True story, a friend and I used to play this together. One person would be the pilot (fly and shoot) with the joystick while the other would be the astromech droid (power distribution) on the keyboard. It worked surprisingly well and was fun because we'd switch rolls from time to time.
Thank you for talking about the iMUSE system. Very important when talking about how awesome the old DOS Floppy and Collector CD DOS versions of X-Wing and Tie Fighter are. It is rather sad that many games of today are simply not able to do this. Sure sounds and music quality has vastly improved but why is there no new technology to take that amazing music and mix it all together to events in game, seamlessly and with fluid transition...
You are so right! The iMuse was a brilliant system and I remember as a wide eyed 11yr old reading an interview in ST Format with the Lucas arts devs about how they created it. Loved it in the monkey island series
Some modern games do this with varying degrees of success, but the thing about this game and particularly Tie Fighter, was that the music was jut top notch on itself. It had my adrenaline pumping
Big smile on my face! I loved the X-Wing games back then. The keyboard shortcuts were burned into my young brain back then, I could still reconfigure my shield and weapon power blindly today.
+Neawoulf Tie Fighter was literally the first computer game I ever played and I still adore it. I must have played through the campaign a dozen times. I sincerely hope that someone at EA will get off their ass and remake these games properly, maybe even a new sim with the new t70 Xwing and missions about the New Republic vs The First Order...but that's like wishing water to not be wet... There are always modders for Star Citizen...
+Gristle McThornebody A new X-Wing game by EA? No joystick support, short linear scripted missions with thousands of cutscenes, limited freedom and no challenge except for fighting hundereds of Tie Fighters at the same time, 3rd person view? I don't want any new Star Wars game from EA. No X-Wing, no Jedi Knight, no Knights of the old Repulbic. I really don't like that company, i don't trust them to make good games anymore.
+jestermaximus136 It would be like The Force Unleashed; your #2 button would be "Use the Force" and it would operate as an Iwin button. And all the battle briefings would be Quicktime events. And more microtransaction costume variants than interesting characters. Basically it would suck so much it would make a Sarlacc look like a prude.
For people who don't understand WHY this was difficult to get running. IT WAS HUGE, for a start, most harddrives couldnt fit it. When you eventually got it installed. The thing didn't autodetect any soundcards, so you had to manually tell it how to talk to your soundcard. There were many preset profiles for soundblaster however if your sound card was from anyone else it was a crapshoot. So yeah, I can just imagine the rage if people had to go through the hassles of what was in the early days of pc gaming.
This was a great game. So was TIE Fighter. So was X-Wing vs TIE Fighter. So was X-Wing Alliance. I was always a fan of the A-wing...I loved its speed and agility.
One can not understand the feeling of playing this back then when he is younger. Star Wars was sooo over the top, the coolest thing there was and then you could fly the X-Wings and TIE Fighters yourself. It was so hardcore cool. Don't get me wrong, Wing Commander was cool and great too, but this was on an whole other level. Also this was one of the really rare examples (like most of Lucas Arts titles) of a game with movie licence that doesn't suck or being a cheap ripoff of a movie franchise. It still would be a great game by itself even when the movie had never existed.
Loved this game, as well as Tie Fighter and X-Wing Alliance. Please don't let EA get the rights to this or they will ruin it like Battlefront. Can you imagine it, you get the X-Wing only. if you want A, B & Y Wings, buy the DLC!
Nostalgia OVERLOAD! When I saw this game it made me run out and buy my first PC, a 486 DX40. It was a more civilized time before the console wars ruined everything xD Why the HELL have they not rebooted this game to todays visuals with that interface system.. they would make billions!
5 ปีที่แล้ว +2
He sais it clearly at @0:45. It was a harder game, for a more civilized era. A time where games could afford to be difficult.
There are No Laser in Star Wars. (well except maybe the death star main weapon) They are called Blaster. And are plasma based weapons. Laser are ineffective against the shield and hull-plating technology in this universe.
+Orko Blasters are actually more particle based weapons, not plasma. The Plasma ones are more the Laser Cannons and the Turbolaser. Those ones unlike Blasters, uses lasers as the igniter to turn the gases into either plasma or Charged Particles. Blasters uses a different method to transform he gases in charged particles before shaping it into a bolt. Turbolaser are more or less the same as the laser cannons only using another set of gas along with the igniter gas to further increase the power of the bolt. All three of these weapons operate on the same principles just different results and method. There is also the Composite-Beam Laser used in the LAAT gunships, which is technically what the Death Star Laser is based off from. These ones are laser weapons and more or less slices through droids like butter.
Holy shit, these games were so good. TIE Fighter improved everything, but I'll never forget how much time I spent on these games as a kid. Between this game, Battle of Britain and Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe (and its expansions,) I learned all of my flight-sim skills from these. Thanks for getting these, Dad. :p
In a time when we (poor engineering students) were buying single side 3.5" floppy disks just to drill a hole and make them double side, I never managed to get all the 11 floppy disks of this game working, dammit
my favorite memories of the original x-wing simulator was the accomplishments youd receive as medals and ribbons on your uniform in your room, it really added that immersion to the game
I believe the 98' version of _'X-Wing'_ also plays a bit of "Imperial music" to let you know when an enemy ship has entered the battlezone. Don't know why so many see the music in the '98 version as this big "issue". There is more than enough awesome music in the game and quite frankly, once you get playing, the music quickly becomes of less concern and the attacking ships take the focal point. Not to mention, I have seen videos of people playing the '93 and '95 versions, with the midi music playing and for me personally, it got on my nerves really quick. I'd much rather have the updated graphics and the actual John Williams film score music playing than that but, that's just me. I also prefer this game to _'TIE Fighter'_ as the '98 version of _'TIE Fighter'_ has a bug where all the enemy ships and mines fire advanced concussion missiles at you and it gets really tough after a while as ACM's can usually blow you away, even with full shields sometimes. That little oversight by Totally Games when they ported the '98 version makes it a very tough game, especially when the many of Imperial fighters and ships you're flying don't have any shields. Still, if anyone wants to feel what it's really like to fly an X-Wing or TIE Fighter in the most immersive way to date, then look no further than these games. Not even EA's latest "Battlefront" games (including the VR stuff) hold a candle to these gems. If you want the most authentic and immersive experience as a pilot in the SW universe, *_NOTHING_* beats these classics (oh and if anyone thinks they're some "hotshot" pilot in EA's "Battlefront" games, these PC games here will chew you up and spit you out without remorse. No hand-holding here in these games. Don't even try to use tactics used in "Battlefront" in these games. If you do, you will most certainly wind up dying.... *_A LOT_* ).
