable to play this game. Get well soon, Florian! Host Martijn is here with a big group of guests who are all excited to talk about TIE Fighter. First of all we have Brian ("SpaceGameJunkie") back on the show. We also have Eric ("Shnoogie"), who's joining the podcast for the first time. Then we have Jason ("Angel"), who's in charge of the Tie Fighter Total Conversion project (see links below). And last but not least we have Rik, adaptive music composer and a good friend of Martijn for many years who hasn't played a ton of old PC games, but TIE Fighter being the rare exception!

And on top of all this, we've also received no fewer than three voice messages! They are from Firefokker, Evil Taco and Watchful. Thank you very much for sharing your insights with us, we always enjoy hearing your thoughts on the games we're playing. If you want to share a voice message for a future episode, please e-mail them to [email protected]

https://www.dosgameclub.com/podcast/2026/08/ep120.mp3

[ download mp3 ] (198 mins, 226 MB)

Thanks to our producer Pix for helping with organising the podcast, and thanks to DGC member Console for editing the audio.

Thanks to all who make this show possible, we couldn't do this without you!

RELEVANT LINKS:

* Our guest Angel is the project lead on TIE Fighter: Total Conversion (TFTC), an ambitious mod that overhauls the classic game from top to bottom, reworking everything from the graphics to the core gameplay.

* Angel also shared a sneak peek video of the upcoming intro, created by OtaKing Animation who previously made an excellent animated TIE Fighter short film.

* All of SpaceGameJunkie's output (reviews, podcasts, streams & more) can be found at spacegamejunkie.com

* Mission builder David Wessman gave a post mortem talk at GDC on the making of TIE Fighter, available on GDC Vault.

* YouTuber TechJesse did a video interview with Edward Kilham, co-designer of both TIE Fighter and X-Wing.

* We discuss the infamous leak of the game's release, a story that was covered at the time by the LA Times in COLUMN ONE: The Pirates of the Internet.

* DGC member Pix put together a collection of X-Wing Series Magazine Scans, pulled from his personal archive of gaming magazines.

* We discuss the origin of the "Oom on you" easter egg. More hidden messages are collected on the Cutting Room Floor wiki.

* Friend of the show Jimmy Maher has a great article on the history of TIE Fighter up on his website The Digital Antiquarian