I didn't have X-Wing, but I had Tie Fighter then got Tie Fighter/X-Wing where you could fly both sides. The multiplayer was awesome on Xwing/tiefighter..... I remember this Russian guy I played with...... he always flew a bomber, and "fly" isn't the word for it..... he pretty much sat in one stationary spot and no matter WHAT you did.... he was facing you unloading his shit at you..... it was crazy shit lol
@@rustykoenig3566 I couldn't stand X-wing vs Tie multiplayer. I jump in, launch all missiles and kill them. They jump in shoot all missiles at me, I die. Then back to me jumping in and doing the same. If you didn't do this, they would and you lose. It was just too poorly executed but a nice thought.
@@francischambless5919 I didn't have much of a problem with it.... There was this one Russian guy that I never could beat... and he used a tie bomber and literally just sat stationary or a VERY slow speed and basically used his bomber as a missile turret. Its the only "strategy" I never beat and he was the only one I seen ever do that particular strategy. Other than that, I took down missile boats all the time :)
I loved the power management: you had to peel off from attacks and recharge your lasers and shields. Sometimes you had to divert all power to your rear shields while you were doing it.
While you didn't mention Top Ace I did see him pop up in your video. Refresher for the youngins: the game allowed you to assign other pilots from your roster to any allied fighters in the mission. So I could take my brother's pilot from his own campaign, and include him as a wingman in my own. I think it was the first expansion Imperial Pursuit that added Top Ace, a supposedly superior AI squadron mate that performed better. Now, your wingmen could get shot down in a mission and possibly die. If so, they would be unavailable from then on. This included Top Ace. So the instructions described how you could resurrect Top Ace if he happened to die. I'm not kidding, it actually required that you exit the game and go to the DOS prompt and reload the Top Ace file manually by copying the Top Ace master file from one folder and pasting it into the folder containing the roster of pilots. So one time I went to reload Top Ace and I accidentally misspelled it Toip Ace when I pasted it. I loaded up the game and find Top Ace is still dead but now I have a new pilot named Toip Ace. That's when I realized you could have an infinite number of Top Aces as long as you renamed the file as you pasted it. So I immediately made an entire squadron of them. I have no idea if they were any better or not, but at the age of 15 I felt like an elite hacker for discovering this.
Last playthrough I did I duplicated top ace about ten times and when one died I resurrected them manually. There's a byte to alter in the file that says if they're dead or captured
my family did not have a windows/DOS based computer until 1996, so I got X-Wing a few years late, then a few weeks later, long before I had completed it I found the excelent novel Star Wars: X-Wing: Rogue Squadron (despite not being canon any more the X-Wing series is still well worth a read, I've had to purchase second coppies of them because I wore out the origionals), so I duplicated my topace save 12 times, and renamed it as the entire roster from the books, I had Rogue Squadron covering me, albeit a post Endor Rogue Squadron in a pre Yavin campaign.
You had to go into DOS mode and copy the top ace file to any pilot. Thus you cloned him and he never died. And you had all wingmen being top aces ... Cheesy, but it worked.
I still have my diskettes for XWing and for Tie Fighter. These games drove me to upgrade my 486DX to a Pentium, max out my RAM to something like 32MB, add a Microsoft flight stick, fiddle with SoundBlaster and Adlib cards, and lay down serious cash for a desk-hogging 19 inch CRT. I played them so much that my wife bought me headphones so she didn't have to listen to "incoming missile" every 2 seconds.
iMuse made Xwing, Tie Fighter and Dark Forces great. When the first 2 re-released with looping, non-interactive soundtracks the games lost part of their soul. It was also helpful to hear the musical cues when a batch of friendly or enemy starfighters or capital ships arrived. I'd take the reduced midi sound quality over the CD sound quality any day to keep the interactive music.
@@Frontmanfrg I guess I'm the only one that (on the rare occasion that I did play with music on) would prefer the orchestral score. MIDI just sounds so primitive to me and I absolutely cannot stand it. I never needed musical cues to know when something arrived - I mean, the game tells you if a friendly or hostile ship is entering the area via a "New Craft Alert" text cue. How do you need anything else?
Another fun fact: one of the Rogue Squadron books (I think it was '96's "Rogue Squadron" by Michael Stackpole) mentions a character training in a simulator, recreating one of the very difficult missions from the X-Wing game. I remember reading the book and having sympathetic flashbacks for the characters. That one was a killer.
Yep, turns out Jedi are only mediocre pilots after all. The mission was hard, but the key was to master the long range "jitter shot", when the targets are so far away that they don't lock up under your crosshair properly, and you watch the laser lock indicator rapidly cycle blue/green because the polygons making up the TIEs were being recalculated. Switch to single link and blaze away, with practice you could kill entire incoming 3-ship formations before they even fired at you, giving you the time to chase the carrier dumping new groups on the map, and keep the medical frigate safe relatively easily
@@talltroll7092 The hitbox for the Ties isn't polygonal, it's actually rectangular. (A world aligned cube.) The trick is to ignore the Ties, and focus on the bombers. Engaging the frigate will allow the bombers to reach their target. You need to take out wave after wave of bombers until the mission completes.
One thing you missed. The 1994 CD-ROM version added six new historical missions that don't earn medals. And a bug made that last bonus mission possibly unwinnable because sometimes the Cruiser you're protecting can't make it to hyperspace before the mission clock runs out.
Bonus, missions, yes. As for the bug you mention, that's something new to running the game in Dosbox. the game ties capital ship speed to framerate, and when the CPU cycles are set too high in DosBox, weird things happen. Turrets not firing, that sort of thing.
At the time, I played X-Wing like everyone does, on their computer with dinky computer speakers. I was visiting some friends, and one had the crazy idea of hooking his computer up to his stereo system. He played X-Wing, and I was changed forever by the bass I had never heard.
X Wing is almost 30 years old and will play like a champ on a old 486 DX33 with a 16 bit soundblaster...It was the best Star Wars game ever made, I had 2 roomates flunk out of college because of this game and Falcon 3.0...
hi, Another fun fact about X-Wing. In the book named "Rogue Squadron", The first mission Lt Horn is doing in simulation is the replica of the first mission from X-Wing. And all Combats systems are described in the game play style (Energy balancing, laser, Engine, Shields, Fireing range) Also, most of the battle ships encountered througt the books are from the game. Transports, Golan Stations, Lancier frigate, interdictor etc... all from the games !
I only played though the original X=-Wing but it was absolutely superb, and quite incredible when you consider what it ran on and how small the software was. I still have the inch-thick book that was published which gave a complete walkthrough, as soem of the missions were extremely challenging and required the player to do precise tactics. I seem to recall that was one where you had to prevent every last bomber getting through to your hoem base ship, and an even worse one where you had to rescue Admiral Ackbar! Eventually I got all the ribbons and medals and it felt like a real accomplishment!
@@Raistlen007 Most of the new stuff for me was the pre-release demo graphics, SWOTL inspirations for later games (I never got around to playing SWOTL, but I'm aware of its legacy), and the Historical voice files for Ackbar.
3:00 Wow, SWOTL is game I remember I was playing back in the 90's and I still have the German and US menu music in my head, but hell I could no longer recall the name. I have never spotted the similarities with XWING at the time I was playing it. Thanks for giving back this piece of memory! :D
One of my favorite things about the original version was that you could create pilots and assign them as your co-pilots during missions. The game kept track of their stats and ranks. It was fun to try to keep them alive and see how many kills they could rack up.
