Why Rogue Squadron II is as far as I'll go for Star Wars spin-offs

Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader (2002)

Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader (2002)

Well, I’ve officially lost count of all the Star Wars spin-offs. Of course, building onto the franchise is nothing new; once the nerds got hooked in the 70s and 80s, it was expanding faster than my waistline in the late 90s. And speaking of the late 90s, I’ll give you a little original trilogy memory that’ll mean nothing to you really, because why would you care about someone else’s nostalgia, but you might find it slightly cosy.

It was Christmas Eve, and we were suffering a power cut, which seemed to happen around my way a hell of a lot in the 90s. Primitive times or what? Anyway, this was putting the entire Christmas under threat. How on earth was I to play our new N64 the next day with no leccy?! It was back to candles and family chat for us, that’s how bad things got.

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Eventually the electricity gods, Thor or Zeus or one of those mad fellas, took pity on us and brought us back to civilisation. Well, it was probably some well-trained electrical engineer, and here I am thanking the gods. Some guys just don’t deserve the gift of power, huh?

When the lights did come back on, the soap operas were already over for the night. So what else left to do then, but for my dad to stick on the first of the Star Wars original trilogy, part of the Special Edition VHS boxset.

Of course, if I want to stay popular with the meganerds, I have to pretend that the Special Editions were ridiculously hokey, crowbarring in all sorts of stupid additions and generally taking a Wookie dooky on the original cuts.

But can’t you imagine what seeing those films for the first time as a kid is like? Well, of course you can - a zillion kids have done likewise, and even decades from now there’ll be grown-up children of the future with Star Wars nostalgia, getting nostalgic over the even worse Blu-Ray editions, so we’d better get used to that.

Of course this was all in anticipation of the prequel trilogy, the series of movies that was going to bring the sci-fi space opera genre into the 21st century with a a scream of laser blasts and lightsabers, not to mention a blaze of green screen. Or was it? We’ve all gone over this before, but the prequel trilogy turned out to be the dampest squid since the Bloopers in Mario Sunshine. A proper waste of three cinema trips, you know.

Well, I’m an old sod now, in my thirties. This is ancient by pop-culture standards - although ripe for the picking in marketing standards. So much so, that there was yet another trilogy for us to get through, making for nine episodes of Star Wars in total. In the end, they were another waste of cinema visits as well, plus a quiet game of Fortnite if you wanted to get the full story.

If that wasn’t enough Star Wars for you, and I mean if you really hated your free time, you could get onto the various spin-offs like Solo, Rogue One, The Mandalorian, and… no, leave it out. I’ve genuinely lost count of how many Star Wars TV series have been commissioned. Wicket the Ewok will get one at this rate. And yet my beloved Gonk droid still hasn’t had his chance to shine.

Honestly, you’d get sick of all these spin-offs, desecrating that poor horse and bloating an already grossly overweight franchise even further. No, I’m saying end it here and now. When it comes to Star Wars, just forget about all the excess fat - it’s the original trilogy and that’s it. After that, you’re only fooling yourself.

And it’s the same logic I apply to Rogue Squadron II on Nintendo GameCube. Sure, this was an exciting time for the Star Wars franchise, but it was similarly exciting for Nintendo fans as well, with the new GameCube console to sink one’s midichlorians into.

Alright, the unfortunate truth is that there were nowhere near as many people were as excited for GameCube as there should have been, but nonetheless, as a launch title, this was the showcase of what the console could do. After all, not everyone has a Luigi fetish, you know what I mean?

And sure, the graphics here still look good, the music and sound is right and overall Rogue Squadron II doesn’t play too badly, but there are definitely problems. Really, and I found that this affected the first Rogue Squadron game on N64 as well, but is it just me or can these games just get so dull and boring a lot of the time? I seem to get prolonged periods of flying around with nothing much going on, and your mind just wanders.

That ain’t right, is it? Do you reckon Luke Skywalker, old Red 5, do you think he let his mind wander during the mission? It should be epileptic light shows, blinding laser blasts and deafening noise morning noon and night, and even if you somehow survive, you finish the mission not quite sure what’s happened - that’s a proper Star Wars space battle.

Other than that though, I find that the real problem tends to be the setting. It’s great when you play a level that actually happened in the movies. Opening the game with the famous Death Star mission and trench run was a proper wow moment back then, and must have assured thousands of gamers of their GameCube purchase all by itself. That is pretty impressive. 

But then, when you go onto the next level, and it has you piloting that Y-Wing jalopy in some completely unheard of location for a made up mission, suddenly your interest is gone, and I do mean suddenly.

It certainly doesn’t help that the instructions to actually beat the mission can be quite unclear, necessitating plenty of trial and error. Everyone knows you can’t take the AT-ATs head-on in the Battle of Hoth, for example, and you gotta use your tow cable. If you get that wrong, you’ll be laughed at, justifiably. But when it’s fanfiction stuff and you get it wrong and the commander shouts at you, you’re just left annoyed. 

And it gets worse, because you could be 10, 20 minutes into the mission, before you suddenly fail because you misinterpreted something. This means you gotta start right back at the start, with no checkpoints.

Oftentimes I’m out there flying, completely clueless, nobody coming to my rescue with a quick tap on the shoulder and a reminder. Then a radio message finally whines through, telling me that I’m out of time and we’re all dead, and it’s a trip back to the very familiar Game Over screen for me. Well gee lad, I wish you’d have said something, I might have fired off a photon torpedo or something.

Or maybe it’s just me, and I’m the thicko here? I know the stakes are high here, and I know they got the voice of Wedge Antilles in, along with some other fairly big name voice actors for the time actually, but I’m sorry, I simply do not care.

I want lasers, pew pew pew, while John Williams belts out at maximum volume. Unfortunately, what’s left in Rogue Squadron II is nothing more than decent, which is better than most of the sequel and prequel trilogy I’ll admit.

But would you have the time for all that? It’s not 2002 anymore, we know the GameCube didn’t really blow people away, the spaceship has well and truly sailed. Just stick with my adage, the original trilogy or nothing, and you’ll be alright. I’d rather watch some other fool go out there and take on the Star Destroyers anyway.

20 October 2023