It was 1993. The videogames market was yet to be saturated with Star Wars titles, and with the exception of the sit-in cabinet arcade games, few of the titles to appear so far had dazzled. Then came X-Wing.
After booting the game up and sitting through the developer splash screens, a familiar phrase materialised on the screen....
"A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..."
And before the iconic Star Wars logo and crawl even appeared on screen, a generation of gamers and fans knew that finally, the game we had dreamt of since shoving our first 20p into the 1983 coin-op cabinet, had finally arrived.
18 years on, and the game can still be bought online, usually as part of the "X-Wing Collectors Series". So, whether you are a veteran of two Death Star runs, or a youngster who doesn't know their DOS from their SVGA, I invite you to join me in donning the rouge (or should that be Rogue?) tinted specs, as I look back at the first in the landmark series that re-wrote the book on film-licensed games and made the space-shooter cool.
X-Wing
The game casts you as a newly recruited fighter pilot for the Rebellion, an indeterminate period of time before the events of Star Wars IV: A New Hope. It's obvious from the start that this game wants to immerse you in the Star Wars universe. From the initial log-in screen, to the user interface styled as a main concourse aboard a Rebel Cruiser, the whole affair is largely a graphical interface instead of more conventional menus. This "total immersion" philosophy carries on through mission briefings, training and miscellaneous extras - more of which later.
It's also obvious from the start that this is an old game. That said, the worst criticism of the visuals is not that they are actually bad, just blocky by 2011 standards. After a short amount of time in the cockpit though, the game play soon surpasses the visuals, and most of the time you will simply be too busy to spend much time analysing the graphic quality. Still, as relatively prehistoric as they are, the visuals are still good enough; be it a TIE fighter, Nebulon B Frigate or Imperial Star Destroyer, everything on screen is still instantly recognisable.
The game eases you in with a couple of fairly straightforward missions, where you will have a chance to learn the basic flight controls, without too many enemies overwhelming you. This does change rather rapidly as you progress through the 5 campaigns, or "Tours". That's right. 5. The Collector?s Series edition includes not only the original 3 campaigns, but the two expansion packs that followed the original release, meaning this game is huge. The first two tours focus on the growth of the Rebellion, with the third tour revolving around the events leading up to the final battle of A New Hope, adding a lot of back story to exactly how the Rebels ended up with plans to the Death Star in the first place. The fourth (Imperial Pursuit) concentrates on events after the battle as the Rebels scattered in search of a new home, and the fifth (B-Wing) follows on with a series of missions centered around the introduction of the B-Wing heavy assault fighter into Rebel service and ends with the arrival of the Rebels to the ice world of Hoth, just prior to the events of The Empire Strikes Back.
Progression through each tour is linear, with the player unable to progress until the required mission goals are fulfilled. Due to the cunningly thought out mission design this can prove frustrating when stuck on a tougher mission, although the game does offset this by allowing you to switch between tours at any time if you so wish. Your progress through the tours can be checked by looking up your pilot uniform from the log-in screen, where you are presented with a graphic of your tunic with all the various ribbons and medals awarded so far - a pioneering version of the trophy/achievement system so familiar to gamers today.
Additionally, there are various other modes including "Historical Battles" where you can replay missions and take part in one-off engagements to sharpen your skills, and the rather good "Pilot Proving Grounds" which include various time-trial style missions that involve flying around a sort of outer-space racetrack that shoots back. On the surface, it seems a bit silly but the Proving Grounds undoubtedly help to sharpen your flying skills.
The game play is of course the meat and bones of any game, and this was even truer in an age when mediocre plot and game play could not be hidden by eye-wateringly high definition graphics. Thankfully, X-Wing delivers game play by the Rebel Transport-load.
Missions always begin with a briefing showing various units positions and tasks on a tactical map display, with a page or two of more detailed notes to accompany it. A short (skippable) cut scene and a short hyperspace jump later, and you will find yourself in the cockpit of your fighter. 3 types are initially available - the titular X-Wing which is a well balance all-rounder, the slow but heavy hitting Y-Wing and the lightly armed but lightning fast A-Wing. Later in the game, the formidable B-Wing is also added to the inventory.
Missions all take place in space, but are varied enough to keep you interested. Reconnaissance, convoy raiding, assault and capture, search and destroy, and fleet defence are the main mission types but at times you will find yourself doing other things, such as clearing a minefield around a crippled freighter to clear a path for a boarding party or trying to free Rebel prisoners by scanning their ships then disabling them. The ship you fly is mission specific but this is not a bad thing as usually you are given the ideal tool for the job. For instance, the Y-Wing (and later the B-Wing) has to be used for disabling ships, as the X-Wing and A-Wing do not carry the Ion cannons required to disable a ship without destroying it. Occasionally you will find yourself stuck in a ship that at first appears to be unsuited for the mission as it unfolds, but then war was never supposed to be easy.