Ah, the nostalgia. I was a bit too young at the time to really know what I was doing, but I still remember playing it for hours trying to get medals for my trophy case.
Used to play this as a 2player game...meaning one of us was the pilot, the other was the R2 unit...was fun. I would fly around and yell out commands and my buddy would have the keyboard and control the shields, laser recharge, etc.
Oh the memories...that glorious 320x240 resolution back in 1993! It was still several years before I finally got a new machine and had EF2000 running at 640x480. That was as amazing a leap for me back then as Star Citizen is becoming now.
+InternetStudiesGuy Yeah, TIE Fighter was better. But that does not diminish how good X-Wing was, it's just a testament to exactly how awesome TIE Fighter was. By far one of my favorite games of all time.
In X-Wing, the nintendo hard difficulty, constant dying and all that kept reminding you that you're playing a video game. Tie Fighter was a lot easier, mostly because it was a lot more balanced. But it was also a lot more immersive and atmospheric. I been rooting for the empire ever since Tie Fighter. This rooting survived the prequels and is in full force with The Force Awakens. Filthy rebel scum must die!
+InternetStudiesGuy TIE was so immersive it turned me to the Dark Side as well. I was so PROUD to be flying alongside Vader and getting praised for my performance by the Emperor himself. I want to get it off GOG and relive the old days, but back then I had a full stick/throttle/pedals setup. You can't just walk into Best Buy and get a stick anymore... plus I don't have room for it the way I have my PC setup these days.
Spent waaaaaaay too many days of my youth playing this game, though I wager I sank twice as much time into TIE Fighter and working my way up the secret order (I think that's what it was called). Thanks for the memory lane trip, Scott!
Also, the Y-wings were deployed against the tie bombers because the ion cannons provide an incredibly helpful glitch in the game: If you DESTROY a craft, it will keep getting replaced by NEW craft until they run OUT of craft. Whereas if you DISABLE a craft, they won't send out any new craft to replace it since it hasn't been destroyed. This is especially useful in any escort or defense type mission.
Woah, this is a literal *blast from the past.* I played, no conquered, this game in the 90s. I used to have friends over to compete. So great game. But I had no idea that it "influenced" future games of the genre, none of which I am familiar with. Great video! I want to download and play it again, which is something I have recently done with a few other DOS games of the era.
I don't understand the author's reservation about the joysticks. The original X-Wing worked fine with a standard joystick, I believe plugged into the standard joystick connector supplied by a Sound Blaster ISA interface. But at that time, standalone joystick ports were also available (that's all they did).
I love Xwing Series, loved it as kid and love them now, I finished the GOG version last year and was extremely happy that the game aged so well, thr gameplay is still amazing.
I very much appreciate the references to DOS configuration. I still recall saving my various config.sys and autoexec.bat files customized to get each game I owned to actually run. EMM386, Protected Mode games, himem.sys opened the door to a world of modem terminal commands to initialize my modem, hex-editing game executable files and eventually writing code. You might say that "DOS=HIGH" changed my life. Also, Loved X-Wing, played on my Gateway Intel 486DX2 66, 4MB RAM, 40MB IDE HDD, VGA graphics and a Sound Blaster 16.
I remember how much I loved XWA and then found this and TIE Fighter. All amazing games. I remember XWA had the context sensitive music system. The first time I did the last family mission in the prologue the imperial march signalling the arrival of a Victory II Star Destroyer and it's hordes of TIE Bombers made me crash into a station pylon.
YES! Getting everything you needed to squeeze into the first 640k is a struggle nobody has to worry about anymore. Never had much difficulty configuring for X-Wing, but Mechwarrior 2 was a challenge.
My friend and I used to play this two-player, one person controlled the joystick as the pilot, the other controlled the keyboard as his "R2." Impressive to think in '93 there was enough depth to the game to make that a viable play style.
This is the only game I ever became insanely good at. It got to the stage where I could - with reasonable reliability - clear (if memory serves) 9 tie fighters in something like 12 seconds. That's a one shot for each one, all but the last one or two while they were still dots in the distance, with all power to engines to race towards them, so no shields, and just enough stored power in the guns to give me the 9 (quad) shots I needed. And all that without a rudder. I was living alone and mostly unemployed back then so had a lot of time. I'd also just gotten my first bike license, so used to use X-Wing to get in the mood before getting out on the road. Unfortunately, my 386DX33 had trouble running the higher missions so I never got to finish the campaign. I'm pretty tempted to try it again nowadays and see if any of the old skills remain. I remember being so impressed with how much more sophisticated this game was than my first game - the "Invader 1000", space invaders rendered in a couple of dozen discrete LEDs - and how far the state of the art had come so quickly. Looking back now it's kind of shocking to see how primitive X-Wing looks by modern standards, but then again, in terms of gameplay maybe not.
+Davis Good voice acting? I still shudder at "Lando" during the Death Star II run. Not really sure why you inexplicably become Lando, but why the hell not.
+Davis X-wing alliance is so underated. That game was awesome. I also loved the Custom mission planner, with a huge library of ships you could spawn (though you could only fly single sit fighters an YT freighters.) and you could set different objectives. I loved setting up rebel raids on Star destroyers. There was also an obstacle course mod which was nice.
+LostInNumbers I know right?! My favorite mission was to do a pearl harbor scenario where i would spawn several capital ships and have them inactive and defend them from waves of tie bombers and fighters.
