Star Warshas been getting a fair amount of remasters and re-releases lately, between the re-creations of Dark Forces, Bounty Hunter, and the infamous collection featuring the first twoBattlefrontgames. Even thoughsome of these titles have been better than others, game studios have at least done a good job of preserving classic Star Wars games on modern platforms over the last few years. It’s fairly easy to hit up one of gaming’s online stores and find a bevy of classic Star Wars games available at a cheap price to re-experience (or perhaps even experience for the first time).
Of all the Star Wars games to get remastered and re-released, though, one game has continued to remain elusive, and that’s the Rogue Squadron series. Under the radar, the Rogue Squadron titles were incredibly well received during their era not only for their fun flight-based gameplay but for being major technical achievements on their past platforms. Yet, despite their previous popularity, the Rogue Squadron titles are not currently available on modern platforms. It feels like that should be fixed, and the Rogue Squadron trilogy should get a chance to return on today’s consoles.
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Why Hasn’t It Happened Yet?
Of course, there could be several factors in the way of Rogue Squadron being released, but a few of these factors could work in a re-release’s favor. Notably, the original trilogy was previously only released on Nintendo consoles, with the first title showing up on the Nintendo 64 and its sequels being exclusive to the GameCube. They weren’t published by Nintendo, and it’s been a long enough time since the release of these games that licensing issues may not even be close to a problem for LucasArts (or publisher Aspyr, who has handled the re-releases of numerous Star Wars titles). Bringing these games back means that players who missed out on them back in the day can finally play them on PlayStation and Xbox platforms.
Ownership of the rights won’t be too much of a problem, either; sure, the franchise’s original developer Factor 5 has closed down, but that certainly didn’t hurt the Battlefront games in their path to their notorious re-release earlier this year. Following Factor 5’s closure, the rights for Rogue Squadron got absorbed back into LucasArts, and it seems they have free rein to do whatever they want with it. And even though Aspyr has largely been responsible for remastering old-school Star Wars games, they aren’t the only one who has, as Nightdive Studios did work onthe Star Wars: Dark Forces remaster that was released earlier this year. LucasArts has options for how they could handle a remaster of Rogue Squadron, and perhaps it could be time for them to give these games another shot at light.
With that said, perhaps the publisher has been forced into playing the waiting game. After all, Disney announced in 2020 that a Rogue Squadron film was in development, which on paper could’ve been the right avenue for LucasArts to revive these classic games. Sadly, the film got pushed off of Disney’s release schedule, and while it seems like it’s still being worked on, it could be a while before we see it take form. LucasArts may have been holding off from bringing back the Rogue Squadron games in hopes of releasing them to tie into the film, only to be forced to change plans when the film returned to development. Thus, if Rogue Squadron re-releases are truly in the cards, it may be a long time before they see a proper release.
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Let’s Do It, LucasArts!
Nevertheless, the Rogue Squadron games would be great to have back, especially since their emphasis on space battling and flight makes them unique froma lot of the shooters and action-adventure titlesthat have been re-released lately. Other than 2020’sStar Wars: Squadrons- itself something of a “spiritual successor” to Rogue Squadron - it feels like wehaven’t gotten as many Star Wars games that focus as much on space combat. Plus, the quieter release and lack of post-launch content for Squadrons made it feel like an unexciting (if still decent) follow-up to Rogue Squadron. It’d be nice to see the classic titles make a much-needed comeback.
It also sounds like Aspyr has expressed interest in bringing these back. Asked on Twitter about a revitalization of the Rogue Squadron titles, Aspyr gave a rather innocent reply but still noted their love for bringing back old-school Star Wars games. Essentially, if there is fan demand for a re-release, Aspyr will make it happen. Sure, it’s a pretty standard response, but it’s nice to at least see that Aspyr is leaving the door open for a revival of these classic titles. It may not be anything close to a guarantee, but it’s at least something to feel a bit hopeful about.
It also seems like Aspyr is not the only one on board with bringing the trilogy back. Julian Eggebrecht, one of Factor 5’s founders and the producer of the Rogue Squadron trilogy, replied to Aspyr’s tweet and pitched that the remaster should include the content from the canceled Wii remaster, Rogue Leader. For those out of the know, back in 2008, Factor 5 developed a remaster trilogy of the Rogue Squadron games for the Wii, and even though it was fully completed, Factor 5’s financial issues led to the game never seeing a release. In fact, the team had been working on a similar re-release of the trilogy for the original Xbox back in 2003, which made a re-release a longstanding goal of Factor 5’s for several years before their closure. Perhaps a proper re-release on today’s platforms may accomplish that goal for them.
The fact that a proper remaster trilogy exists would be a good place to start for a Rogue Squadron re-release. Sure, its path back to modern systems comes down to fan demand, but these are titles well worthy of being brought back. Beyond being impressive technical achievements for their time, they still hold up incredibly well and remain supremely fun to play. Hopefully, bringing the trilogy back isn’t too huge of a hurdle for LucasArts to jump through, and Rogue Squadron can receive new life on modern consoles.
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