@@adrienlaubard I had to use the guide book, which was really well-written. I also made batch files to backup and restore my pilot in case of failed missions. I still have "Wedge" on a 3 1/2" floppy somewhere. Tie Fighter was a much more user-friendly game, but getting all the way through X-Wing was more satisfying.
I got my first PC when I was 10 from my parents. It had only two games, X-Wing and Command & Conquer. Now they are both getting remastered. Couldn’t ask for more 🥰
Oh goodness can people ever just appreciate old Star Wars without bashing Disney or the prequels (or can people just appreciate any old thing without bashing newer things)?
The 5.25" disks were floppy disks, because they were literally floppy. The 3.5" disks were sometimes called "diskettes" because they looked so much smaller even though they held more data. Of course they were floppy too, just the floppy parts were contained inside the hard plastic shells. And of course some people even called the 5.25" disks "diskettes" because they were comparing them to the 8" disks that came before that, though all of them are "floppy" on the inside.
This is amazing I spent so many hours enjoying the original floppy release. Loved levelling up pilots for use as my wingmen. It was crushing when I bought the steam version so many years later and was so excited to see if my adult mind would crush this game with my imaginary squadron only to find out this feature was dropped. Thank you so much for reanimating my childhood crush back from the grave.
@@davidvincent380 Holy Shit!!! Yes please!! I'll be figuring out how to install all that on my next day off. :D In the mean time, I hope they fixed the audio glitch that plagues the game on newer systems... All that beautiful John Williams music, and I had to turn the music off because it would only play for a couple of minutes before getting stuck in a loop which you couldn't get out of without restarting the game. :(
@@c182SkylaneRG Haha the infamous music freeze bug. It was the last bug remaining for years (because apparently and surprisingly it was hard to reproduce). And finally it has been fixed only a few months ago by the talented coders over xwupgrade : www.xwaupgrade.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=12668&p=171028&hilit=music+freeze+hook#p171028 Look at what they have done of a 20 years old game : ua-cam.com/video/9BBFVMD-PrU/v-deo.html
Man, so many hours spent playing this game in high school and shortly after. Tie Fighter is by far my favorite after the two. The Tie Defender simply dominated anything and everything it went up against.
Prima Games published the X-wing strategy guide in 1993. Although it wasn't printed in color, it's a pretty good guide for the game although the original didn't include the expansions. What's pretty unique about it is the story and background of Keyan Farlander, who has now become part of Star Wars lore (he was piloting the Y-wing during the segment when the Death Star was about to explode). Even more interesting is the guide is packed with CGI rendered photos, most of which had never been seen until then or since. Great memories, great video....thank you!
One of the writers of the strategy guide was Wessman, featured in this video. You can tell from the writing that they tried to explain in game behavior and other oddities the testers encountered.
@@michaelandreipalon359 : It was when Star Wars was actually good. And Timothy Zahn books expanded upon it, instead of some Hollyweird virtue-signalling Mary Sue version of it.
This game represented my early childhood, especially the floppy disk version of X-wing. I played it in a old and bold 486 processor pc.... maaaan was it slow xD
Bought all those editions along with the Tie Fighter series and still have the floppy disk version, all the manuals and both the Xwing and Tie fighter guides. Thanks for bringing back some fun memories of great games! If only Squadrons was half as good.
30 years ago now. And the sights and sounds still transport me back to that time, even if I haven't played in decades. To just think what Star Wars could of been.
I had ALL of the series and its expensions, as said in video its regaurded (in memory) as one of my favorite flight sims ever rivaling the original Red Baron game. I even had a full Thrust master Joystick/Throttle/rudder set and a "emperial pilot" statue at my dedicated PC used just for playing these sims. I would go NUTS if someone released a updated version of the game
I loved this series. There was a game store that had 8 computer set ups with joystick and throttles. We would play 4 on 4 Xwing versus TIE battles on them. My favorite was the A wing!
TIE FIGHTER EASTER EGG: In a particular mission after all the goals have been completed, if you hang around long enough in the area, a transport hyperspaces in.....when you ID it, it's a STARSPEEDER 3000 carrying "Tourists". That's right, tourists from Disneyland from STAR TOURS. You can either blast them into a million pieces or let them jump to lighspeed and escape
I loved X-Wing Alliance, it was my favourite. I created custom battles that recreated the big battles from the X-Wing novels about rogue and wraith squadron.
I really wish there was a way to see all the old pilot profile images that were in the original game for every profile you’d make. They were a mix of images of pilots from the films themselves digitized, but also pilots mixed and matched as well, to make new or unique images. Some were aliens as I recall. I remember making as many profiles as I could just to see all the images, and it seemed like quite a few unique pilot images were available for your profiles. Btw the mundane was some of the best aspects of these games... foodstuffs as cargo, grain shipments being sabotaged, etc. I loved the immersion. I was a young teen and this game was my introduction to computers because I bought one just to play it.
Great video. This brings back memories when I bought my first PC in 1992 and my brother gave me this game for Christmas. I love it very much. It was 8 years later that I got the CD-ROM version of the X-Wing/TIE Fighter/X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter game. I love the flight simulators and combats. It's been years since this game was released. I hope they will re release it again on regular platforms someday.
Awesome video champ. I never noticed all the non star wars caricatures on the concourse back when i was a kid. You just made me legit LoL twice in that scene when u pointed them out, thankyou!
Here's a little bit of an X-wing trivia: - By default, crafts with the same allegiance could not harm each other. Imperials could not harm imperials, neutrals could not harm neutrals, and rebels could not harm rebels either, with the exception of you of course. Friendly starfighters could not collide with each other either. Of course, if friendly starfighters rammed their own capital ship, or two friendly capital ships collided, they blew up. - No matter what the mission or craft was, you were always assigned to the Red squadron. - You could basically get unlimited points at every mission involving shielded crafts. Since every laser hit gives you 3 points, you can just chase a shielded craft for years racking up points. Hitting asteroids or Death Star surface counts as a miss, tho. - Space objects always counted as kills. Mines were always hostile. - If you shot unshielded crafts with ion cannons, they became destroyed, but the game still treated them as being disabled. This led to many mission fails.
Few notes because I'm pedantic: -Starfighters can die if they crash into a friendly capital ship, so a tie flying into a star destroyer and crashing will die. -when a ship comes in to dock or land in hangar it is unable to collide with the ship it is docking with -being in red squadron is a choice in the mission file, which the developers always followed. you can alter your squadron in the mission file, and your fighter will have the colors of the squad you picked, but the cockpit graphics were static bitmaps, so your A-wing will always look red from the inside. -you can technically set a mine to be on your side, it will just shoot you anyway. -Only the Ties would blow up when disabled, and that was a self destruct mechanism, which is why when the mission needed you to destroy them it didn't count as destroyed. Very very few missions required you to destroy ties while you're in an ion equipped fighter. Historical Y-Wing 3 comes to mind.
Excellent video, as it actually does include stuff most people wouldn't know! X-Wing is easily my all-time favourite DOS game and I now can't wait to set up a period-correct system on which to listen to the MT-32 soundtrack.
The Force is strong with this one! - Nicely done! What a legendary game series and legacy. This was a fascinating history and dare I say well-researched, excellent job Ras! Back in the day (2000) I remember getting my first joystick and combat flight simulator game, soon to follow I would discover X-Wing, and also Tie Fighter! It was amazing. The game was especially immersive for me because Star Wars was life for us as kids ahaha! Aww nostalgia. These games were SO fun to play once you got a feel for the controls and gameplay. I'm going to have to give them a spin again, see how they hold up. It's really cool GOG has preserved this classic for all to play! X-Wing '94 version for the win!