Wow! Thanks for the flashback to sophomore year in high school! Had a brand new 486DX Computer complete with a Pro Audio Spectrum sound card (installed by me, he he), and I thought I was awesome. I used to watch the cut scenes and intro cartoon all the time. I loved that computer and that time in gaming. This was an awesome trip down memory lane. :-)
this is was the first simulator I played, as a 3 year old playing on Windows3.1 on my old Olivetti machine. This was me hooked, I remember that my dad and I would take turns to be copilots and manage the energy sheilds and guns etc.
X Wing Alliance had that dynamic music element and objectives tracker which made staying on top of a dynamically evolving mission easier. I lost many, many, MANY hours to that game. XWA was definitely the best.
Ah .. good old days of Wing Commander and X-Wing series. When I play Elite Dangerous now and toggle my power distribution, i smile when i think back on this game.
Tie Fighter and Mission Disks - Yes, they did that back in the days, with almost as much content as the main game - was so much better. It's basicially the best game ever made.
Ah Scott, you're flying around in the X-wing the whole time with power diverted to your shields and blasters yet they were at max capacity. Remember: speed is life. If you can keep the X-wing's speed up it is a competent dog-fighter. It's when you pump all your power into weapons and shields it becomes a bit of dog. I prefer diverting power from the shields because they drain slower and you can always pump weapon energy into them in a pinch. It's only when you get pummeled with missiles or have a veteran A/I on your tail that you wanna go all defensive and crank up shield power and turn down your weapons. In that situation you maneuver to get back on their 6 and then when you get the drop on them give them a dosage of dual-link missile fun right up their exhaust port at point blank range. No need to even bother locking on. Oh, and when you are on an enemies 6, trying to blast 'em, toggle off your cockpit overlay to get a clearer view for lining up your shot.
Finally! Someone who appreciates the finesse of efficient X-Wing power management! ;) Though the Y-Wing & A-Wing were a little different, as their shield recharge rate was comparable to the laser charge rate. It was therefore most efficient to always keep your lasers at 0 charge & store all your energy in your shields (running at increased charge rate). Then whenever you needed to pewpew, temporarily dump energy into lasers to double charge them, and transfer it away when done. The Y-Wing could be made a competent dog fighter in this configuration, and the A-Wing became nuts; occasionally being too fast & causing collisions. It was a horrible micromanagement nightmare, but definitely helped separated the Rookies from the Top Aces :D Also..... manually cycling between lasers & ions to avoid energy wastage.... so glad they added laser/ion linking in the later games.
I had a great time with X-Wing vs Tie Fighter. B-wing was so OP, 3 lasers, 3 ions, torpedos and rockets (Or were they missiles? Memory is hazy there). You were like a multi-role spaceship from hell, eating TIE's by the spoonful!
+frealms Kinda like the Broadsword from Wing Commander. Classified as a heavy bomber, but let anything with a hull classified as a fighter in front of it and eating the 3 mass drivers? They quickly became smudges on the 'windscreen'.
Kyle Lorrin Torpedos are the blue ones, they are slow and pack a punch (mostly you use for capitals or shotgunning distracted pilots). Missiles are the red ones, guided and more manueverable, for AA action. Rockets are the middle ground, unguided, not that slow, pack a good punch, think they were orangeish.
+frealms Torpedoes were actually the middle ground, fast enough to pose a danger to fighters, but heavy enough to do damage to frigates. Firing a rocket at anything faster than an Assault Transport or Stormtrooper Transport was just a waste. There were also bombs, which were almost unguided but difficult to see.
my heart went all soft and tender while looking at these games through the lens of nostalgia. I'll respect them for what they were, and i'll give them the same treatment i'd give to my school ex-gf , (20y ago). Better we not meet again. I'll treasure your memory. :P
+Bob Robertson Though, in all honesty, the dogfight sequences in The Force Awakens are more reminiscent of the Rogue Squadron games than the X-Wing series...
Scott, proton torpedoes themselves were the first "official" guided weapons, that's what the targeting computer was for. And even if they weren't, the first licensed thing they appeared in would be their first appearance in universe. Also, i don't remember it being difficult to get anything running in DOS...
One day, my friend and I were perusing Egghead Software. I picked up X-Wing and Wing Commander and told my friend, "This is for when I buy a computer." That night, we find us visiting Circuit City and I'm applying for my 2nd credit card. We walked home with Packard Bell 486sx computer. with 4 MB of RAM. It took me about 4 hours to figure how to get X-Wing running. My friend and sat there until about 5 AM flicking the mouse in my parents living room. That mouse needed to be replace about 3 days later. I can thank this game as the start of my career as a programmer.
Played X-Wing to death on my dads old win 3.1 PC. TIE Fighter was my favourite though, TIE Defenders were beasts and flying as Vader's wingman was a real nerd out moment.
+aseredy It's essentially a barrel roll where you spiral towards a target. It was described in the strategy guide, which was actually worth it for the huge amounts of background info.
This is why you're awesome Mr. Manley! It was super effective, at least for the slow blasts of tie fighters and star destroyer turbo lasers. After I mastered that, the missions became so easy. They always aimed where you were, not where you would be.
+aseredy I wouldn´t know until I read it here but used it instinctivly to dodge blaster fire from SDs just so I could "park" me in its belly and give hell to it until it blew...mwahaha...stupid imperials :)
hahah. I did that once too, but it took me 45 min or so of blasting it, because I refused to use the unlimited proton torpedo cheat code. ahh memories!
This and X-wing vs Tie fighter were the games that got me into pc gaming. I remember the graphics being much nicer, well I was a little kid at the time.
Had this game on 4 discs or something like that. Never got Tie Fighter for myself, but played it later by a friend. Both were great games for this time.
Ha, - yeah! A vid out of the golden, old age when you were able to buy fully working (!) games with cinematic feeling. Long, long times ago, seemly in an other galaxy...
There was always a simple reason for the Rebels using the 'wrong' ships for some missions: Their vehicle pool was always more 'broad' than 'deep', sometimes you sent a Y-Wing squadron on an intercept mission because you had Y-Wings you could task to the mission but no X- or A-Wings that weren't already doing something.
