Star Wars: Rogue Squadron
Many reviews compared "Star Wars: Rogue Squadron" to one of its inspirations, the Battle of Hoth flight combat level in "Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire", considered one of that game's best elements. "GamePro" remarked that "Rogue Squadron" "enhanced the flight model with true pitch, roll, and bank mechanics". IGN praised its inclusion of "upgrades, more enemies, better sound, and stunning second-generation graphics". The Nintendo 64 version received mostly positive reviews, and received an aggregate score of 85 percent from both GameRankings and Metacritic. "GamePro" named it one of the best games released in 1998. In a 2008 retrospective, IGN's Levi Buchanan stated that the game revived the "Star Wars" license on consoles through well-paced gameplay, a story tied into the "Star Wars" canon and visuals that made it "one of the generation's top stunners".
Star Wars: Rogue Squadron
During "Rogue Squadron" development, ""—the first new "Star Wars" film in more than 15 years—was less than one year from its scheduled release date. To take advantage of this marketing opportunity, Factor 5 included content from the upcoming film in "Rogue Squadron". LucasFilm provided the developers with design art for the Naboo Starfighter, a ship prominently featured in the new film. These designs were used to create an in-game model. Because the game was scheduled to be released six months before the film, Factor 5 was required to keep the ship's inclusion a secret. As a result, most of the game's development team at Factor 5 and LucasArts were not informed of its inclusion. A complex scrambling system was also developed to help hide the ship's code from gamers using cheat cartridges such as GameShark or Action Replay. More than six months after the release of "Rogue Squadron", LucasArts unveiled the code to unlock the Naboo Starfighter as a playable craft. The code has been named the Nintendo 64's most well-hidden code because of the length of time before its discovery.