New discovery: on Death Star surface levels, destroyed buildings and turbo-laser turrets will respawn after a while. I spent about half a day huntin' down stuff to rack up tons of points, and I noticed that the previously destroyed stuff re-appeared around the Nav Bouy. Also, if you take out about 2000+ surface buildings (this includes turrets), during the mission evaluation, it will errorneously state "you did not destroy Laser Towers", but luckily, the mission is still treated as a success. Guess it's caused by some integer overflow or something.
Looked into it a bit more. The game tracks 64 tiles at a time, so if you damage a turret in 64 tiles, and then damage one in a 65th tile, the game will forget what happened in the first one, and the turrets will respawn there.
I know I'm a bit late, but here's an Easter Egg in X-Wing that a lot of people don't know about. If you name your pilot a name out of the movies, like Luke, it will use a picture of that character instead of the generic pilot images.
Not quite. The game has a database of pilot portraits but the assignment of portrait to pilot is semi randomized but tied to the pilot name. A pilot named Luke for instance, selects a portrait of Biggs. a pilot named Rasi will select an A-Wing pilot.
Thank you for this. I've spent hundreds of hours with all of them...it was great to see again...also the"secrets" made the whole thing special! Very nice vid. Subscribed!
This was the game that I dropped a grand on buying a 486 PC back in the day. The X-Wing and TIE fighter series of games are legendary. They are still fun to play even today
I noticed that in one of the missions there was a freighter called Shantipole, the Shantipole project was one of West End Games adventure modules for the old d6 RPG they did
There was also a mission where if you kill everything and hang around, a pirate frigate jumps in like 100K away. You can fly over there and watch it do a rendezvous with a shuttle or something. You can kill it too if you want. X-Wing was the most fun I ever had playing a video game. I'm very grateful to the creators - real Star Wars fans!
Me and my buddies would meet years after the war, grab a beer, and tell war stories from our tour of duty for the Rebell Alliance. Those were the days!
I adored this game. I remember one mission where the solar system you went to was designated "BFG 9000" and another one where you piloted a Y-Wing. If you took down the Star Destroyer that showed up in the mission you got a secret medal.
Would die to see a modern remake of X-WING. I don't care how much it cost. I would buy that shit and play every single mission like I did back in the 90's.
Woow really excelente job man! That was so cool. Makes me so excited remembering those wonderful moments playing x wing campaigns and tour, identifying those freigters. Greetings
Hm, at the end you playback the XWA cutscene and I'm wondering how cool that XWVM has better graphics in gameplay than the XWA cutscene was. What a time to be alive! (Whooopsie! I see you are a man of culture Rasi)
Fun fact, I spoke to the guy who did those cutscenes, and he told me they used 3d models that ILM used for the production of ANH:SE. Things really have changed over 20 years!
My preferred config: all power to weapons, all 4 guns linked, and whatever was left over goes to engines. Manually dump gun charge into shields as needed for repairs.
It's criminal we ended up with Squadrons..... I bought all the series on release and they were just fantastic. The mod scene really does an excellent job of keeping them alive.
I love that old pixely cockpit. So nostalgic and painstakingly drawn. I have some trivia that maybe isn't well known - the X-Wing cockpit view doesn't match the models because you wouldn't be able to see much in front of you if it did.
I would definitely make one. Need to gather a lot more inside info on it before that happens and right now all my focus is on xwing and will probably be there for a while yet
@@Raistlen007 I love both x-wing and tie fighter and found this video super interesting. I would absolutely support a tie fighter video. Really great stuff you did here!
These games were the best... but when the Thrustmaster joystick came out, they became legendary. :) The N64 game was very good as were Rogue Leader and Rebel Strike. :)
I miss this games! I've told my son for years I wish they'd remaster these games for game consoles. Forget the new games, I want the nostalgia of these games!
X-Wing: Alliance was an awesome game! And all the intricate flight controls and squadron commands made it really feel like you're inside the cockpit of a Starfighter.
Fun fact: in the X-Wing Alliance Simulators (basically Skirmish Mode), if an enemy hits you with Ion bolts while your shields are down, your ship systems WILL shut down, including the Eject, meaning you are *stuck* until you shut down the sim yourself.
Solid video! I'm glad the Top Ace hack was mentioned in the comments. Lucasarts infuriated me leaving behind the iMUSE system! It was one of my favorite aspects of the 93 & 94 games. Does anyone else remember the books that corresponded to the missions? I've misplaced mine.
Excellent video. I lost count of how many hours I played this game many years ago. I got all the budgets minus 1. The one for the B wing. I did not use tricks to pass the training phase to get the mark of the fighter on my shoulder. I think the maximun level the game records was between 11 or 12. I can not remember the exact number. I was able to reach higher level but the machine never put higher than 12 (assuming that was the max number for the doors level. By the way, I passed the trench mission to destroy the Death Star at first try. I was extremly happy after that. I think after finishing the game I was shut down 60 times more or less and more than 1000 ships destroyed. Ahhhh, old times......................Good video
The iMuse was a great way to know that damn transport you escorted just blew up. There is the ticker tape info of course, but without iMuse I went on for several minutes before realizing that the mission had failed a while ago. The game's guide, which was sold separately, was the best guide I'd ever read in my whole 40yr gaming experience. It was written as the protagonist's after action report/ journal. This is one of the very few games in which I seek achievements. Those ribbons, medals and patches really hit my reward nerves. The pilot proving ground really boost your gaming skill. When some friends complained that the game was too hard, I told them to do the proving ground until they earn a flight patch. Most learned how to shoot effectively, some learned to fly well, a few even learned how to distribute powers efficiently.
I still have the boxes for a few of these games buried somewhere. The immersion you felt was incredible - I was a big fan of the Privateer series of games too. Back in those days you had to configure com ports and other things on your computer manually for each game so that your sound card, video card and game controller would work. Saved the settings to an autoexec.bat file and reboot the computer for each game.
@@Raistlen007 HIMEM says hello. Also, which sound blaster you had, and where did you put the COM and IRQ jumpers on it, depending on the other ISA cards in your system.
On the first mission, the one you mention the freighters having reversed names of software companies, if you can get all of the freighters, a Nebulon B Frigate will appear about 10 clicks away and if you go to it, it will launch 4 squadrons of 4 Tie Fighters, one squadron at a time, and then 2 squadrons of 4 Tie Interceptors, one squadron at a time as well. If you can defeat them all, you can then destroy the Frigate by taking down it's guns and turrets one at a time and then the ship itself. If you do you will be promoted to Captain. There's another mission where a Star Destroyer makes an appearance and it is possible to destroy it: I did so several times. You have to eliminate all the Tie squadrons, take down the shield generators and then slowly take it apart like the aforementioned Frigate. X-Wing was the game that captured my interest in computers and how to build them. I started with a Tandy 386DX that I got at Radio Shack that could barely play the game (went 2-3 fps sometimes) and after that I've built all my computers since. I bought a math co-processor for it to try to improve performance, but it did no good. My third build was based on a Cyrix 486 CPU that had 12 megs of memory! I would load the whole game into a Ram Disk, and it ran lightning fast after that. (running DOS 6.2, not DOS 6.22, and Quarterdeck EMM386 Memory Manager) The days before the "Chicago Project" and the resultant NTFS file management and Windows 95.
