Star Wars: Rogue Squadron - Development

Development

After the success of Shadows of the Empire on the Nintendo 64 in 1996, LucasArts began planning a follow-up. At the time, Factor 5 was developing a game engine to create large terrain maps. LucasArts, pleased with earlier collaborations with the company, decided to use Factor 5's engine for its new game. The game's focus would be space combat; this direction was inspired by a level of Shadows of the Empire in which the player flies a snowspeeder during the Battle of Hoth. Rogue Squadron and Factor 5 production manager Brett Tosti stated, "That whole scene was actually the genesis for Rogue Squadron because everybody said, 'Why don't you do a whole game like that?' So we did." Factor 5 initially pitched a concept to allow gamers to play through missions similar to the fans' favorite action sequences from the Star Wars films. This proposal was rejected, however. At that time, LucasFilm was not comfortable with video games drawing directly from the films.

During the early stages of development, the designers at LucasArts were inspired by Rogue Squadron and later Star Wars: X-wing Rogue Squadron, a series of books and comic books set during the years of the original film trilogy. They began developing the story and gameplay with a similar setting that would include characters from the films participating in new, original missions using Factor 5's terrain map engine as the base. In May 1998, a demo of the game was displayed at E3, but the game was so incomplete at the time that Tosti considered it a tech demo. It rendered a basic heightmap and an immobile AT-AT model, while TIE fighters lacking artificial intelligence flew and fired in a predetermined path. When "playing" the demo for audiences, Tosti followed a very specific flight path of his own to give the illusion that he was actually battling with the TIEs. Despite the demo's barebones presentation, response from gamers was largely positive.

Factor 5 appealed to Nintendo to use the Nintendo 64's newly developed memory Expansion Pak. Nintendo was reluctant, expecting the technology to be reserved solely for hardware peripherals. However, after Iguana Entertainment used the Expansion Pak to achieve a higher display resolution for Turok 2: Seeds of Evil, Factor 5 was given the green light. The Expansion Pak is used to increase Rogue Squadron's N64 resolution from 320 × 240 to 640 × 480.

LucasFilm was hesitant to grant access to the Star Wars library of sound effects for the game's sound designer, Rudolph Stember. As a compromise, the company provided Stember with sounds sampled at the relatively low rate of 22 kHz, half the standard rate. Stember objected, claiming that the clips sounded worse than effects he had lifted from VHS tapes for a previous Star Wars project. The game includes voice work from several notable persons, including screen actors Olivia Hussey and Raphael Sbarge as well as voice actors Bob Bergen, Neil Ross and Terence McGovern. Instead of using Nintendo's default sound drivers, Factor 5 developed its own tool called MOsys FX Surround. The Factor 5 drivers use Nintendo 64 processors, but tax them less; advanced compression techniques were also employed. As a result, the game includes over 80 minutes of high-quality stereo sound.

In November 1998, a month before the game's scheduled release, LucasArts signed a worldwide agreement with Nintendo concerning three new Star Wars video games. It granted Nintendo the rights to market the games and hold exclusive, worldwide distribution rights for five years following each release. Rogue Squadron was the first game released under this agreement.