Rogue Squadron Disbanded!
- Martyn Young
- Aug 11, 2017
- 2 min read
Some game franchises get cancelled because of poor sales. Some may have sold well, but were poor quality. But this brings us to killing off of Rogue Squadron, the star wars flight sim style series. From it's original inception on the nintendo 64, factor 5 had hit the ground running. Using compression to allow the actual film sound effects on the limited Nintendo 64 cartridge. Playing as Luke Skywalker you lead Rogue squadron on suicidal missions to help the rebel alliance. A huge success selling over two million units worldwide. Spawning two sequels the far superior Rogue leader and great Rebel strike. The final game Rebel strike sold 0.8 million units world wide. Usually this would have guaranteed a fourth installment. This was not meant to be.
A fourth game was meant to be released on the Wii. Star Wars Rogue Squadron: Rogue Leaders unfortunately factor 5 filed for bankruptcy in 2009 , getting it axed before the Disney acquisition of star wars in 2012. Games and franchises have survived buy outs before. What killed Rogue squadron?
A trailer was leaked to IGN of Star Wars Rogue Squadron: Rogue Leaders by an anonymous source. It looks like a remake of Rogue leader and Rebel Strike with light-saber missions using the Wii mote. To be honest, I think the trailer is spurious as the flight sections and cut-scenes are taken directly from Rogue leader and Rebel Strike. I'll let you decide for yourselves. Rogue leaders does look like it was expanding the weaker sections of rebel strike while adding no new missions for the core gameplay.
With Disney removing the Rogue squadron books from expanded universe. The killing off of Ysanne Isard and Baron fel from the Star wars universe would make it difficult for the story to continue from their original source material. I hope to see Rogue squadron get a revival or a remaster on the latest generation of console. With Battlefront II around the corner, I hope Dice take some inspiration from this great series of games and uses to improves on their lackluster fighter squadron section.
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