The combat itself seems deceptively simple at first with dogfights seemingly boiling and wheeling randomly as ships engage. It becomes clear very quickly though that the Imperial forces are often incredibly organised, with different enemy units trying to accomplish specific objectives. Recognising these threats is key to winning the mission. One second you will be turning and burning in a furious dogfight with TIE fighters, the next second you realise that a flight of TIE bombers has blazed through and is going after one of the ships you are tasked to defend. Do you order your wingmen to give chase while you stay and keep the fighters busy? Or do you take off after the bombers yourself and order your wingman to cover you? There is usually no "set" way to achieve victory and you can play a battle several times without it ever unfolding quite the same way twice.
The other key mechanic is energy management. Your ship produces a fixed amount of power, but it is up to the player how they consume it. Full power to shields and weapons gives you the fastest recharge times for these, but at the expense of diverting power away from the engines. Alternatively you may choose to dump full power to the engines for a pursuit or to intercept enemies further out, but you will have to deal with the weapons and shields being at low power, or even totally drained by the time you engage.
You are also given a lot of control over how weapons and shields are employed. Do you link your cannons to fire in pairs (or a quad in the X-Wing)? This increases the time between shots but gives a far harder hit to the target, or do you leave them in single-fire for increased fire rate but less damage? Do you balance the shields front and rear? When attacking a capital ship or going for a head-on pass with an enemy fighter, you might want to put everything into the forward shield. Remember to shift them to the rear once you have made your strafing run on that Star Destroyer though, or one hit from the big guns will vaporise you.
Additionally, being able to instantly transfer stored energy between the shield and weapons adds further flexibility. The controls for all these functions are pretty simple and intuitive, but learning how best to use this feature and when is something that takes practice and experience, and will vary depending on the players preferred style.
Despite the fact that almost two decades have passed since X-Wing was released, it still stands up as one of the finest examples of the space shooter genre. Easy to pick up but difficult to master, and ridiculously long by the standards of most of today's games it is still - in this reviewer's opinion - among the greatest games ever released. If you've never tried a space shooter, the instantly recognizable and identifiable setting makes this easy to get into. If you're a fan of the genre and haven't played this, it is almost an essential purchase. After all, it set many of the standards for the genre. And if you are a Star Wars fan it's an absolute must.
After booting the game up and sitting through the developer splash screens, a familiar phrase materialised on the screen....
"A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..."
And before the iconic Star Wars logo and crawl even appeared on screen, a generation of gamers and fans knew that finally, the game we had dreamt of since shoving our first 20p into the 1983 coin-op cabinet, had finally arrived.
18 years on, and the game can still be bought online, usually as part of the "X-Wing Collectors Series". So, whether you are a veteran of two Death Star runs, or a youngster who doesn't know their DOS from their SVGA, I invite you to join me in donning the rouge (or should that be Rogue?) tinted specs, as I look back at the first in the landmark series that re-wrote the book on film-licensed games and made the space-shooter cool.
X-Wing
The game casts you as a newly recruited fighter pilot for the Rebellion, an indeterminate period of time before the events of Star Wars IV: A New Hope. It's obvious from the start that this game wants to immerse you in the Star Wars universe. From the initial log-in screen, to the user interface styled as a main concourse aboard a Rebel Cruiser, the whole affair is largely a graphical interface instead of more conventional menus. This "total immersion" philosophy carries on through mission briefings, training and miscellaneous extras - more of which later.
"Be careful with that R2 unit..."
It's also obvious from the start that this is an old game. That said, the worst criticism of the visuals is not that they are actually bad, just blocky by 2011 standards. After a short amount of time in the cockpit though, the game play soon surpasses the visuals, and most of the time you will simply be too busy to spend much time analysing the graphic quality. Still, as relatively prehistoric as they are, the visuals are still good enough; be it a TIE fighter, Nebulon B Frigate or Imperial Star Destroyer, everything on screen is still instantly recognisable.
The game eases you in with a couple of fairly straightforward missions, where you will have a chance to learn the basic flight controls, without too many enemies overwhelming you. This does change rather rapidly as you progress through the 5 campaigns, or "Tours". That's right. 5. The Collector?s Series edition includes not only the original 3 campaigns, but the two expansion packs that followed the original release, meaning this game is huge. The first two tours focus on the growth of the Rebellion, with the third tour revolving around the events leading up to the final battle of A New Hope, adding a lot of back story to exactly how the Rebels ended up with plans to the Death Star in the first place. The fourth (Imperial Pursuit) concentrates on events after the battle as the Rebels scattered in search of a new home, and the fifth (B-Wing) follows on with a series of missions centered around the introduction of the B-Wing heavy assault fighter into Rebel service and ends with the arrival of the Rebels to the ice world of Hoth, just prior to the events of The Empire Strikes Back.