Excellent video ! I got into X-Wing late. One of my friends kept telling me about it , and finally I tried it. Mostly to shut him up. I got hooked right away and he just had the biggest grin you ever saw. Played both Tie & VS after that. Never got Alliance though. Now I want it.
@@Raistlen007 : Also : I never got to play SWOTL ! I played Battlehawks 1942 and Their finest hour on my Amiga 500 , but that one only came on PC. When I finally got me a PC , the game was obsolete and nowhere to be found. Sad but true.
One of the best PC games ever. Nothing like hitting the H key to have your s-foils close and turn you towards the hyperspace jump as you are getting pummeled by laser file just trying to make it back to mark the mission as complete.
My old man had a 6100 series Mac for his work - so I ended up having both X-Wing versions as the Mac itself, had a Mac and a PC in it (486 from memory). I noticed the differences, preferred some on one, and other changes on the other.
OMFG! I've been trying to figure out what the game I played so very VERY long ago was.... it was Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe :O. OMFG! Decades I've been trying to figure it out! Thank you!
Check out the sequel Secret Weapons Over Normandy, made by the developers of SWOTL and X Wing Alliance. Its more of an arcade game but its very enjoyable and features some great missions (also features an Xwing and Tie Fighter as easter eggs)
Regarding hidden names, there was one mission, in Imperial Pursuit, if I remember correctly, the name of a star Destroyer was Badi Deah. I only know that because in one particular session, I would destroy every and any star Destroyer in every single mission regardless of what I flew. I lost track of how many I that was,, but I got nearly 1K of TIE Fighter kills. So... a lot.
I spent so many hours on these games like on no others. I still have the X-Wing CD, in my bedroom in my hometown. Too bad I don't even have a cd player anywhere anymore. I always wished there was a online thing to play this game with a big community and play a mission with like a hundred spaceships actually driven by human players instead of AI. PS: I've always played with the mouse only :-D
You can buy it from GoG, and it runs like a dream, even with mouse control. later games in the series, XvT, XwA, technically require a joystick but there are programs that bypass that and let you fly with a mouse with varying results. XWVM will support mouse control through and through.
I remember what a pain X-Wing CD was to get running. Required EMS memory, and a lot of conventional memory available (592k as I recall). As for Easter Eggs, I remember in TIE Fighter a Strike Cruiser named Lonsigar (Long Cigar). Always found that one funny.
Meow! Lots of starship names concealed Easter Eggs in the X-wing series. Here are a few: - Freighter names in the first mission: Orcim, Esorp, Arreis, Nigiro, Murtceps. Read them backwards! - A Freighter named "Diputs" in a later mission. - Star Destroyer named "Badi Dea" - Star Destroyer commander "T. Ryagain" for TIE Fighter - Interdictor "Suleu" for a TIE Fighter combat mission is a direct reference to Star Trek - The entire Sepan Civil War saga: "Dimoks" stand for democrats, "Ripoblus" stand for republicans - Corellian Transport "Geddawai" for the mission "Capture Harkov" - The Container named "THX-1138" for the "Load Base Equipment" mission is a direct reference for the George Lucas movie
Awesome video. The X-W series (mainly X_Wing and Tie Fighter) are still my favorite games of all time. Unmatched in their gameplay. Still I didn't know most of this stuff. (If you do Tie Fighter there are nice easter eggs for freighter names too..StimsnJ-Kat and Ren Hoek ;D). Those damage sprites look really great, too bad those were cut from the game. Anyhow I can not wait for the XWVM mod, I been following this since years and I am super excited. It looks so great but whats most important for me is that it retains the original mission structure. Thanks for the videos and may the force be with you!
I remember staying up all night playing either X-Wing or Tie Fighter back in the early 90s. Such great games.
I didn't have X-Wing, but I had Tie Fighter then got Tie Fighter/X-Wing where you could fly both sides.
The multiplayer was awesome on Xwing/tiefighter..... I remember this Russian guy I played with...... he always flew a bomber, and "fly" isn't the word for it..... he pretty much sat in one stationary spot and no matter WHAT you did.... he was facing you unloading his shit at you..... it was crazy shit lol
@@rustykoenig3566 I couldn't stand X-wing vs Tie multiplayer. I jump in, launch all missiles and kill them. They jump in shoot all missiles at me, I die. Then back to me jumping in and doing the same. If you didn't do this, they would and you lose. It was just too poorly executed but a nice thought.
"Number One! Mission critical craft under attack!"
@@francischambless5919 I didn't have much of a problem with it.... There was this one Russian guy that I never could beat... and he used a tie bomber and literally just sat stationary or a VERY slow speed and basically used his bomber as a missile turret. Its the only "strategy" I never beat and he was the only one I seen ever do that particular strategy. Other than that, I took down missile boats all the time :)
I used to be late to work because of this game.
I loved the power management: you had to peel off from attacks and recharge your lasers and shields. Sometimes you had to divert all power to your rear shields while you were doing it.
i thought squadrons would hav kept the substance of it ... but only the form :(
yup just like tie fighter the 1998 version wuz the best version
No, my father didn't fight in the wars. He was a navigator on a grain freighter.
*Spice freighter.
@@white-dragon4424 watch the video, moon-jockey
@@TokyoXtreme It doesn't matter, that's what he said in the film.
@@white-dragon4424 no need to be pedantic - the point is that it's not exactly an honourable duty. Or is it...
@@white-dragon4424 he was quoting the video dick head
While you didn't mention Top Ace I did see him pop up in your video. Refresher for the youngins: the game allowed you to assign other pilots from your roster to any allied fighters in the mission. So I could take my brother's pilot from his own campaign, and include him as a wingman in my own. I think it was the first expansion Imperial Pursuit that added Top Ace, a supposedly superior AI squadron mate that performed better. Now, your wingmen could get shot down in a mission and possibly die. If so, they would be unavailable from then on. This included Top Ace. So the instructions described how you could resurrect Top Ace if he happened to die. I'm not kidding, it actually required that you exit the game and go to the DOS prompt and reload the Top Ace file manually by copying the Top Ace master file from one folder and pasting it into the folder containing the roster of pilots. So one time I went to reload Top Ace and I accidentally misspelled it Toip Ace when I pasted it. I loaded up the game and find Top Ace is still dead but now I have a new pilot named Toip Ace. That's when I realized you could have an infinite number of Top Aces as long as you renamed the file as you pasted it. So I immediately made an entire squadron of them. I have no idea if they were any better or not, but at the age of 15 I felt like an elite hacker for discovering this.
Last playthrough I did I duplicated top ace about ten times and when one died I resurrected them manually. There's a byte to alter in the file that says if they're dead or captured
my family did not have a windows/DOS based computer until 1996, so I got X-Wing a few years late, then a few weeks later, long before I had completed it I found the excelent novel Star Wars: X-Wing: Rogue Squadron (despite not being canon any more the X-Wing series is still well worth a read, I've had to purchase second coppies of them because I wore out the origionals), so I duplicated my topace save 12 times, and renamed it as the entire roster from the books, I had Rogue Squadron covering me, albeit a post Endor Rogue Squadron in a pre Yavin campaign.
Oh, the memories! DOS command... copy *.bak *.plt.
@@rcschmidt668 bat files are your friend
You had to go into DOS mode and copy the top ace file to any pilot. Thus you cloned him and he never died. And you had all wingmen being top aces ... Cheesy, but it worked.
I still have my diskettes for XWing and for Tie Fighter. These games drove me to upgrade my 486DX to a Pentium, max out my RAM to something like 32MB, add a Microsoft flight stick, fiddle with SoundBlaster and Adlib cards, and lay down serious cash for a desk-hogging 19 inch CRT.
