I think a lot of the value of a total rewrite in C is that it is a buildable executable that should be runable on virtually any system, given that this game predates the popularity of the modern "3D Card". A lot of the friction in these games is dealing with all the peculiarities of getting a DOS game to somehow install on a 30 year newer Mac. A complete rewrite eliminates all of that awkward installer friction, so long as you have the necessary game files.
The original Star Wars: TIE Fighter was one of the first computer games I played as a teenager. The funny thing is, I had absolutely no idea what Star Wars was, but somehow I still thought the game was really cool and played it for quite a while.
Cool! I played the original with a joystick back in the day. I tried the previous port to XWA with Tie Fighter more recently, and it had been so long that I couldnt even complete the tutorial with the joystick! Proper gamepad support would be clutch
I think I would really like a Tie Fighter mobile port.
That being said I still remember all the keybindings of Tie Fighter...
... and the correct sound card settings for my Pentium.
On a more serious note, there's also a really great conversion that ports the original TIE Fighter over to the later X-Wing Alliance engine [2].
And of course if you need copies of the originals, they still sell them over on GOG (Good Old Games).
[1] - https://imgpb.com/AoSwyrZ
[2] - https://www.moddb.com/mods/tie-fighter-total-conversion-tftc
I only mentioned GOG because it’s probably the easiest legal way to obtain the original assets necessary to use OpenTIE.
May need to find a modern HOTAS setup and immerse myself in these.