YMMV / TIE Fighter

The Video Game

• Demonic Spiders:
  • Enemy TIE Advanceds and Defenders. It says something that the game needed to give you special equipment and/or ships (including Advanced warheards, tractor beams, and the Missile Boat itself) to take these things out.
  • A-Wings were this, if you weren't in a TIE Advanced, TIE Defender, or Missile Boat. Small, fast, maneuverable, and armed with missiles, they were dangerous for assault gunboats and almost instant death for unshielded TIEs. To emphasize this, the game will sometimes spawn high-level A-Wings in some missions if you try to fly somewhere you shouldn't, such as near a capital ship.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Grand Admiral Thrawn, hands down.
• Even Better Sequel: A tough contest, as X-Wing gets a lot of deserved love from the fans, still Tie Fighter includes a new and unique perspective, lot of improvements and new features. It also got better reviews and universal acclaim.
• Evil Is Cool: The game deliberately plays this up as a means to immerse the player in the mindset of an Imperial soldier. The story starts off showing the sympathetic and mundane duties of the Imperial Navy, protecting innocent traders from pirates and terrorists, while showering the player in cool uniforms, medal ceremonies, and audiences with Imperial leadership as rewards for their service... rewards that help to distract the player from the increasingly shady and ignoble details in their mission briefings, leaving them so caught up in the propagandistic thrill they may not notice they've transitioned from a noble soldier to a pawn in the destructive, self-serving infighting at the Empire's highest ranks.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Manages to have two, and one (the Missile Boat, King Hell God Emperor Starfighter of Death no less) was developed to counter the other (the TIE Defender). The Tie Defender was this because it essentially was better than everything else at everything, it was the fastest craft, it had the best shields, by far (its hull wasn't anything to brag about but it shields meant that was moot), and the best armed. The Missile Boat, at its named implied, was loaded with missiles that could allow it deal with anything, and it boost that drew power away from its laser cannons and shields allowed to double its speed, the thing already being pretty fast, allow it move faster than the Tie Defender. Because they were too powerful, production of these special craft was ceased in case a future traitor would get their hands on them. (Both would be removed from the multiplayer sequel, whose craft library had entries that explicitly stated that it was due to their brokenness. The last game, X-Wing: Alliance, would end up using slightly toned down versions, although not enough so to avert the trope.)
  • The previous game allows you to use the Y-Wing to take out the shield generators on a Star Destroyer, then use a few ion cannons to disable the vessel. In this version, you could blast the generators with an Imperial Gunboat or TIE Defender, but improvements to the shield system no longer cause shields to instantly drop (and instead, you need to rely on rockets or space bombs). However, a capital ship without shields is paralyzed instantly.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • A-Wings are a tremendous pain in the ass to kill, as they are fast, highly maneuverable, and have a small hitbox. Oh, and they come equipped with anti-starfighter missiles as standard.
  • Missile Mines. These things are the same as standard mines, except when you destroy them, they automatically launch a missile at you. The really nasty versions launch an advanced missile instead. Clearing a minefield of these was an exercise in tedium, as you'd need to destroy the mine, then evade/destroy the resulting missile that emerged. Can be averted by setting all your lasers to fire at once (dual fire/fire linked), then attacking the mine, as there's a chance you'll blow up the mine and the missile simultaneously.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Go here.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • The fanfare heard whenever an Imperial capital ship arrives to the battlefield, however the same music also plays whenever a traitorous capital ship arrives.
  • A little jingle plays whenever you shoot down an enemy ship. A more triumphant jingle plays when an enemy capital ship is destroyed.
  • Completing all primary, secondary, and secret objectives rewards the player with praise.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: One of the best Space Simulators ever made and frequently still ranked among the best Star Wars-related games. A great sequel to the groundbreaking X-Wing.
• Rooting for the Empire: The game's underlying theme of how the propagandistic Patriotic Fervor of The Empire blinds its soldiers to the reality of what they're doing may have worked a little too well, as some players found themselves similarly blinded by the Evil Is Cool aesthetics. The game actually boosted the Empire's popularity in the fandom to the point that after its release, West End Games produced a Star Wars d6 expansion specifically for playing Imperial characters.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: The game is generally a great deal easier than its Nintendo Hard predecessor, with the exception of missions where you pilot a shieldless craft and every damage is permanent and non recoverable.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: The introduction of numerous and hidden bonus goals makes the 100% Completion more elusive than on X-Wing.
• Scrappy Mechanic: TIE Fighters have two laser cannons, no other weapons, no shields, no hyperdrive, and essentially two hit points. Enemy TIE Fighters in the expansion have shields. Justified in that Zaarin was heavily involved in improving the TIE series and was looking for ways to keep his depleted forces alive.
• That One Achievement: Plenty of bonus objectives (completing which gives no tangible benefit) fall squarely into this. One mission memorable for this is Mission 1 Battle 5 where Harkov defects and you are set up for an ambush by overwhelming forces while flying a relatively underpowered TIE Interceptor. Luckily, Imperial forces were prepared for this and a friendly corvette warps in and you are ordered to get on board. Yes, the primary objective of this mission is to successfully run away. Bonus objectives on the other hand require you to destroy all enemy forces short of capital ships, and there is no friendly fighter escort coming to help you.
• That One Level: Mission 13 Battle 5: You must defend weapons' platforms from waves of enemy transports, if one gets destroyed you fail the mission. However due to a programming error, all transports gang up on a single platform rather than distributing their attacks evenly among the others, this can easily cause the platform to be destroyed before the player has any chance to save it. This is the part where many players either lower the difficulty to "easy" or use a third-party mission editor to fix the AI of the transports.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Some fans were not happy with the fact that both expansions (and, by extension, the entire second half of the campaign) revolved around hunting Zaarin instead of fighting the Rebellion.

The Short Animated Fan Film

• Awesome Art: The video is a labour of love, hand-animated by a single guy over a period of four years, and it shows.
• Broken Base: Not the video itself, which has generally received very positive reactions, but the soundtrack. Some viewers consider the rock score with its emphasis on heavy guitar riffs too generic, or inappropriate for the Star Wars setting, while others think it's just as impressive as the animation and a great homage to 80's mecha anime. ^note  OtaKing 77077 was a well known "tripfag" (user who used a tripcode) who frequented 4chan, and specifically /m/, the mecha board, until sometime in the late 2010s.
• Funny Moments: Not laugh-out-loud funny, but Neel's brief Grin of Audacity and thumbs-up while putting on his helmet are kind of endearing and show how much he loves his job.
• Moment of Awesome:
  • The long, awe-inspiring zoom into the command bridge of the Star Destroyer, followed by Gaunt's arm sweep as he orders the gunners to open fire.
  • Ada managing to make a TIE Bomber, one of the larger fighters in the Imperial fleet, fly like the more nimble Interceptor. Special mention goes to how she zooms through the asteroid field catches a squad of rebel fighters by surprise, and blows them all away with a missile burst.
• Rooting for the Empire: If you don't enjoy doing this at least a bit, you're probably not gonna like this video.
• The Woobie: That poor astromech droid.

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