I really do miss the days of sophisticated game play. The experience of this old gem is more enjoyable than most anything that has come out with the IP over the past 15 years.
Oh man, that game was awesome. Did I spent hours of fun fiddling with it when I was a young padawan (and my computer's CPU was topping at 25MHz back there)
This was my gateway drug into the Star Wars universe.... we need a new game! I did not know that the actor from ROTJ did the voice for Ackbar in the game... that's awesome!!! 18:46 - I LOVE B-Wings!!!!
Scott Lawrence did the voice of Vader for TIE 95. (I thought it was Brock Peters, who did the voice of Vader for the SW Radio Dramas, but it wasn't). Nick Jameson (Palpatine in the same game) was Ian McDiarmid's voice double for TPM and ROTS as well as the principle voice actor for Palpatine in many oher games such as Galactic Battlegrounds (give that one a go, Scott, it's heavy on the resource management but with a little hacking of a text file you can set up some epic battles).
Played this game 23 years ago. Took 14 floppy discs to install it, and to login you need the password reference from the manual tied to pages with unique characters.
Thanks for doing this wonderful game! I started playing X-Wing when I was very young, about 8 or 9. It was pretty much my childhood. However Tie Fighter even more so! I hope you get a chance to do a video on Tie Fighter!
I played the X-Wing series so much that eventually I didn't have to use the predictive targeting; I was so used to deflection shooting that I would squeeze the trigger when it felt right, and the ship I was leading would just disintegrate. I got to the point where I didn't even have to see my target to know the angle was right, and didn't have to wait to see if I'd destroyed it. I would just fire and move on to the next target without hesitation, and all the TIEs would get fragged in rapid succession. I was basically Poe. ;)
I totally remember save scumming on the original floppy disk version of X-Wing. Play a mission… if it went well, quit to DOS, and backup my profile to a floppy. If it went poorly… quit to DOS and restore it. Despite wanting to fly an X-Wing, as you mention, TIE Fighter's improvements made the game so much more enjoyable in my book.
Thrawn was such a magnificent character. Probably the biggest reason I'm saddened by the Expanded Universe being ditched in the new trilogy to be honest. Now all I need is for someone to commission an Episode VII era version of either X-Wing or TIE Fighter, and I could be a very, very happy chap.
True story, a friend and I used to play this together. One person would be the pilot (fly and shoot) with the joystick while the other would be the astromech droid (power distribution) on the keyboard. It worked surprisingly well and was fun because we'd switch rolls from time to time.
Casey Goddard I actually do this with my younger bro while playing TIE fighter. I manage the systems and guide him to the target.
“Artoo, try and increase the power!”
(R2 diverts all laser and shield recharge to the engines)
“Woah!!!” (barely avoiding obstacles in the trench)
Me and my brother did the same back in the day. It worked surprisingly well.
I love that! I'm going to try that with my 7 year old son!
It's an older game,sir, but it checks out.
Thank you for talking about the iMUSE system. Very important when talking about how awesome the old DOS Floppy and Collector CD DOS versions of X-Wing and Tie Fighter are. It is rather sad that many games of today are simply not able to do this. Sure sounds and music quality has vastly improved but why is there no new technology to take that amazing music and mix it all together to events in game, seamlessly and with fluid transition...
You are so right! The iMuse was a brilliant system and I remember as a wide eyed 11yr old reading an interview in ST Format with the Lucas arts devs about how they created it. Loved it in the monkey island series
The first Halo game had a system for transitioning music in response to in game events.
Some modern games do this with varying degrees of success, but the thing about this game and particularly Tie Fighter, was that the music was jut top notch on itself. It had my adrenaline pumping
Big smile on my face! I loved the X-Wing games back then. The keyboard shortcuts were burned into my young brain back then, I could still reconfigure my shield and weapon power blindly today.
+Neawoulf Tie Fighter was literally the first computer game I ever played and I still adore it. I must have played through the campaign a dozen times.
I sincerely hope that someone at EA will get off their ass and remake these games properly, maybe even a new sim with the new t70 Xwing and missions about the New Republic vs The First Order...but that's like wishing water to not be wet...
There are always modders for Star Citizen...
+Gristle McThornebody A new X-Wing game by EA? No joystick support, short linear scripted missions with thousands of cutscenes, limited freedom and no challenge except for fighting hundereds of Tie Fighters at the same time, 3rd person view? I don't want any new Star Wars game from EA. No X-Wing, no Jedi Knight, no Knights of the old Repulbic. I really don't like that company, i don't trust them to make good games anymore.
+Neawoulf im sure you could allways buy joystick support in a friendly dlc package for only 29.99
+jestermaximus136 It would be like The Force Unleashed; your #2 button would be "Use the Force" and it would operate as an Iwin button. And all the battle briefings would be Quicktime events. And more microtransaction costume variants than interesting characters. Basically it would suck so much it would make a Sarlacc look like a prude.
For people who don't understand WHY this was difficult to get running. IT WAS HUGE, for a start, most harddrives couldnt fit it. When you eventually got it installed. The thing didn't autodetect any soundcards, so you had to manually tell it how to talk to your soundcard. There were many preset profiles for soundblaster however if your sound card was from anyone else it was a crapshoot. So yeah, I can just imagine the rage if people had to go through the hassles of what was in the early days of pc gaming.
This was a great game. So was TIE Fighter. So was X-Wing vs TIE Fighter. So was X-Wing Alliance. I was always a fan of the A-wing...I loved its speed and agility.
I didn't care for X-Wing vs Tie-Fighter. The story and progression made these games for me. XW vs TF felt a little soulless
@@Titere05 true, X Wing vs TIE Fighter was designed for multiplayer so there were little, if any, single player elements.
One can not understand the feeling of playing this back then when he is younger.
Star Wars was sooo over the top, the coolest thing there was and then you could fly the X-Wings and TIE Fighters yourself.
It was so hardcore cool. Don't get me wrong, Wing Commander was cool and great too, but this was on an whole other level.
Also this was one of the really rare examples (like most of Lucas Arts titles) of a game with movie licence that doesn't suck or being a cheap ripoff of a movie franchise. It still would be a great game by itself even when the movie had never existed.