I played them so much that my wife bought me headphones so she didn't have to listen to "incoming missile" every 2 seconds.
Those were the days...
iMuse made Xwing, Tie Fighter and Dark Forces great. When the first 2 re-released with looping, non-interactive soundtracks the games lost part of their soul. It was also helpful to hear the musical cues when a batch of friendly or enemy starfighters or capital ships arrived. I'd take the reduced midi sound quality over the CD sound quality any day to keep the interactive music.
that is so true
100000000% this.
Agreed. Couldn’t help but grin when the music went all “threat mode” as it was like really playing inside one of the films.
@@Frontmanfrg I guess I'm the only one that (on the rare occasion that I did play with music on) would prefer the orchestral score. MIDI just sounds so primitive to me and I absolutely cannot stand it. I never needed musical cues to know when something arrived - I mean, the game tells you if a friendly or hostile ship is entering the area via a "New Craft Alert" text cue. How do you need anything else?
In Tie Fighter, there was no cue more gratifying than when a friendly Star Destroyer came out of hyperspace to your aid.
Another fun fact: one of the Rogue Squadron books (I think it was '96's "Rogue Squadron" by Michael Stackpole) mentions a character training in a simulator, recreating one of the very difficult missions from the X-Wing game. I remember reading the book and having sympathetic flashbacks for the characters. That one was a killer.
Tour 1 Mission 4 - Protect Medical Frigate Redemption
Yep, turns out Jedi are only mediocre pilots after all. The mission was hard, but the key was to master the long range "jitter shot", when the targets are so far away that they don't lock up under your crosshair properly, and you watch the laser lock indicator rapidly cycle blue/green because the polygons making up the TIEs were being recalculated. Switch to single link and blaze away, with practice you could kill entire incoming 3-ship formations before they even fired at you, giving you the time to chase the carrier dumping new groups on the map, and keep the medical frigate safe relatively easily
@@talltroll7092 The hitbox for the Ties isn't polygonal, it's actually rectangular. (A world aligned cube.)
The trick is to ignore the Ties, and focus on the bombers. Engaging the frigate will allow the bombers to reach their target. You need to take out wave after wave of bombers until the mission completes.
One thing you missed. The 1994 CD-ROM version added six new historical missions that don't earn medals. And a bug made that last bonus mission possibly unwinnable because sometimes the Cruiser you're protecting can't make it to hyperspace before the mission clock runs out.
Bonus, missions, yes. As for the bug you mention, that's something new to running the game in Dosbox. the game ties capital ship speed to framerate, and when the CPU cycles are set too high in DosBox, weird things happen. Turrets not firing, that sort of thing.
Just Finished Tie Fighter 5 minutes ago for the 3rd time in my life, still a great game even after more than 20 years.
Still my favorite Star Wars game of all time. Were it not for TIE Fighter I never would have joined the 501st Legion costume club.
I got the collection really cheap last year and I've been meaning to pick up a joy stick to play them ever since.
I advise you to play it with accelerated 3D graphics, it's awesome.
These were some of the most obscure references I've ever seen. Pitch Meetings AND Black and White in the same video?! Respect.
Man, that SWotL footage took me back. Nostalgia!
At the time, I played X-Wing like everyone does, on their computer with dinky computer speakers. I was visiting some friends, and one had the crazy idea of hooking his computer up to his stereo system. He played X-Wing, and I was changed forever by the bass I had never heard.
The iMuse system in XWing and Tie Fighter was SO GOOD. I've always liked this. Thanks for this vid, it brings fond memories :)
X Wing is almost 30 years old and will play like a champ on a old 486 DX33 with a 16 bit soundblaster...It was the best Star Wars game ever made, I had 2 roomates flunk out of college because of this game and Falcon 3.0...
hi,
Another fun fact about X-Wing.
In the book named "Rogue Squadron", The first mission Lt Horn is doing in simulation is the replica of the first mission from X-Wing.
And all Combats systems are described in the game play style (Energy balancing, laser, Engine, Shields, Fireing range)
Also, most of the battle ships encountered througt the books are from the game. Transports, Golan Stations, Lancier frigate, interdictor etc... all from the games !
Although a lot of those ships come from still earlier, in the West End Games RPG...
Getting your emperor lightning tattoo at the end of tie fighter was the like checking a life goal box!
I only played though the original X=-Wing but it was absolutely superb, and quite incredible when you consider what it ran on and how small the software was. I still have the inch-thick book that was published which gave a complete walkthrough, as soem of the missions were extremely challenging and required the player to do precise tactics. I seem to recall that was one where you had to prevent every last bomber getting through to your hoem base ship, and an even worse one where you had to rescue Admiral Ackbar! Eventually I got all the ribbons and medals and it felt like a real accomplishment!
I've been playing X-wing off and on since 1993...and beat it dozens of times...and even I didn't know about 75% of these game facts. Great video, man!
Thanks! Just curious, what was the 25% you did know?
@@Raistlen007 Most of the new stuff for me was the pre-release demo graphics, SWOTL inspirations for later games (I never got around to playing SWOTL, but I'm aware of its legacy), and the Historical voice files for Ackbar.
3:00 Wow, SWOTL is game I remember I was playing back in the 90's and I still have the German and US menu music in my head, but hell I could no longer recall the name.
I have never spotted the similarities with XWING at the time I was playing it.
Thanks for giving back this piece of memory! :D
One of my favorite things about the original version was that you could create pilots and assign them as your co-pilots during missions. The game kept track of their stats and ranks. It was fun to try to keep them alive and see how many kills they could rack up.
That feature is going to be in xwvm as well
I ve played it when i was young... And it was damn hard. But also oustanding. You really fell to be a starfighter pilot.
@Wisty Boy🤣 this game was hard as fucked... it took me month to finish it
@@adrienlaubard I had to use the guide book, which was really well-written. I also made batch files to backup and restore my pilot in case of failed missions. I still have "Wedge" on a 3 1/2" floppy somewhere. Tie Fighter was a much more user-friendly game, but getting all the way through X-Wing was more satisfying.
I got my first PC when I was 10 from my parents. It had only two games, X-Wing and Command & Conquer. Now they are both getting remastered. Couldn’t ask for more 🥰
Xwing was one of my first games as well. Played it on a quick shot joystick. The other game was star trek 25th
Wrong
Great compilation, I'm playing this game since 1993 and still found some new facts in this video. Thanks a lot.
I loved these games when I was in my early 20s. Before the Dark Times... before Disney Wars. 😁
Thats great... lol
Disney screwed it up pretty badly.
Oh goodness can people ever just appreciate old Star Wars without bashing Disney or the prequels (or can people just appreciate any old thing without bashing newer things)?
@@EuropeanQoheleth To be fair, I found things to like about the Prequel Trilogy.
@@MDMetal the end credits?
It's been a long time since I heard an English speaker say "disquettes" instead of "floppy disks". Delightfully vintage, love it.
I remember it was spelled "diskettes." That added U smells slightly British
@@Raistlen007 "disquette" is actually the french spelling. (uh ?! Brits are using french words now ? ;-) )
@@Olibe-1 as long as they live in mansions and eat pork...
The 5.25" disks were floppy disks, because they were literally floppy. The 3.5" disks were sometimes called "diskettes" because they looked so much smaller even though they held more data. Of course they were floppy too, just the floppy parts were contained inside the hard plastic shells. And of course some people even called the 5.25" disks "diskettes" because they were comparing them to the 8" disks that came before that, though all of them are "floppy" on the inside.
