Star Wars: X-Wing

The X-wing computer game was the first set in the Star Wars universe that attempts to "realistically" simulate the experience of combat in the starfighters of the Rebel Alliance.

Plot
Players must complete missions ranging from simple dogfights with opposition starfighters, through escort duty for freighters or capital ships to attacks on larger opposition ships. As well as dogfighting designed to resemble the free-wheeling duels of World War I, the games also offered the challenge of managing power resources and wingmen, and using weapons effectively. It featured as its concluding missions recreations of the attacks on the Death Star I.

In 1994, X-Wing won the Origins Award for Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Computer Game of 1993.

It featured hand-drawn (and voiced - this was quite unusual in these days) cutscenes at crucial points in the storyline, although these were not as extensive as those in the Wing Commander]] series to which the game owed much. It also featured music from the movie trilogy, which in some games responded to the player's actions, using the iMUSE system.

The Collector Editions
X-Wing was re-released as Collector's CD-ROM, with the expansion packs included. It also tweaked various areas of the game by including bugfixes, improved graphics, rehashed cutscenes, bonus missions, and the addition of voiceovers for the mission briefings and in-game radio messages.

A cut-down version of X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter was re-released as part of the X-Wing Collector Series, which also contained the Collector's CD-ROM versions of the first two games. In this edition, X-Wing and TIE Fighter were retrofitted with the X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter graphics engine, which uses texture mapping instead of Gouraud shading.

There was also an X-Wing Trilogy release containing X-Wing and TIE Fighter with the updated graphics engine, a demo version of X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, and X-Wing Alliance.

The Developers
The games were developed by Lawrence Holland's company Totally Games, under license from LucasArts, later also released by LucasArts. There are no plans to release further games in the series, although in an interview in 2003, Mr. Holland indicated he might return to the series at some point in the future.

Other games in the series

 * TIE Fighter (1994)
 * TIE Fighter: Defender of the Empire (expansion) (1994)
 * TIE Fighter: Collector's CD-ROM (1995)
 * X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter (1997)
 * Balance of Power (expansion) (1997)
 * X-Wing Collector Series (1998)
 * X-Wing Alliance (1999)