Star Wars: X-Wing

The X-wing computer game is the first Lucasarts DOS game set in the Star Wars universe. An attempt to capitalize on renewed interest in Star Wars sparked by Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy and the popularity of flight simulation software, X-wing achieved what few subsequent Star Wars games could by being critically acclaimed, embraced by fans and a financial success. Players entered the role of a young pilot in the Rebel Alliance and gave them the opportunity to pilot the titular X-wing, as well as Y-wing, A-wing and eventually B-wing starfighters.

Mechanics
X-wing operated on a custom-built graphics engine that used 3D polygons instead of the bitmaps used by the popular Wing Commander games. Totally Games based the engine on their earlier World War II flight simulators.

The player must complete missions ranging from simple dogfights with Imperial starfighters, through escort or capture for freighters or capital ships to attacks on larger opposition ships. Each series of missions is organized linearly, permitting the player to choose either death/capture or a retry at each failure.

The dogfighting was designed to resemble the free-wheeling duels of World War I and World War II and lacks the effects of realistic space combat. The game also offers the challenge of managing power resources (lasers, shields and engines), commanding wingmen, and using weapons effectively.

By combining the exciting space combat with cut scene story elements and the interactive iMUSE music system, X-wing created an environment that attempted to recreate the atmosphere of the Original Trilogy's space battles.

The cutscenes were usually composed by screenshots taken from instances of the movies but combined to make a new narrative

History
The original X-Wing game was released on floppy disk with the acronym XWFD. Expansion disks for the "Imperial Pursuit" and "B-Wing" campaigns were released shortly after. In 1994, a CD-ROM version was released as XWCD and contained the content of the original game and both expansions.

With the XWCD release, a limited edition version was made available with special packaging and a document titled The Farlander Papers, which was also featured in the strategy guide for the game.

Awards
In addition to being the best-selling game of 1993, X-wing won LucasArts several awards, including:
 * Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Computer Game of 1993, Origins 1994
 * Best Game of 1993, Electronic Entertainment
 * Best Simulation of 1993, Computer Game Review
 * Simulation of the Year, Computer Gaming World

Gameplay
Players assume the role of Keyan Farlander of Red Squadron, a Rebel pilot who fought in a number of key battles before, during and after the Battle of Yavin. Echoing the Alliance's hit-and-fade strategy, the majority of missions are concerned with protection, salvage, intelligence gathering and ambushing Imperial capital ships where feasible.

The storyline evolves through 3 tours of duty with 12 missions each:


 * "A New Ally": describes the finding of new allies for the Rebels and the discovery of Operation Strike Fear, the Imperial campaign against Rebels. The tour ends when Rebels with hidden explosives destroy the Imperial-class Star Destroyers Invincible, which led the Operation.
 * "The Great Search": Rebels discover the Death Star I. The campaign ends with protection of Leia's corvette Tantive IV, who ferries the Death Star plans.
 * "The Gathering Storm": describes Rebels' route to the final Battle of Yavin, the Trench Run and the Death Star destruction. This Tour has 2 more missions, which occur on the Death Star.

The expansion packs each consisted of one 20 mission tour of duty that took place between the Battle of Yavin and the construction of Echo Base on Hoth:
 * "Imperial Pursuit": The evacuation of Yavin IV and the search for a new secret location for a new base. The Rebels must resist growing Imperial pressure and the new Interdictor Cruiser.
 * "B-wing": Production of a new craft, the B-wing, and its delivery to the Rebellion. The tour ends with the arrival on Hoth and sets the stage for The Empire Strikes Back.

Apart from the tour of duty missions, players could explore the Pilot proving grounds and historical missions to train and augment their scores and ranks before beginning the standard scenarios. They could also examine ship schematics and review mission films that can be recorded in the memory cache during the missions, and afterwards saved in disk.

Voice Cast

 * C. Andrew Nelson: Luke Skywalker
 * Erik Boauersfield: Admiral Ackbar
 * Nick Jameson: Grand Moff Tarkin
 * Clive Revill: General Jan Dodonna

Easter eggs
Many names of ships, especially freighters, are English words or name spelled backwards. For example Arreis, Orcim, and Diputs. Other names of were borrowed from Han Solo at Star's End.

Plot mistakes
As the first Star Wars game with a major storyline, X-wing began the so-called "game C-canon." As such, a number of contradictions appear that have required retconning or other explanation.
 * TIE Interceptors and A-wings appear in battles prior to their date of creation. This has been explained as early versions of later ships.
 * The Twi'lek homeworld is also called Twi'lek instead of Ryloth.
 * The player character (Keyan Farlander) destroys the Death Star instead of Luke Skywalker. This has been explained that in the final levels, the player controls Luke Skywalker flying in Farlander's borrowed ship as Red 5. Farlander flew with the Gold Squadron in the battle.

The Collector Editions
A year later (1994) X-wing was re-released as Collector's CD-ROM, with the expansion packs included. It tweaks various areas of the game by including bug fixes, easy versions of some old missions, improves graphics, rehashes cutscenes, adds bonus missions, as well as voiceovers for the mission briefings and the in-game radio messages. The in-flight engine is improved to the caliber of the later Star Wars: TIE Fighter game, which is an improved version of the original X-wing game featuring Gouraud shading.

X-wing had a major retouch for its release along with the collections X-wing Collector Series (1998) and X-wing Trilogy (1999). The game was retrofitted with the X-wing vs. TIE Fighter graphics engine, which uses texture mapping instead of Gouraud shading. Concourse graphics and some cutscenes were also retouched, but the remade X-wing wasn't very favorable by most fans.

Ships featured

 * X-wing
 * A-wing
 * Y-wing
 * B-wing
 * TIE Fighter
 * TIE Interceptor
 * TIE Bomber
 * Assault Gunboat
 * Imperial I-class Star Destroyer
 * Delta-class DX-9 stormtrooper transport
 * CR90 Corellian Corvette
 * Assassin-class corvette (actually same polygon model as the other)
 * MC80 Star Cruiser
 * Nebulon-B Escort Frigate
 * BFF-1 Bulk Freighter
 * Cargo Container
 * Communications Satellite
 * Proximity mine Type A
 * CT-11 Space Tug