Release
LucasArts offered a pre-release demo on two floppy disks bundled with Computer Gaming World. The single-mission demo, sponsored by Dodge and featuring an ad for the Dodge Neon, advertises a spring 1994 TIE Fighter release. However, TIE Fighter was not released until July 1994, 17 months after X-Wing's deput. The Defender of the Empire expansion, which adds three battles, came out soon thereafter. Later that year, LucasArts released a Collector’s CD-ROM version of X-Wing using TIE Fighter's updated graphics engine.
In 1995, TIE Fighter also received a Collector's CD-ROM. The CD-ROM version offered optional enhanced SVGA graphics, increasing the game's resolution from 320x200 to 640x480. The cinematic cutscenes were also enhanced, and the game received numerous voiceovers. The CD-ROM includes the previously-released Defender of the Empire expansion and an additional Enemies of the Empire expansion. This CD-ROM also added support for gameplay under Mac OS 8 and Mac OS 9.
TIE Fighter is part of the 1998 X-Wing Collector Series, which also includes updated versions of X-Wing and a pared-down version of X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter. This version drops DOS support, installing only under Windows 9x. TIE Fighter and X-Wing use the X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter flight engine, which adds 3D-accelerated graphics and texture mapping. The MIDI-based interactive soundtrack used in previous versions is replaced by looped Red Book audio recordings of John Williams' Star Wars score. This version also requires a joystick; previously, players could use a mouse and keyboard. This version was later bundled with the X-Wing Trilogy, which includes X-Wing and X-Wing Alliance.
Read more about this topic: Star Wars: TIE Fighter
Famous quotes containing the word release:
“An inquiry about the attitude towards the release of so-called political prisoners. I should be very sorry to see the United States holding anyone in confinement on account of any opinion that that person might hold. It is a fundamental tenet of our institutions that people have a right to believe what they want to believe and hold such opinions as they want to hold without having to answer to anyone for their private opinion.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“As nature requires whirlwinds and cyclones to release its excessive force in a violent revolt against its own existence, so the spirit requires a demonic human being from time to time whose excessive strength rebels against the community of thought and the monotony of morality ... only by looking at those beyond its limits does humanity come to know its own utmost limits.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“We read poetry because the poets, like ourselves, have been haunted by the inescapable tyranny of time and death; have suffered the pain of loss, and the more wearing, continuous pain of frustration and failure; and have had moods of unlooked-for release and peace. They have known and watched in themselves and others.”
—Elizabeth Drew (1887–1965)