Loved this game, as well as Tie Fighter and X-Wing Alliance. Please don't let EA get the rights to this or they will ruin it like Battlefront. Can you imagine it, you get the X-Wing only. if you want A, B & Y Wings, buy the DLC!
+Dave Messenger To be fair, the B-Wing was an expansion that you had to buy later.
+Dave Messenger At least they'll actually... you know, put out games.
It's not like anyone else is chomping at the bit to remake X-Wing.
+Scott Manley Yes, from a Galaxy Far Far Away, where DLC was actually worth the cost!
+Scott Manley It also came with a brand new campaign. Imagine that!
+Dave Messenger I don't think they'd ruin the series, its not like by making a new game they would undo the old games
I do remember that after being hit by a missile my old Force Feedback Pro would do it's very best to break my wrist.
+Andy M
Just like the G27 does today when you hit a wall at ludicrous speeds =p
+frealms *ludicrous speed
+Andy M Pretty sure there was no force feedback support until X-Wing Alliance, but yeah I had one too and it was amazing. xD
You are probably correct on that one, I don't even think the FFPro was even out when X-Wing/Tie Fighter came out. Must have been XW:A then.
+Andy M Force feedback wasn't even invented for PC when X-Wing came out in 1993.
Nostalgia OVERLOAD! When I saw this game it made me run out and buy my first PC, a 486 DX40. It was a more civilized time before the console wars ruined everything xD Why the HELL have they not rebooted this game to todays visuals with that interface system.. they would make billions!
He sais it clearly at @0:45. It was a harder game, for a more civilized era. A time where games could afford to be difficult.
Star wars squadrons is being released next week
@ : And when wimps who found the game too hard for them couldn’t cry ‘BS!’ on Twitter, because social media hadn’t been invented yet!
Modern space sim games your lock on weapons always work.
90s Xwing. They dodge and break formation when being locked on to.
There are No Laser in Star Wars. (well except maybe the death star main weapon)
They are called Blaster. And are plasma based weapons. Laser are ineffective against the shield and hull-plating technology in this universe.
Tell that to Han Solo who says 'that was no laser blast, something just hit us'
Scott Manley yea it couldn't be since they don't use laser ;)
Same reason why laser brain can't be an insult ^_^
+Orko Blasters are actually more particle based weapons, not plasma. The Plasma ones are more the Laser Cannons and the Turbolaser. Those ones unlike Blasters, uses lasers as the igniter to turn the gases into either plasma or Charged Particles. Blasters uses a different method to transform he gases in charged particles before shaping it into a bolt. Turbolaser are more or less the same as the laser cannons only using another set of gas along with the igniter gas to further increase the power of the bolt.
All three of these weapons operate on the same principles just different results and method.
There is also the Composite-Beam Laser used in the LAAT gunships, which is technically what the Death Star Laser is based off from. These ones are laser weapons and more or less slices through droids like butter.
gotta love pretend science for a fantasy movie =D
+Orko "Turbo Lasers"
Thanks Scott Manley! Blast from the past. I had so much fun playing this whole series, I think I'll replay them!
Played this game so much when I was a kid. And thanks to GoG I can play it and the sequel TIE Fighter again.
Holy shit, these games were so good. TIE Fighter improved everything, but I'll never forget how much time I spent on these games as a kid. Between this game, Battle of Britain and Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe (and its expansions,) I learned all of my flight-sim skills from these.
Thanks for getting these, Dad. :p
In a time when we (poor engineering students) were buying single side 3.5" floppy disks just to drill a hole and make them double side, I never managed to get all the 11 floppy disks of this game working, dammit
A classic and one of my favourites. This and the B-wing expansion and also XvT and XWA :) The story on XWA was really compelling too.
my favorite memories of the original x-wing simulator was the accomplishments youd receive as medals and ribbons on your uniform in your room, it really added that immersion to the game
I believe the 98' version of _'X-Wing'_ also plays a bit of "Imperial music" to let you know when an enemy ship has entered the battlezone. Don't know why so many see the music in the '98 version as this big "issue". There is more than enough awesome music in the game and quite frankly, once you get playing, the music quickly becomes of less concern and the attacking ships take the focal point.
Not to mention, I have seen videos of people playing the '93 and '95 versions, with the midi music playing and for me personally, it got on my nerves really quick. I'd much rather have the updated graphics and the actual John Williams film score music playing than that but, that's just me. I also prefer this game to _'TIE Fighter'_ as the '98 version of _'TIE Fighter'_ has a bug where all the enemy ships and mines fire advanced concussion missiles at you and it gets really tough after a while as ACM's can usually blow you away, even with full shields sometimes.
That little oversight by Totally Games when they ported the '98 version makes it a very tough game, especially when the many of Imperial fighters and ships you're flying don't have any shields. Still, if anyone wants to feel what it's really like to fly an X-Wing or TIE Fighter in the most immersive way to date, then look no further than these games. Not even EA's latest "Battlefront" games (including the VR stuff) hold a candle to these gems. If you want the most authentic and immersive experience as a pilot in the SW universe, *_NOTHING_* beats these classics (oh and if anyone thinks they're some "hotshot" pilot in EA's "Battlefront" games, these PC games here will chew you up and spit you out without remorse. No hand-holding here in these games. Don't even try to use tactics used in "Battlefront" in these games. If you do, you will most certainly wind up dying.... *_A LOT_* ).
Ah, the nostalgia. I was a bit too young at the time to really know what I was doing, but I still remember playing it for hours trying to get medals for my trophy case.
Wow, this whole video takes me back... I teethed on this genre!
oh man, thanks for that awesome trip down memory lane! I'm gonna go re-live my childhood now.
this was one of my favorite games as child, so awesome you did a video of it. oh the nostalgia!
Used to play this as a 2player game...meaning one of us was the pilot, the other was the R2 unit...was fun. I would fly around and yell out commands and my buddy would have the keyboard and control the shields, laser recharge, etc.
Oh the memories...that glorious 320x240 resolution back in 1993! It was still several years before I finally got a new machine and had EF2000 running at 640x480. That was as amazing a leap for me back then as Star Citizen is becoming now.