@@Raistlen007 i preferred Tie Fighter to X-wing i found Tie to be WAY more interesting.
This is amazing I spent so many hours enjoying the original floppy release. Loved levelling up pilots for use as my wingmen. It was crushing when I bought the steam version so many years later and was so excited to see if my adult mind would crush this game with my imaginary squadron only to find out this feature was dropped. Thank you so much for reanimating my childhood crush back from the grave.
The wingmen pilot feature is definitely going to be in the virtual machine version!
Wait, who's modernizing what now? I'm more excited about that than Squadrons!
Right? Basically spent my entire childhood flying around Tie Defenders
What game is that?
@@davidvincent380 Holy Shit!!! Yes please!! I'll be figuring out how to install all that on my next day off. :D In the mean time, I hope they fixed the audio glitch that plagues the game on newer systems... All that beautiful John Williams music, and I had to turn the music off because it would only play for a couple of minutes before getting stuck in a loop which you couldn't get out of without restarting the game. :(
@@c182SkylaneRG Haha the infamous music freeze bug. It was the last bug remaining for years (because apparently and surprisingly it was hard to reproduce). And finally it has been fixed only a few months ago by the talented coders over xwupgrade : www.xwaupgrade.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=12668&p=171028&hilit=music+freeze+hook#p171028
Look at what they have done of a 20 years old game :
ua-cam.com/video/9BBFVMD-PrU/v-deo.html
@@davidvincent380 Do you have to have the original XWA game to add these upgrades.
Man, so many hours spent playing this game in high school and shortly after. Tie Fighter is by far my favorite after the two. The Tie Defender simply dominated anything and everything it went up against.
While true the TIE Avenger needs to get more love. Excellent craft.
Prima Games published the X-wing strategy guide in 1993. Although it wasn't printed in color, it's a pretty good guide for the game although the original didn't include the expansions. What's pretty unique about it is the story and background of Keyan Farlander, who has now become part of Star Wars lore (he was piloting the Y-wing during the segment when the Death Star was about to explode).
Even more interesting is the guide is packed with CGI rendered photos, most of which had never been seen until then or since.
Great memories, great video....thank you!
One of the writers of the strategy guide was Wessman, featured in this video. You can tell from the writing that they tried to explain in game behavior and other oddities the testers encountered.
Gotta miss those feelies manuals. Am a sucker for lore, you know.
@@michaelandreipalon359 : It was when Star Wars was actually good. And Timothy Zahn books expanded upon it, instead of some Hollyweird virtue-signalling Mary Sue version of it.
This game represented my early childhood, especially the floppy disk version of X-wing. I played it in a old and bold 486 processor pc.... maaaan was it slow xD
Bought all those editions along with the Tie Fighter series and still have the floppy disk version, all the manuals and both the Xwing and Tie fighter guides. Thanks for bringing back some fun memories of great games! If only Squadrons was half as good.
What an amazing video! I've been playing this series since I was a 4th grader and never knew so many details. This is like Christmas for me.
I played it in 4th grade, too! I used to play it on the weekends then sketch the 2d cockpits in my notebooks at school during class when I was bored.
30 years ago now. And the sights and sounds still transport me back to that time, even if I haven't played in decades. To just think what Star Wars could of been.
I was expecting facts I already knew intended for people who had never played the game... I was so wrong
Very instructive!!
I had ALL of the series and its expensions, as said in video its regaurded (in memory) as one of my favorite flight sims ever rivaling the original Red Baron game. I even had a full Thrust master Joystick/Throttle/rudder set and a "emperial pilot" statue at my dedicated PC used just for playing these sims.
I would go NUTS if someone released a updated version of the game
I loved this series. There was a game store that had 8 computer set ups with joystick and throttles. We would play 4 on 4 Xwing versus TIE battles on them.
My favorite was the A wing!
TIE FIGHTER EASTER EGG: In a particular mission after all the goals have been completed, if you hang around long enough in the area, a transport hyperspaces in.....when you ID it, it's a STARSPEEDER 3000 carrying "Tourists". That's right, tourists from Disneyland from STAR TOURS. You can either blast them into a million pieces or let them jump to lighspeed and escape
I loved X-Wing Alliance, it was my favourite.
I created custom battles that recreated the big battles from the X-Wing novels about rogue and wraith squadron.
I really wish there was a way to see all the old pilot profile images that were in the original game for every profile you’d make. They were a mix of images of pilots from the films themselves digitized, but also pilots mixed and matched as well, to make new or unique images. Some were aliens as I recall. I remember making as many profiles as I could just to see all the images, and it seemed like quite a few unique pilot images were available for your profiles.
Btw the mundane was some of the best aspects of these games... foodstuffs as cargo, grain shipments being sabotaged, etc. I loved the immersion. I was a young teen and this game was my introduction to computers because I bought one just to play it.
How about this, for a start? puu.sh/GFkPI/6494af35cf.png
Great video. This brings back memories when I bought my first PC in 1992 and my brother gave me this game for Christmas. I love it very much. It was 8 years later that I got the CD-ROM version of the X-Wing/TIE Fighter/X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter game. I love the flight simulators and combats. It's been years since this game was released. I hope they will re release it again on regular platforms someday.
I'm glad I stuck around for the Black & White crossover at the end. Made my night.
Awesome video champ. I never noticed all the non star wars caricatures on the concourse back when i was a kid. You just made me legit LoL twice in that scene when u pointed them out, thankyou!
Here's a little bit of an X-wing trivia:
- By default, crafts with the same allegiance could not harm each other. Imperials could not harm imperials, neutrals could not harm neutrals, and rebels could not harm rebels either, with the exception of you of course. Friendly starfighters could not collide with each other either. Of course, if friendly starfighters rammed their own capital ship, or two friendly capital ships collided, they blew up.
- No matter what the mission or craft was, you were always assigned to the Red squadron.
- You could basically get unlimited points at every mission involving shielded crafts. Since every laser hit gives you 3 points, you can just chase a shielded craft for years racking up points. Hitting asteroids or Death Star surface counts as a miss, tho.
- Space objects always counted as kills. Mines were always hostile.
- If you shot unshielded crafts with ion cannons, they became destroyed, but the game still treated them as being disabled. This led to many mission fails.
Few notes because I'm pedantic:
-Starfighters can die if they crash into a friendly capital ship, so a tie flying into a star destroyer and crashing will die.
-when a ship comes in to dock or land in hangar it is unable to collide with the ship it is docking with
-being in red squadron is a choice in the mission file, which the developers always followed. you can alter your squadron in the mission file, and your fighter will have the colors of the squad you picked, but the cockpit graphics were static bitmaps, so your A-wing will always look red from the inside.
-you can technically set a mine to be on your side, it will just shoot you anyway.
-Only the Ties would blow up when disabled, and that was a self destruct mechanism, which is why when the mission needed you to destroy them it didn't count as destroyed. Very very few missions required you to destroy ties while you're in an ion equipped fighter. Historical Y-Wing 3 comes to mind.
I spent hundreds of hours playing this game and SWOTL back in the day. What a great time.
It brings back so many memories. One of the best game of all time!
Excellent video, as it actually does include stuff most people wouldn't know! X-Wing is easily my all-time favourite DOS game and I now can't wait to set up a period-correct system on which to listen to the MT-32 soundtrack.
Loved the Mon Mothma wink at the medals-for-Wookies joke, and of course Ryan is always nice to see. Tight!
