We spent a while discussing this Nintendo 64 mod and concluded that it isn't just a Tie Fighter, it's an Imperial Tie Fighter.
Console mods are rarely as interesting to us as PC case mods, and this one is certainly a little crude compared to
some of the mods we've covered in the past, such as
The Supreme Commander Mod which we're all so proud of.
Still, clunky as this modded Nintendo 64 may be, it still holds something of a unique charm and sense of geek-style.
J Grayson, picked up the console in question for a single dollar from a yard sale and decided to fuse it with a Tie Interceptor toy. Controversially in the
blog post he has written, which includes a handful of pictures of the work in progress, he refers to it as a Tie Fighter. After heated discussion in the office about the shape of the wings however, our editors decided that the creator was wrong - it's actually a Tie Interceptor.
THEN, when the article was about to go live, we had a rethink and furore subsequently raged as some of us insisted it was maybe a Tie Bomber, or a Tie Fighter Advanced. Still, others were threatened with violence when they said they didn't care because either way, The Enterprise could easily destroy anything Palpatine or Vader could throw at it.
20 minutes of arguing later, we've just finished going over some Star Wars vehicle schematics we found lying about, and settled on the fact that it's an Imperial Tie Advanced Fighter, as used by Lord Vader himself.
Either way, it's going to look ace (or incredibly sad) suspended above a TV, and if he can manage to scrounge together a PlayStation Deathstar, a Sega Saturn Millenium Falcon, a 3DO X-wing and an Atari Jaguar civilian spaceship to get blasted to pieces in the crossfire, then the Star Wars Fifth Generation console wars diorama will be complete.
Or, there's always the option to upscale towards PC modding and build something
truly amazing.
Fancy showing him what a bit-tech modder could do with the same material, or do you have an original mod of your own that you want to share with the world? Either way, get to
the forums and if your mods impress us enough then you may end up with a front page news item of your own!
22 Comments
Discuss in the forums ReplyIt's the TIE Advanced X1 Prototype. Flown by Darth Vader at the Battle of Yavin when the first Death Star was destroyed by the farmboy. ;) It was the basis for the later TIE Advanced. It had one major advantage over the Eyeballs (TIE Fighters) and Squints (Interceptors) it had shields. :)
Looks like an awesome mod to me, a bit big perhaps, but definately very cool. :D
The basic way to tell them apart is:
TIE: Square wings
TIE Bomber: Two Cockpit pods with angled wings
TIE Interceptor: Pointy wings
TIE X1: Angled wings, unpointed, with Darth at the helm.
I love Rogue Squadron... :D
Yep, it's also called the Imperial Tie Fighter in some places too. :)
The TIE Advanced X1 shouldn't really be called the 'Imperial TIE Fighter'. :) All of the Empire's TIEs are 'Imperial' but the TIE Fighter is the simple one with a small ball-pod and hexagonal wings around it. The TIE Bomber was a twin-pod craft with canted wings, with one pod containing the pilot and the second containing torps or thermal detonators, dependent on it's designated role at the time - torps for anti-ship runs, thermal detonators for anti-ground runs. In the games they could also be equipped with concussion missiles, space bombs etc.
...
Man, I love this mod, though! :D It's been so long since I exercised my Star Wars geekdom - since Episode 1 came out, my interest in Star Wars has all but died...
Not sure what the pink bits on the front are all about, though - maybe Darth Vader was going through a gay phase?
And... the prequels... good? That's like saying that cyanide is good for you. :| :) I realise that some things are set in stone (like the fact that Anakin Falls) but Ep 3 in particular was a horrendous let-down - whiny emo teenagers do not good anti-heroes make. ;) Not helped by the fact that Eps 1 and 2 hardly set it up to be any good.
And my 64 just sits there unmodded. :|
The Darth Maul fight scene in Episode 1 was pretty awesome in my opinion. The rest of the movie around it may have sucked, but that is probably my favorite fight scene in all of the Star Wars movies.
The mod is pretty sweet, I would keep my N64 hooked up and in view for people if it looked like that, which would lead to me playing it more often again.
just if someone wants to see the difference in size of some ships...
I can justify the prequel trilogy with 2 words : Natalie Portman :D
It's a nice mod, atlhough it looks extremly chunky and clicking to see the guy's blog theres no proper worklog :(
Q.F.T
I never realised how much bigger the Executor class Star Destroyers were, that's a seriously awesome ship. :D
There was a fan-project for X-Wing Alliance a few years ago that updated the textures and meshes etc. for all the ships - but they were adamant that the SSDs were a different size. All the canon says they were 17km long, but they were certain that it was somewhere around the 8 or 9 mark...
But...
What about the Eclipse-class? A ship even bigger than an SSD, with a super-laser (Death Star laser) mounted on the bow.
Joypad ports? (well they had to go somewhere :))