TIE Fighter, as X-Wing did before it, achieves such depth through attention to detail, though the life of an anonymous helmeted henchman rather than a noble freedom fighter was always going to be a harder sell. And TIE Fighter commendably does little to make the Imperial cause sympathetic. Part of what makes TIE Fighter still feel so fresh is its stance on a fiction that has, in recent years, tended to bank on the elements that appeared to work well in the original films and fail to bring anything new to the mix. It naturally encompasses the action, drama and geopolitical intrigue you might hope for, but all from a fresh perspective: you’re not some Rebel collaborator.

As an upstanding member of the Imperial forces, you’re keen to restore ‘peace and order’ in the face of the Rebel insurgency and root out corruption. The game’s iconographic introductory yellow scrolling text takes a triumphant stance on the Empire’s operation against the Rebel terrorists’ Hoth base. Your superiors are efficient officers (with clipped English accents) and cowled servants of the Emperor. The pernickety and impatient training simulator tutor says things like: “Delta One, do exactly as you’re told, no more, no less”, and the tone during missions is decidedly militaristic, with commanders commending you with, “Excellent hunting, Alpha 1”.

The story, however, veers away from sending you on an epic campaign against the Rebels. Instead, TIE Fighter’s story is a vision of the challenge the Empire has to keep order. You’re just as likely to be dogfighting with pirates, warring factions and treacherous Imperials. And, best of all, the spectre of morality never raises its head. You carry out your orders, each of which is clear and free from ambiguity. Even when a member of the Secret Order Of The Emperor, a covert Imperial sect that’s investigating attempts to oust the Empire’s ruling elite, shows up and starts giving you secondary mission objectives that work alongside and sometimes somewhat contrarily to your main ones, you just keep ticking off that order list all the same.

The Order’s requests reveal a plot by a renegade Admiral to usurp the Emperor from power, whereupon the story spirals out from fighting Z95 Headhunters and Y-Wings to other TIE Fighters and even Star Destroyers. What seem like side issues during missions, therefore, take new purpose, such as a scenario in which you’re asked to break off from the primary objective to find a stolen Imperial shuttle containing Rebel officers escaping from Hoth (surely a small allusion to the similar sequence in Return Of The Jedi). The overall story isn’t affected by your failure to achieve these objectives; the reward, instead, is two sets of decoration: standard medals won through completing missions and achieving your nominal commander’s secondary and bonus objectives, and a purple tattoo on your arm that increases in complexity as you achieve more of the Order’s, as well as unlocking special cutscenes. It’s a low-tech yet elegant way of making you feel more involved in a plot that’s driven by your commanding officers – who are only following immutable scripts created by the game designer anyway.

The team that created WWII-based flight sims such as Secret Weapons Of The Luftwaffe made X-Wing and TIE Fighter, an interesting parallel with George Lucas having based the dogfights in A New Hope on those of WWII movies. But because Star Wars space battles lack such real-world inconveniences as the ground and stalling, TIE Fighter’s battles are much closer to the filmic ideal. Without the need to emulate proper space physics, they are close-up and intense, quarry and hunter twisting and turning against a starfield shot through with green and orange laser bolts.