I loved this series. I played it again recently when GOG released a port for it.
Incredibly well made and phenomenal research thank you the nostalgia is unreal
Thank you for throwing me back to my childhood for a brief time :-) Really enjoying Star Wars Squadrons at the moment
The X-Wing series were my favorites back in the day.
I'd love a modern version of these games
That's what XWVM will hopefully bring. In the meantime the TIE Fighter Total Conversion lets you replay that in VR.
The Force is strong with this one! - Nicely done! What a legendary game series and legacy. This was a fascinating history and dare I say well-researched, excellent job Ras!
Back in the day (2000) I remember getting my first joystick and combat flight simulator game, soon to follow I would discover X-Wing, and also Tie Fighter! It was amazing. The game was especially immersive for me because Star Wars was life for us as kids ahaha! Aww nostalgia. These games were SO fun to play once you got a feel for the controls and gameplay. I'm going to have to give them a spin again, see how they hold up. It's really cool GOG has preserved this classic for all to play! X-Wing '94 version for the win!
New discovery: on Death Star surface levels, destroyed buildings and turbo-laser turrets will respawn after a while. I spent about half a day huntin' down stuff to rack up tons of points, and I noticed that the previously destroyed stuff re-appeared around the Nav Bouy.
Also, if you take out about 2000+ surface buildings (this includes turrets), during the mission evaluation, it will errorneously state "you did not destroy Laser Towers", but luckily, the mission is still treated as a success. Guess it's caused by some integer overflow or something.
Gonna look into that, if I find out what exactly is causing it, I'll get back to you!
Looked into it a bit more. The game tracks 64 tiles at a time, so if you damage a turret in 64 tiles, and then damage one in a 65th tile, the game will forget what happened in the first one, and the turrets will respawn there.
I still have these games in my archives, Original packaging, instructions, the works.
I know I'm a bit late, but here's an Easter Egg in X-Wing that a lot of people don't know about. If you name your pilot a name out of the movies, like Luke, it will use a picture of that character instead of the generic pilot images.
Not quite. The game has a database of pilot portraits but the assignment of portrait to pilot is semi randomized but tied to the pilot name. A pilot named Luke for instance, selects a portrait of Biggs. a pilot named Rasi will select an A-Wing pilot.
Thank you for this. I've spent hundreds of hours with all of them...it was great to see again...also the"secrets" made the whole thing special! Very nice vid. Subscribed!
This was the game that I dropped a grand on buying a 486 PC back in the day. The X-Wing and TIE fighter series of games are legendary. They are still fun to play even today
I noticed that in one of the missions there was a freighter called Shantipole, the Shantipole project was one of West End Games adventure modules for the old d6 RPG they did
it was where the B-Wing was developed.. and amazingly Filoni rescued that in Rebels
Nice work. I grew up on XWing and Tie Fighter.
There was also a mission where if you kill everything and hang around, a pirate frigate jumps in like 100K away. You can fly over there and watch it do a rendezvous with a shuttle or something. You can kill it too if you want.
X-Wing was the most fun I ever had playing a video game. I'm very grateful to the creators - real Star Wars fans!
It was killing a container that triggers it
@@Raistlen007 That's awesome you remember. It was so long ago. Do you by chance recall the mission name?
@@DD-lm1gv T4m6b "protect vital supply container"
@@Raistlen007 Awesome, thanks man
Me and my buddies would meet years after the war, grab a beer, and tell war stories from our tour of duty for the Rebell Alliance. Those were the days!
These games were amazing in their day. I bought the Thrust Master peddles and joy stick for them. Loved them.
I adored this game. I remember one mission where the solar system you went to was designated "BFG 9000" and another one where you piloted a Y-Wing. If you took down the Star Destroyer that showed up in the mission you got a secret medal.
The kalidor crescent is awarded if you pass a certain score threshold per mission. Killing a star destroyer definitely qualifies.
Would die to see a modern remake of X-WING. I don't care how much it cost. I would buy that shit and play every single mission like I did back in the 90's.
It's being worked on as we speak. It's not a remake per se but, but it's already amazing
Woow really excelente job man! That was so cool. Makes me so excited remembering those wonderful moments playing x wing campaigns and tour, identifying those freigters. Greetings
Hm, at the end you playback the XWA cutscene and I'm wondering how cool that XWVM has better graphics in gameplay than the XWA cutscene was. What a time to be alive!
(Whooopsie! I see you are a man of culture Rasi)
Fun fact, I spoke to the guy who did those cutscenes, and he told me they used 3d models that ILM used for the production of ANH:SE. Things really have changed over 20 years!
@@Raistlen007 Wow! So the X-Wing models are identical in the XWA cutscene and the ANH Death Star scenes? Very interesting!
@@Sekir80 Yep!
My preferred config: all power to weapons, all 4 guns linked, and whatever was left over goes to engines. Manually dump gun charge into shields as needed for repairs.
That's how you do it
It's criminal we ended up with Squadrons..... I bought all the series on release and they were just fantastic. The mod scene really does an excellent job of keeping them alive.
Wow that was actually worth the near twenty minutes!
My vote is for X-Wing Alliance backstory.
I love that old pixely cockpit. So nostalgic and painstakingly drawn. I have some trivia that maybe isn't well known - the X-Wing cockpit view doesn't match the models because you wouldn't be able to see much in front of you if it did.
Definitely do one about TIE Fighter! Would watch repeatedly
I would definitely make one. Need to gather a lot more inside info on it before that happens and right now all my focus is on xwing and will probably be there for a while yet
@@Raistlen007 I love both x-wing and tie fighter and found this video super interesting. I would absolutely support a tie fighter video. Really great stuff you did here!
These games were the best... but when the Thrustmaster joystick came out, they became legendary. :) The N64 game was very good as were Rogue Leader and Rebel Strike. :)
I miss this games! I've told my son for years I wish they'd remaster these games for game consoles. Forget the new games, I want the nostalgia of these games!
REMAKE there is a diff
X-Wing: Alliance was an awesome game! And all the intricate flight controls and squadron commands made it really feel like you're inside the cockpit of a Starfighter.
Fun fact: in the X-Wing Alliance Simulators (basically Skirmish Mode), if an enemy hits you with Ion bolts while your shields are down, your ship systems WILL shut down, including the Eject, meaning you are *stuck* until you shut down the sim yourself.
Awesome video! What great games. They still bring you into the SW universe so easily. Thanks for your time and effort. And yes, please, TIE fighter!
Solid video! I'm glad the Top Ace hack was mentioned in the comments. Lucasarts infuriated me leaving behind the iMUSE system! It was one of my favorite aspects of the 93 & 94 games. Does anyone else remember the books that corresponded to the missions? I've misplaced mine.
Excellent video. I lost count of how many hours I played this game many years ago. I got all the budgets minus 1. The one for the B wing. I did not use tricks to pass the training phase to get the mark of the fighter on my shoulder. I think the maximun level the game records was between 11 or 12. I can not remember the exact number. I was able to reach higher level but the machine never put higher than 12 (assuming that was the max number for the doors level. By the way, I passed the trench mission to destroy the Death Star at first try. I was extremly happy after that. I think after finishing the game I was shut down 60 times more or less and more than 1000 ships destroyed. Ahhhh, old times......................Good video
The game lets you enter directly and keep score up to level 8. It increases difficulty up to 11. You can fly after that virtually limitless.