Tie Fighter kicks this game's ass. Played them both back in the day. Tie Fighter had all the quirks worked out and had full voice action.
+InternetStudiesGuy Yeah, TIE Fighter was better. But that does not diminish how good X-Wing was, it's just a testament to exactly how awesome TIE Fighter was. By far one of my favorite games of all time.
In X-Wing, the nintendo hard difficulty, constant dying and all that kept reminding you that you're playing a video game. Tie Fighter was a lot easier, mostly because it was a lot more balanced. But it was also a lot more immersive and atmospheric.
I been rooting for the empire ever since Tie Fighter. This rooting survived the prequels and is in full force with The Force Awakens. Filthy rebel scum must die!
+InternetStudiesGuy TIE was so immersive it turned me to the Dark Side as well. I was so PROUD to be flying alongside Vader and getting praised for my performance by the Emperor himself.
I want to get it off GOG and relive the old days, but back then I had a full stick/throttle/pedals setup. You can't just walk into Best Buy and get a stick anymore... plus I don't have room for it the way I have my PC setup these days.
+XH1927 Saitek Av-8R. Cheap, twist rudder, dual throttle axis and plenty of extra buttons, plus 3 independently programmable modes.
This game is so ingrained in my adolesence I can't overstate it. I loved the damage modelling for the cocpits when you got nailed in the hull
Spent waaaaaaay too many days of my youth playing this game, though I wager I sank twice as much time into TIE Fighter and working my way up the secret order (I think that's what it was called). Thanks for the memory lane trip, Scott!
Also, the Y-wings were deployed against the tie bombers because the ion cannons provide an incredibly helpful glitch in the game: If you DESTROY a craft, it will keep getting replaced by NEW craft until they run OUT of craft. Whereas if you DISABLE a craft, they won't send out any new craft to replace it since it hasn't been destroyed. This is especially useful in any escort or defense type mission.
In Y-W missions you could destroy ships with ion-cannons but it was concidered a mistake and mission was a failure.
Woah, this is a literal *blast from the past.* I played, no conquered, this game in the 90s. I used to have friends over to compete. So great game. But I had no idea that it "influenced" future games of the genre, none of which I am familiar with. Great video! I want to download and play it again, which is something I have recently done with a few other DOS games of the era.
I don't understand the author's reservation about the joysticks. The original X-Wing worked fine with a standard joystick, I believe plugged into the standard joystick connector supplied by a Sound Blaster ISA interface. But at that time, standalone joystick ports were also available (that's all they did).
X-Wing Alliance was one the first games I played and it was awesome, still replay it every odd year or so.
I love Xwing Series, loved it as kid and love them now, I finished the GOG version last year and was extremely happy that the game aged so well, thr gameplay is still amazing.
This takes me back. Thanks for doing these awesome games
Played this first when I was 8
I very much appreciate the references to DOS configuration. I still recall saving my various config.sys and autoexec.bat files customized to get each game I owned to actually run. EMM386, Protected Mode games, himem.sys opened the door to a world of modem terminal commands to initialize my modem, hex-editing game executable files and eventually writing code. You might say that "DOS=HIGH" changed my life.
Also, Loved X-Wing, played on my Gateway Intel 486DX2 66, 4MB RAM, 40MB IDE HDD, VGA graphics and a Sound Blaster 16.
I love how you make 6yo me sound like an elite hacker.
wow, the 98 version looks good.
I know elite hackers who would have trouble getting dos setup for some games.
LH C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\MSCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD001
Brings back memories. I played X-Wing on my first Windows PC....a Tandy 486 with 4Mb of RAM.
I remember how much I loved XWA and then found this and TIE Fighter. All amazing games. I remember XWA had the context sensitive music system. The first time I did the last family mission in the prologue the imperial march signalling the arrival of a Victory II Star Destroyer and it's hordes of TIE Bombers made me crash into a station pylon.
We need a remake of the old classics... If EA doesn't get their hands on it and turns it into a 4 year old's toy.
Wow, that bring back a lot of memory. I mostly played X-Wing vs Tie Fighter and X-Wing Alliance back then.
YES! Getting everything you needed to squeeze into the first 640k is a struggle nobody has to worry about anymore. Never had much difficulty configuring for X-Wing, but Mechwarrior 2 was a challenge.
I loved this game as a kid.... I've just started playing again!! 👍
My friend and I used to play this two-player, one person controlled the joystick as the pilot, the other controlled the keyboard as his "R2." Impressive to think in '93 there was enough depth to the game to make that a viable play style.
Good memory, I loved that game, at the time I had a SoundBlaster AWE 32 and it improved a lot the quality of the dynamic music.
This is the only game I ever became insanely good at. It got to the stage where I could - with reasonable reliability - clear (if memory serves) 9 tie fighters in something like 12 seconds. That's a one shot for each one, all but the last one or two while they were still dots in the distance, with all power to engines to race towards them, so no shields, and just enough stored power in the guns to give me the 9 (quad) shots I needed. And all that without a rudder.
I was living alone and mostly unemployed back then so had a lot of time. I'd also just gotten my first bike license, so used to use X-Wing to get in the mood before getting out on the road. Unfortunately, my 386DX33 had trouble running the higher missions so I never got to finish the campaign. I'm pretty tempted to try it again nowadays and see if any of the old skills remain.
I remember being so impressed with how much more sophisticated this game was than my first game - the "Invader 1000", space invaders rendered in a couple of dozen discrete LEDs - and how far the state of the art had come so quickly. Looking back now it's kind of shocking to see how primitive X-Wing looks by modern standards, but then again, in terms of gameplay maybe not.
Personally i felt X-Wing alliance was the better game. Updated Graphics, better story line and voice acting that gave a damn.
+Davis Good voice acting? I still shudder at "Lando" during the Death Star II run. Not really sure why you inexplicably become Lando, but why the hell not.
+Joey Gil Oh yeah i forgot about the deathstar part. Mostly thinking of the Family missions..
