Trivia / Rogue Squadron

• Creator Backlash: During production of Lair, workers at Factor 5 claimed they were sick of working on the Rogue Squadron series and were glad to move on to another franchise; and with a game like Rebel Strike, it showed.
• Fanwork Ban: For years, the MIDI remix music website VGMusic refused to allow remixes of the games music to be posted due to a request from the games' composer. The ban was eventually lifted around the 2010s.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • For a very long time the original N64 game was impossible to emulate in a playable manner due to unique microcodes Factor 5 used in the game that couldn't be reverse-engineered, with people only getting it running after a ton of tinkering and even then only achieving a game that ran at a frame or two a second with severe graphical glitches, and the PC port was released long before the days of digital distribution, while the game never saw any rerelease on the Wii's nor Wii U's Virtual Console. It would eventually be rescued fortunately when the PC version saw a rerelease on Steam in 2016, 18 years after its original release, and a couple years after that people would finally figure out how to get the N64 version properly working in emulators.
  • The spin-off, Battle For Naboo, had the same issue of its N64 version never seeing any sort of rerelease and being impossible to emulate in a playable state like all Factor 5 N64 games, while the PC version was released before digital distribution, except unlike the original Rogue Squadron its PC version has yet to see any rerelease on Steam or elsewhere, leaving it stuck in this purgatory. However shortly after Rogue Squadron's emulation issues were figured out people have managed to get Battle For Naboo properly working in emulators, so it can be played nowadays if you can't get your hands on a secondhand copy.
  • Rogue Leader and Rebel Strike are still only legally available through used GameCube copies. And as What Could Have Been below show, Factor 5 actually tried an Updated Re-release (which now seems unlikely given LucasArts' current status as licensor-only).
• Killer App: Rogue Leader was released at the launch of the Nintendo GameCube, and its amazing visuals and gameplay led it to outsell even Nintendo games in some markets. In some European markets, it even managed to outsell Super Smash Bros. Melee (the console's biggest hit) during the Gamecube's launch window.
• Role Reprise: Denis Lawson, Wedge Antilles' original actor, reprises his role for Rogue Leader.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Chris Cox subs in for Denis Lawson as Wedge Antilles in Rebel Strike.
  • In the Death Star Trench Run level of Rogue Leader, David Davies subs in for Sir Alec Guinness' "Use the Force, Luke!" line, apparently because the developers weren't able to clear the rights to use Guinness' dialogue with his estate.
• Troubled Production:
  • In the making of documentary for Rebel Strike, they mentioned that in an attempt to improve the games performance over Rogue Leader, they made the brazen decision to scrap the entire game engine, and completely rebuild it from scratch. This decision chewed up a very large chunk of the games development time, and ultimately wound up having barely any improvement from the original engine in the end.
  • Rogue Leader had its own issues, such as only having a year to go from Battle For Naboo on the N64 to a launch title on a completely new console, which also required some programming miracles to implement graphics shaders the way they wanted (as the GameCube didn't support hardware shaders). Rogue Leader's success in spite of this probably convinced Factor 5 that they could make lightning strike twice with Rebel Strike while fixing the concessions they had to make for Rogue Leader at the same time, with mixed results.
• What Could Have Been:
  • In the "Rebel Strike" Mission; "Deception at Destrillion", the player was originally tasked with destroying a floating installation, only to find just a convoy of transports about to jump to hyperspace. According to commentary, originally, it was intended for the installation to be there, with the player getting an AT-ST and calling Y-wings to target sensitive areas. This was, however, cut for time.
  • This Unseen64 video details Factor 5's attempts to continue the series. After Rebel Strike, they started concept work on a spin-off focused around playing as Darth Vader called Star Wars: Dark Squadron, but LucasArts turned it down in favor of an action game featuring Chewbacca...which itself would be quickly cancelled due to George Lucas hating the idea.
  • Also as the above video covers, Factor 5 attempted to make an Updated Re-release compilation of the Rogue Squadron games for the Wii titled Rogue Leaders that contained a number of new features, such as a two-player lightsaber battle mode and rebuilt mechanics for the disliked on-foot missions from Rebel Strike. However, Factor 5 went bankrupt about halfway through development, but continued working on the game in secret. When former employees found out about the deception, they sued for fraud.^note In 2017, Factor 5 co-founder Julian Eggebrecht announced that the company had returned and there has been no updates about the lawsuit since 2010, in case you're curious. While the game was done at this point, LucasArts decided not to publish it as they feared being drawn into the lawsuit.

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