The iMuse was a great way to know that damn transport you escorted just blew up. There is the ticker tape info of course, but without iMuse I went on for several minutes before realizing that the mission had failed a while ago.
The game's guide, which was sold separately, was the best guide I'd ever read in my whole 40yr gaming experience. It was written as the protagonist's after action report/ journal.
This is one of the very few games in which I seek achievements. Those ribbons, medals and patches really hit my reward nerves.
The pilot proving ground really boost your gaming skill. When some friends complained that the game was too hard, I told them to do the proving ground until they earn a flight patch. Most learned how to shoot effectively, some learned to fly well, a few even learned how to distribute powers efficiently.
I still have the boxes for a few of these games buried somewhere.
The immersion you felt was incredible - I was a big fan of the Privateer series of games too.
Back in those days you had to configure com ports and other things on your computer manually for each game so that your sound card, video card and game controller would work.
Saved the settings to an autoexec.bat file and reboot the computer for each game.
And Config.sys. It was part of owning a PC to know how to configure those things. Shoutout to my old friend EMM386.
@@Raistlen007 HIMEM says hello. Also, which sound blaster you had, and where did you put the COM and IRQ jumpers on it, depending on the other ISA cards in your system.
Great video! Pretty strange to see X-Wing cockpit without the usual two-halves oval shield indicator
Stranger is to see the targeting display element as a hud
@@Raistlen007 True, I was so focused on the instrument panel I haven't even noticed that obvious difference :P
On the first mission, the one you mention the freighters having reversed names of software companies, if you can get all of the freighters, a Nebulon B Frigate will appear about 10 clicks away and if you go to it, it will launch 4 squadrons of 4 Tie Fighters, one squadron at a time, and then 2 squadrons of 4 Tie Interceptors, one squadron at a time as well. If you can defeat them all, you can then destroy the Frigate by taking down it's guns and turrets one at a time and then the ship itself. If you do you will be promoted to Captain.
There's another mission where a Star Destroyer makes an appearance and it is possible to destroy it: I did so several times. You have to eliminate all the Tie squadrons, take down the shield generators and then slowly take it apart like the aforementioned Frigate.
X-Wing was the game that captured my interest in computers and how to build them. I started with a Tandy 386DX that I got at Radio Shack that could barely play the game (went 2-3 fps sometimes) and after that I've built all my computers since. I bought a math co-processor for it to try to improve performance, but it did no good.
My third build was based on a Cyrix 486 CPU that had 12 megs of memory! I would load the whole game into a Ram Disk, and it ran lightning fast after that. (running DOS 6.2, not DOS 6.22, and Quarterdeck EMM386 Memory Manager)
The days before the "Chicago Project" and the resultant NTFS file management and Windows 95.
Awesome video! Wing Commander had many of the same features including metals for missions, dynamic music, and cut scenes.
This was a great video and I sincerely hope you keep making them, my only critical feedback is that I wish there was more show and less tell.
Excellent video ! I got into X-Wing late. One of my friends kept telling me about it , and finally I tried it. Mostly to shut him up. I got hooked right away and he just had the biggest grin you ever saw. Played both Tie & VS after that. Never got Alliance though. Now I want it.
For what it's worth, Alliance is my favorite in the series, but I'm an outlier on that.
@@Raistlen007 : Also : I never got to play SWOTL ! I played Battlehawks 1942 and Their finest hour on my Amiga 500 , but that one only came on PC. When I finally got me a PC , the game was obsolete and nowhere to be found. Sad but true.
One of the best PC games ever. Nothing like hitting the H key to have your s-foils close and turn you towards the hyperspace jump as you are getting pummeled by laser file just trying to make it back to mark the mission as complete.
never played x-wing as i devoted my life to the empire in Tie Fighter.
Might need to play it now though :D
My old man had a 6100 series Mac for his work - so I ended up having both X-Wing versions as the Mac itself, had a Mac and a PC in it (486 from memory). I noticed the differences, preferred some on one, and other changes on the other.
OMFG! I've been trying to figure out what the game I played so very VERY long ago was.... it was Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe :O. OMFG! Decades I've been trying to figure it out! Thank you!
Check out the sequel Secret Weapons Over Normandy, made by the developers of SWOTL and X Wing Alliance.
Its more of an arcade game but its very enjoyable and features some great missions (also features an Xwing and Tie Fighter as easter eggs)
Did you get the SWOTL data disks featuring extra aircraft?
Regarding hidden names, there was one mission, in Imperial Pursuit, if I remember correctly, the name of a star Destroyer was Badi Deah.
I only know that because in one particular session, I would destroy every and any star Destroyer in every single mission regardless of what I flew. I lost track of how many I that was,, but I got nearly 1K of TIE Fighter kills. So... a lot.
Subbed! I have sooo many fond memories of Tie Fighter. Would love to see that in the future!
I spent so many hours on these games like on no others. I still have the X-Wing CD, in my bedroom in my hometown. Too bad I don't even have a cd player anywhere anymore.
I always wished there was a online thing to play this game with a big community and play a mission with like a hundred spaceships actually driven by human players instead of AI.
PS: I've always played with the mouse only :-D
You can buy it from GoG, and it runs like a dream, even with mouse control.
later games in the series, XvT, XwA, technically require a joystick but there are programs that bypass that and let you fly with a mouse with varying results.
XWVM will support mouse control through and through.
It’s on steam right now.. not sure on multiplayer.
I had a mt-32! Hearing the Adlib music takes me back. Funny how music takes you back the way it does.
That was a nice nostalgic trip, thank you. 🐾
I remember what a pain X-Wing CD was to get running. Required EMS memory, and a lot of conventional memory available (592k as I recall). As for Easter Eggs, I remember in TIE Fighter a Strike Cruiser named Lonsigar (Long Cigar). Always found that one funny.
I remember calling tech support and the guy taught me how to make a boot disk, I was like 12 at the time.
Meow! Lots of starship names concealed Easter Eggs in the X-wing series. Here are a few:
- Freighter names in the first mission: Orcim, Esorp, Arreis, Nigiro, Murtceps. Read them backwards!
- A Freighter named "Diputs" in a later mission.
- Star Destroyer named "Badi Dea"
- Star Destroyer commander "T. Ryagain" for TIE Fighter
- Interdictor "Suleu" for a TIE Fighter combat mission is a direct reference to Star Trek
- The entire Sepan Civil War saga: "Dimoks" stand for democrats, "Ripoblus" stand for republicans
- Corellian Transport "Geddawai" for the mission "Capture Harkov"
- The Container named "THX-1138" for the "Load Base Equipment" mission is a direct reference for the George Lucas movie
I played 93 version and I have not seen anything better to this day.... also played SWOTLW... memories!
This was so cool and interesting. I’d really love to see it done for TIE Fighter.
Me too. Still not close to working on Tie Fighter to that extent.
Awesome video. The X-W series (mainly X_Wing and Tie Fighter) are still my favorite games of all time. Unmatched in their gameplay.
Still I didn't know most of this stuff. (If you do Tie Fighter there are nice easter eggs for freighter names too..StimsnJ-Kat and Ren Hoek ;D). Those damage sprites look really great, too bad those were cut from the game.
Anyhow I can not wait for the XWVM mod, I been following this since years and I am super excited. It looks so great but whats most important for me is that it retains the original mission structure.
Thanks for the videos and may the force be with you!
The mission structure remains completely intact. 😊 Thanks!
@@Raistlen007 Cool thanks for the reply. XWVM is going to be such a great rerendition of a milestone game!
Possibly the most enjoyment i have gotten out of a game franchise.