Star Wars: X-Wing

The Star Wars: 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.

Original release
X-wing was developed for LucasArts by the team which would later become Totally Games with the story created by Lawrence Holland and Edward Kilham. The original X-Wing game was released on floppy disk in 1993.

A limited edition version was made available with special packaging and a book titled The Farlander Papers, which gave the background story of Keyan Farlander, the player's character, and which also featured in the strategy guide for the game.

Expansion packs
Two expansion packs, Imperial Pursuit and B-wing were released shortly after. Each provided an additional twenty tour of duty missions while B-wing also gave access to its namesake, the B-wing starfighter and another six historical missions for that ship. Two of these missions were the remade versions of the tour of duty Death Star missions, where the player now could fly the B-wing in the attack against the battlestation.



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, rehashed cutscenes, 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 and the game was now Windows 9x compatible, but the remade X-wing wasn't very favorable by most fans.

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.

Scoring advanced the player's rank (Flight Cadet, Flight Officer, Lieutenant, Captain, Commander, General). He then could use his old pilot files and assign them as wingmen; this would improve their AI performance according to the rank of the pilot assigned to each wingman. This feature however was removed from the Win95 remakes as well as the Macintosh version.

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 game was split into three tours of duty which followed on from each other, though the player was free to tackle them in any order. The first two tours had twelve missions each, while the third had fourteen missions. 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.

Apart from the tour of duty missions, players could explore the Pilot proving grounds and historical missions to train and augment their scores on each of the three available ships, X-wing, Y-wing and A-wing with six historical missions for each ship, 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.

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

Plot

 * Note: X-wing is unique in the corpus of Star Wars in that it features many 'opening crawl' texts. Apart the introductory one, a crawl is seen when the player begins a new tour of duty

Players assume the role of Keyan Farlander of Red Squadron, a Rebel pilot who served in Independence and fought in a number of key battles before, during and after the Battle of Yavin.

Tour of Duty I: A New Ally
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 Destroyer Invincible, which led the Operation.

Missions

 * 1) Destroy Imperial Convoy
 * 2) ID Reconnaissance Mission
 * 3) Fly Point During Evacuation
 * 4) Protect Medical Frigate
 * 5) Ambush Imperial Supply Convoy
 * 6) Raid for R2 Units
 * 7) Recover Stolen X-wings
 * 8) Rescue Sullustan Tech Staff
 * 9) Diplomatic Summit at Sullust
 * 10) Rescue Sullustan Leader
 * 11) Capture Staff from Cygnus
 * 12) Recover Explosive Warhead

Tour of Duty II: The Great Search
The Great Search: Rebels discover the Death Star. The campaign introduces Operation Skyhook and ends with the protection of Princess Leia's corvette Tantive IV, who ferries the Death Star plans.

Missions

 * 1) Rescue from Star's End
 * 2) Rescue Wookiee Slaves
 * 3) Attack Weapons Convoy
 * 4) Capture Stolen Freighter
 * 5) Protect Captured Satellites
 * 6) Ambush in the Cron Drift
 * 7) Protect a disabled X-wing
 * 8) Stop Hyperdrive Replacement
 * 9) Take Out Intrepid's Escort
 * 10) Destroy the Intrepid
 * 11) Deliver Plans to Princess Leia
 * 12) Protect Princess Leia

Tour of Duty III: The Gathering Storm
The Gathering Storm: describes the Rebels' route to the final Battle of Yavin, the Trench Run and the Death Star destruction. This Tour has two more missions, which occur on the Death Star.

Missions

 * 1) Guard Weapons Transfer
 * 2) Destroy Repair Dock
 * 3) Capture Military Transport
 * 4) Scramble!
 * 5) Intercept and Capture
 * 6) Destroy Imperial Base
 * 7) Destroy Priam's Escort
 * 8) Capture the Frigate Priam
 * 9) Capture Ethar I and II
 * 10) Guard Vital Supply Depot
 * 11) Defend the Independence
 * 12) Begin Death Star Assault
 * 13) Attack Death Star Surface
 * 14) Death Star Trench Run

Tour of Duty IV: Imperial Pursuit
Expansion 1, Imperial Pursuit: The evacuation of Yavin 4 and the search for a new secret location for a new base. The Rebels must resist growing Imperial pressure and the new Interdictor Cruiser.

Tour of Duty V: B-wing
Expansion 2, 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 the construction of Echo Base, setting the stage for The Empire Strikes Back.

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

Voice Cast

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

Easter eggs

 * If the player runs the game when his BIOS clock is set to December 25, a figure resembling Santa Claus will appear in the Independence concourse.
 * Many names of ships, especially freighters, are English words or names spelled backwards or are just anagrams. The most obvious examples are Arreis, Orcim, and Diputs. This tactic has been continued but to a lesser extent in the sequels.
 * Some capital ships like Halifax, Fugazi and Tone have names referring to real names of ships or slang (usually Japanese of WWII or other real periods) of war.
 * Other names and locations were borrowed from Han Solo at Stars' End.

Plot mistakes
Being a first Star Wars game with a major storyline, X-wing began the game-contributed C-canon. As such, a number of contradictions to previous (or to subsequent) sources appear that have required retconning or other explanations.


 * TIE Interceptors and A-wings appear in battles prior to their date of creation. The A-wing inconsistency as been later resolved with the R-22 Spearhead retcon. However the appearance of the TIE Interceptors hasn't an explanation as of yet.
 * Same happens with capital ships: Mon Calamari cruisers, are canonically mentioned to enter the Alliance after the Battle of Yavin but are the main type of Rebel capital ship in the game.
 * The Twi'lek homeworld is also called Twi'lek instead of Ryloth.
 * The game causes some confusion by showing the historical battles simulations as being actual recreations in space (it doesn't show the pilot entering a simulator room, but actually leaving the mothership). It's never clear if the Pilot proving grounds are also simulation or actual flying in Rebel space. Briefings seem to be contradicting.
 * Although based on the game alone, it seems that the player character (Keyan Farlander) destroys the Death Star instead of Luke Skywalker, The Farlander Papers (included with the strategy guide) explained that in the final mission, the player actually controls Luke Skywalker flying in Farlander's borrowed ship as Red 5. Farlander flew with the Gold Squadron in the battle.
 * Proton torpedoes were slower than concussion missiles but more damaging. However, this contradicts information in many canon sources which show that both proton torpedoes and concussion missiles are just general types of weapons with various yields.

Rebel snubfighters

 * T-65 X-wing starfighter
 * R-22 Spearhead
 * BTL Y-wing starfighter
 * B-wing starfighter

Imperial snubfighters

 * TIE Advanced x1
 * TIE/ln starfighter
 * TIE/I starfighter
 * TIE/sa starfighter
 * Alpha-class Xg-1 Star Wing

Transports

 * Delta-class DX-9 stormtrooper transport
 * Lambda-class T-4a shuttle
 * BFF-1 Bulk Freighter
 * Class-A Cargo Container

Capital ships

 * MC80 Star Cruiser )
 * Imperial I-class Star Destroyer
 * EF76 Nebulon-B escort frigate
 * CR90 Corellian Corvette
 * Assassin-class corvette

Other

 * Communications Satellite
 * Mine Type A
 * CT-11 Space Tug