I guess the problem with that scene was I had a comparison to Billy Dee Williams' performance.
+Davis X-wing alliance is so underated. That game was awesome.
I also loved the Custom mission planner, with a huge library of ships you could spawn (though you could only fly single sit fighters an YT freighters.) and you could set different objectives. I loved setting up rebel raids on Star destroyers. There was also an obstacle course mod which was nice.
+LostInNumbers I know right?! My favorite mission was to do a pearl harbor scenario where i would spawn several capital ships and have them inactive and defend them from waves of tie bombers and fighters.
Wow! Thanks for the flashback to sophomore year in high school! Had a brand new 486DX Computer complete with a Pro Audio Spectrum sound card (installed by me, he he), and I thought I was awesome. I used to watch the cut scenes and intro cartoon all the time. I loved that computer and that time in gaming. This was an awesome trip down memory lane. :-)
I always love flying that game since 1998!!!! Great review!! I even got a power fx x wing when I was 15!!!!
this is was the first simulator I played, as a 3 year old playing on Windows3.1 on my old Olivetti machine. This was me hooked, I remember that my dad and I would take turns to be copilots and manage the energy sheilds and guns etc.
X Wing Alliance had that dynamic music element and objectives tracker which made staying on top of a dynamically evolving mission easier. I lost many, many, MANY hours to that game. XWA was definitely the best.
LucasArts pixel art and animation was just superb =)
A new version of these with newer graphics (and nothing else!) would make so many geeks happy.
I was ADDICTED to this game. Widely considered the hardest game ever, at the time.
Oh yeah!! Those Escort missions!! Hated them lol.. Thank you for evoking my childhood, Scott
Tie fighter was my favourite game from that era but x wing was the pioneer. I'd love to see a modern remake
Ah .. good old days of Wing Commander and X-Wing series. When I play Elite Dangerous now and toggle my power distribution, i smile when i think back on this game.
x-wing vs tie fighter was my first flight simulator game, and still one of my favorites
This brings up memories... I do not remember it beeing that hard to get it to run in MS DOS... I spent nights playing this.
Tie Fighter and Mission Disks - Yes, they did that back in the days, with almost as much content as the main game - was so much better. It's basicially the best game ever made.
X-Wing Simulator... Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time... a long time.
This brings back memories. Really good game back in the day.
Ah Scott, you're flying around in the X-wing the whole time with power diverted to your shields and blasters yet they were at max capacity. Remember: speed is life. If you can keep the X-wing's speed up it is a competent dog-fighter. It's when you pump all your power into weapons and shields it becomes a bit of dog. I prefer diverting power from the shields because they drain slower and you can always pump weapon energy into them in a pinch. It's only when you get pummeled with missiles or have a veteran A/I on your tail that you wanna go all defensive and crank up shield power and turn down your weapons. In that situation you maneuver to get back on their 6 and then when you get the drop on them give them a dosage of dual-link missile fun right up their exhaust port at point blank range. No need to even bother locking on. Oh, and when you are on an enemies 6, trying to blast 'em, toggle off your cockpit overlay to get a clearer view for lining up your shot.
Finally! Someone who appreciates the finesse of efficient X-Wing power management! ;)
Though the Y-Wing & A-Wing were a little different, as their shield recharge rate was comparable to the laser charge rate.
It was therefore most efficient to always keep your lasers at 0 charge & store all your energy in your shields (running at increased charge rate).
Then whenever you needed to pewpew, temporarily dump energy into lasers to double charge them, and transfer it away when done.
The Y-Wing could be made a competent dog fighter in this configuration, and the A-Wing became nuts; occasionally being too fast & causing collisions.
It was a horrible micromanagement nightmare, but definitely helped separated the Rookies from the Top Aces :D
Also..... manually cycling between lasers & ions to avoid energy wastage.... so glad they added laser/ion linking in the later games.
I had a great time with X-Wing vs Tie Fighter. B-wing was so OP, 3 lasers, 3 ions, torpedos and rockets (Or were they missiles? Memory is hazy there). You were like a multi-role spaceship from hell, eating TIE's by the spoonful!
+frealms Kinda like the Broadsword from Wing Commander.
Classified as a heavy bomber, but let anything with a hull classified as a fighter in front of it and eating the 3 mass drivers?
They quickly became smudges on the 'windscreen'.
+frealms Utill someone got in a TIE Advanced, flew circles around you, got on your tail, and turned you into space-dust. ;-)
*****
If you were dumb enough to fly away from the pack and not keep an eye on your radar, sure.
Kyle Lorrin
Torpedos are the blue ones, they are slow and pack a punch (mostly you use for capitals or shotgunning distracted pilots). Missiles are the red ones, guided and more manueverable, for AA action. Rockets are the middle ground, unguided, not that slow, pack a good punch, think they were orangeish.
+frealms Torpedoes were actually the middle ground, fast enough to pose a danger to fighters, but heavy enough to do damage to frigates. Firing a rocket at anything faster than an Assault Transport or Stormtrooper Transport was just a waste. There were also bombs, which were almost unguided but difficult to see.
One of my teachers worked on these, it's always interesting hearing how it was made.
my heart went all soft and tender while looking at these games through the lens of nostalgia. I'll respect them for what they were, and i'll give them the same treatment i'd give to my school ex-gf , (20y ago). Better we not meet again. I'll treasure your memory. :P
A classic game from a golden age of space combat sims!
Played hours upon hours of this game. Really excited about Star Wars Squadrons
I loved this game. Thanks for the nostalgia trip.
This series needs to be brought back.
Having lost days as a child to X-Wing Alliance, I did get a bit of a nostalgic lump in my throat during the dogfights in The Force Awakens.
+Bob Robertson Though, in all honesty, the dogfight sequences in The Force Awakens are more reminiscent of the Rogue Squadron games than the X-Wing series...
Aaaah boot disk, Expanded or Extended memory... I can never remember which this needed... so much fun.
Scott, proton torpedoes themselves were the first "official" guided weapons, that's what the targeting computer was for. And even if they weren't, the first licensed thing they appeared in would be their first appearance in universe. Also, i don't remember it being difficult to get anything running in DOS...