Progression through each tour is linear, with the player unable to progress until the required mission goals are fulfilled. Due to the cunningly thought out mission design this can prove frustrating when stuck on a tougher mission, although the game does offset this by allowing you to switch between tours at any time if you so wish. Your progress through the tours can be checked by looking up your pilot uniform from the log-in screen, where you are presented with a graphic of your tunic with all the various ribbons and medals awarded so far - a pioneering version of the trophy/achievement system so familiar to gamers today.
Additionally, there are various other modes including "Historical Battles" where you can replay missions and take part in one-off engagements to sharpen your skills, and the rather good "Pilot Proving Grounds" which include various time-trial style missions that involve flying around a sort of outer-space racetrack that shoots back. On the surface, it seems a bit silly but the Proving Grounds undoubtedly help to sharpen your flying skills.
The game play is of course the meat and bones of any game, and this was even truer in an age when mediocre plot and game play could not be hidden by eye-wateringly high definition graphics. Thankfully, X-Wing delivers game play by the Rebel Transport-load.
Missions always begin with a briefing showing various units positions and tasks on a tactical map display, with a page or two of more detailed notes to accompany it. A short (skippable) cut scene and a short hyperspace jump later, and you will find yourself in the cockpit of your fighter. 3 types are initially available - the titular X-Wing which is a well balance all-rounder, the slow but heavy hitting Y-Wing and the lightly armed but lightning fast A-Wing. Later in the game, the formidable B-Wing is also added to the inventory.
A B-wing hits an Imperial Convoy
Missions all take place in space, but are varied enough to keep you interested. Reconnaissance, convoy raiding, assault and capture, search and destroy, and fleet defence are the main mission types but at times you will find yourself doing other things, such as clearing a minefield around a crippled freighter to clear a path for a boarding party or trying to free Rebel prisoners by scanning their ships then disabling them. The ship you fly is mission specific but this is not a bad thing as usually you are given the ideal tool for the job. For instance, the Y-Wing (and later the B-Wing) has to be used for disabling ships, as the X-Wing and A-Wing do not carry the Ion cannons required to disable a ship without destroying it. Occasionally you will find yourself stuck in a ship that at first appears to be unsuited for the mission as it unfolds, but then war was never supposed to be easy.
Y-wings in formation
The combat itself seems deceptively simple at first with dogfights seemingly boiling and wheeling randomly as ships engage. It becomes clear very quickly though that the Imperial forces are often incredibly organised, with different enemy units trying to accomplish specific objectives. Recognising these threats is key to winning the mission. One second you will be turning and burning in a furious dogfight with TIE fighters, the next second you realise that a flight of TIE bombers has blazed through and is going after one of the ships you are tasked to defend. Do you order your wingmen to give chase while you stay and keep the fighters busy? Or do you take off after the bombers yourself and order your wingman to cover you? There is usually no "set" way to achieve victory and you can play a battle several times without it ever unfolding quite the same way twice.
Bombers inbound!
The other key mechanic is energy management. Your ship produces a fixed amount of power, but it is up to the player how they consume it. Full power to shields and weapons gives you the fastest recharge times for these, but at the expense of diverting power away from the engines. Alternatively you may choose to dump full power to the engines for a pursuit or to intercept enemies further out, but you will have to deal with the weapons and shields being at low power, or even totally drained by the time you engage.
You are also given a lot of control over how weapons and shields are employed. Do you link your cannons to fire in pairs (or a quad in the X-Wing)? This increases the time between shots but gives a far harder hit to the target, or do you leave them in single-fire for increased fire rate but less damage? Do you balance the shields front and rear? When attacking a capital ship or going for a head-on pass with an enemy fighter, you might want to put everything into the forward shield. Remember to shift them to the rear once you have made your strafing run on that Star Destroyer though, or one hit from the big guns will vaporise you.
Additionally, being able to instantly transfer stored energy between the shield and weapons adds further flexibility. The controls for all these functions are pretty simple and intuitive, but learning how best to use this feature and when is something that takes practice and experience, and will vary depending on the players preferred style.
Despite the fact that almost two decades have passed since X-Wing was released, it still stands up as one of the finest examples of the space shooter genre. Easy to pick up but difficult to master, and ridiculously long by the standards of most of today's games it is still - in this reviewer's opinion - among the greatest games ever released. If you've never tried a space shooter, the instantly recognizable and identifiable setting makes this easy to get into. If you're a fan of the genre and haven't played this, it is almost an essential purchase. After all, it set many of the standards for the genre. And if you are a Star Wars fan it's an absolute must.