The very Star Warsesque clock wipe was a nice touch.
One day, my friend and I were perusing Egghead Software. I picked up X-Wing and Wing Commander and told my friend, "This is for when I buy a computer." That night, we find us visiting Circuit City and I'm applying for my 2nd credit card. We walked home with Packard Bell 486sx computer. with 4 MB of RAM. It took me about 4 hours to figure how to get X-Wing running. My friend and sat there until about 5 AM flicking the mouse in my parents living room. That mouse needed to be replace about 3 days later. I can thank this game as the start of my career as a programmer.
OMG ... This game was a time sponge. Spend so many hours in this game and no minute was wasted :)
Played X-Wing to death on my dads old win 3.1 PC. TIE Fighter was my favourite though, TIE Defenders were beasts and flying as Vader's wingman was a real nerd out moment.
You're a hardcore X-Wing Pilot if you know what "Wotan Weave" means.
+aseredy It's essentially a barrel roll where you spiral towards a target. It was described in the strategy guide, which was actually worth it for the huge amounts of background info.
This is why you're awesome Mr. Manley! It was super effective, at least for the slow blasts of tie fighters and star destroyer turbo lasers. After I mastered that, the missions became so easy. They always aimed where you were, not where you would be.
+aseredy I wouldn´t know until I read it here but used it instinctivly to dodge blaster fire from SDs just so I could "park" me in its belly and give hell to it until it blew...mwahaha...stupid imperials :)
hahah. I did that once too, but it took me 45 min or so of blasting it, because I refused to use the unlimited proton torpedo cheat code. ahh memories!
+aseredy Ahh.. The good ol' Wotan Weave. I was about 10 or 11 when I got into that lovely manual and learned that trick.This was my first PC game.
This and X-wing vs Tie fighter were the games that got me into pc gaming. I remember the graphics being much nicer, well I was a little kid at the time.
Had this game on 4 discs or something like that.
Never got Tie Fighter for myself, but played it later by a friend.
Both were great games for this time.
Ha, - yeah!
A vid out of the golden, old age when you were able to buy fully working (!) games with cinematic feeling.
Long, long times ago, seemly in an other galaxy...
Plus the full game being on 10MB of data and never requiring any updates or Internet connection
There was always a simple reason for the Rebels using the 'wrong' ships for some missions: Their vehicle pool was always more 'broad' than 'deep', sometimes you sent a Y-Wing squadron on an intercept mission because you had Y-Wings you could task to the mission but no X- or A-Wings that weren't already doing something.
I really do miss the days of sophisticated game play. The experience of this old gem is more enjoyable than most anything that has come out with the IP over the past 15 years.
X-Wing was my first Star Wars game.
And damn was it awesome.
The wonderful Interdictor is also available in Star Wars Rebellion/Supremacy. A MUST for your fleets if you want to have any real success in the game.
I had this game! Too young to do anything effectively, but I remember it!
In SW:ToR, the Galactic Starfighter feature has the same energy management system and the fore and aft shielding mechanic. Great homage.
Oh man, that game was awesome. Did I spent hours of fun fiddling with it when I was a young padawan (and my computer's CPU was topping at 25MHz back there)
This was my gateway drug into the Star Wars universe.... we need a new game!
I did not know that the actor from ROTJ did the voice for Ackbar in the game... that's awesome!!!
18:46 - I LOVE B-Wings!!!!
Scott Lawrence did the voice of Vader for TIE 95. (I thought it was Brock Peters, who did the voice of Vader for the SW Radio Dramas, but it wasn't). Nick Jameson (Palpatine in the same game) was Ian McDiarmid's voice double for TPM and ROTS as well as the principle voice actor for Palpatine in many oher games such as Galactic Battlegrounds (give that one a go, Scott, it's heavy on the resource management but with a little hacking of a text file you can set up some epic battles).
probably the first game I finished, the trench run was so difficult and so satisfying
"I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home. They're not much bigger than two meters." XD Miss those days. Holds up well for '94
Together with Wing Commander and Tie Fighter - This was the most enjoyable Space Fight Game ever made!
Played this game 23 years ago. Took 14 floppy discs to install it, and to login you need the password reference from the manual tied to pages with unique characters.
You mentioned the Miniatures game in a live stream recently, have you ever played it and do you collect? Would love to see a video if you do.
+Samuel Mumby Orion got X-Wing miniatures set, I got Armada, will have a game sometime.
Thanks for doing this wonderful game! I started playing X-Wing when I was very young, about 8 or 9. It was pretty much my childhood. However Tie Fighter even more so! I hope you get a chance to do a video on Tie Fighter!
I missed out on X-wing simulator, but X-wing vs Tie Fighter and Balance of Power were my jam back in the day.
I played the X-Wing series so much that eventually I didn't have to use the predictive targeting; I was so used to deflection shooting that I would squeeze the trigger when it felt right, and the ship I was leading would just disintegrate. I got to the point where I didn't even have to see my target to know the angle was right, and didn't have to wait to see if I'd destroyed it. I would just fire and move on to the next target without hesitation, and all the TIEs would get fragged in rapid succession. I was basically Poe. ;)
TIE Fighter was better, because you played as the good guys in that.
What you told us is true, from a certain point of view.
You are now the the Emperor's Hand.
Also, less bugs and more ships hehe
"FOR THE GREATER GLORY OF THE EMPIRE! DESTROY EVERYTHING!"
Serve the Emperor above all!!
I totally remember save scumming on the original floppy disk version of X-Wing. Play a mission… if it went well, quit to DOS, and backup my profile to a floppy. If it went poorly… quit to DOS and restore it.
Despite wanting to fly an X-Wing, as you mention, TIE Fighter's improvements made the game so much more enjoyable in my book.
Thrawn was such a magnificent character. Probably the biggest reason I'm saddened by the Expanded Universe being ditched in the new trilogy to be honest.
Now all I need is for someone to commission an Episode VII era version of either X-Wing or TIE Fighter, and I could be a very, very happy chap.
The X-Wing and Tie Fighter series is also on Steam now as well.