Classic PC Game Review: 'Star Wars: X-Wing Collector's Edition - CD ROM'
If you're a reader of Bantam Spectra's long-running Star
Wars: X-Wing novels by Michael A. Stackpole and Aaron Alliston, you know
the books were not only inspired by George Lucas' original Star Wars Trilogy
and the subsequent Expanded Universe novels by Timothy Zahn and other authors,
but also by Star Wars: X-Wing, a best-selling series of PC games from
Lucasarts Games.
Designed by Lawrence Holland (Strike Fleet) and Edward Kilham, Star Wars: X-Wing first appeared in 3.5-inch floppy disk format for DOS-based IBM PCs and compatible machines which used the Intel 386 processor.
I couldn't afford it back then -- a brand new 5-disc set with manual and a copy of The Farlander Papers cost about $50 back in 1993 -- but my then-neighbor Geno Betancourt had a brand-new copy. Geno, knowing I love Star Wars and PC games, loaned me his Star Wars: X-Wing software and the manual -- he was both working and studying long hours back then, and he wasn't playing the game much, so he figured someone else might as well enjoy it.
Star Wars: X-Wing was, and still is, a single-player combat flight simulator that allows you to "hop into" a virtual cockpit of one of three Rebel Alliance starfighters: The X-Wing (made famous by Luke Skywalker in The Star Wars Trilogy), the Y-Wing fighter-bomber, and the A-Wing high-speed interceptor. Each fighter had a similar set of flight and weapons controls, but each had its own assets and liabilities; the X-Wing had four laser cannons but only six proton torpedoes, while the Y-Wing had two laser cannon, eight proton torpedoes, and two ion cannons. The A-Wing had two laser cannon, eight concussion missiles, and a faster sub light drive. (The B-Wing, which was only available in the B-Wing Expansion Pack, was heavily armed with laser cannon, ion cannon, and proton torpedoes but was harder to fly.)
Like most flight/spacecraft simulators I've used, Star Wars: X-Wing has three basic mission types -- Training, Single Engagements, and Campaign. Ideally, you as a player would start out by practicing basic flight and gunnery techniques in the Training area, then get "combat experience" in Single Engagement (called "Historical Engagements") mode, and graduate to full Star Wars-level heroics in the Campaign against the Empire.
The Setting: The original version of Star Wars: X-Wing is set a few months before the events depicted in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. The game's storyline starts you out as a new starfighter cadet in flight school, and once you complete the Training mission and have fought a few single engagements, you can join the fight against the Empire in the first of three Tours of Duty that, if you should survive all the way to the final battle, culminate with an attack on the first Death Star.
The Collector's Edition CD-ROM: (Because this is the version I owned, most of my comments will deal with this version of X-Wing.) Although the first floppy disc-format version of the game was successful enough for Lucasarts to release two Expansion Packs (Imperial Pursuit, B-Wing), the growing dominance of the CD-ROM format meant that software designers could cram the data carried in five or more 3.5-in. diskettes into one CD, so when time came to roll out X-Wing in CD-ROM, Lucasarts decided to include Imperial Pursuit and B-Wing as the fourth and fifth post-Battle of Yavin Tours of Duty. The graphics and sound, particularly the music, were much improved, although the game's demands on my PC (by now a Pentium I machine and with, of course, a CD-ROM drive) didn't help matters much.
Flying in the Star Wars Galaxy: Although the game has an "outside the fighter" view option, Star Wars: X-Wing is basically a standard "in the cockpit" flight sim, albeit one that's set in the Star Wars galaxy. The default view, naturally, is the front viewport and interior control panel of one of the three Rebel Alliance starfighters, which includes such vital screens and gauges as Power Level, Targeting Computer/Starship ID screen, Shield Status and Setting, Laser/Ion Cannon Power Levels, and Missile Weapons counter. On the central cockpit canopy panel (at eye level) is a Heads-Up Display that is extremely useful in dogfights and torpedo runs; when using missile weapons you use the HUD's crosshairs to establish a lock on those pesky Imperial fighters -- when a TIE bomber or fighter is out of missile range, the HUD will be red and a lock-on tone will beep sporadically; as the range closes the HUD will change color from red, to yellow and finally to green, while the lock-on tone will be more insistent, increasing in speed and pitch until it's a loud BEEEEP! noise. The HUD also includes two threat screens that appear on the upper left and right corners of the cockpit; they provide positional information on Rebel, Imperial, and neutral spacecraft in the battle area.
You can, of course, "turn your head" and look around your ship (especially to "check your six" -- look directly behind you) and "out the windows" by using the numeric keypad on the right side of the keyboard.
Flying in X-Wing is done either with a joystick (the best way) or with the up, down, left, and right directional keys between the QWERTY part of the keyboard and the numeric keypad. You fly your starfighter like you would a "real" plane on Microsoft Flight Simulator: to go up, pull back on the stick or hit the down key. To dive, push the stick forward or hit the up key....and so on and so forth. Throttle commands are also easy; just hit the + key to increase speed, and - to slow down.
To fly in combat missions, though, you also need to master the fine art of power management. Although in standard flight mode your fighter's power is evenly distributed among Shields, Lasers/Ion Cannon, and Engines, sometimes you might need to increase power to one system. If, for instance, you have a pesky TIE on your tail and your shields are weakening, you can switch power from either engines or lasers to the shields. The trade-off is risky, of course, because as you watch your Shield Level increase and the back shields are strengthening, you'll notice that whichever system you are transferring power from is weaker. Either your speed is lower by a factor of 10 units or your beam weapons are being drained and you won't be able to fire lasers or ion cannon. Pray that either the Force is with you or that you have missiles left...otherwise your shield gambit is simply a stalling tactic and the Imperials will shoot you down.
Training: The training level is basically designed to give you the most basic of flight-and-gunnery schooling. Here, you must fly the Maze, a series of evenly spaced structures shaped like flat steel plates topped by two "gates" on each end. Your mission: to pass through as many gates as possible within a set time limit (I think it's about two minutes or so). At first, it's relatively easy, but the Maze's layout curves up and down in space, and as you get closer to the end, some of the "gates" will be defended by a turbolaser turret, which must be destroyed before it shoots you. The more "gates" you pass and the more turrets you destroy, the better your score is, but if you don't finish the Maze run before the time runs out, your R2 unit will beep at you and abort the mission. (Gamer's confession: Before I gave up playing this, I never, ever finished the Maze.)
Historical Missions Technically still part of training you to be a Rebel fighter pilot, Historical Missions are Single Engagements that ideally prepare you for the Tours of Duty. They are arranged by degree of difficulty and don't always place you in the seat of an X-Wing. Some missions pit you and your AI (artificial intelligence) wingmen against an undefended (for now) Imperial supply depot, while others send you in a solitary recce mission to find out about an Imperial fleet deployment. Here, though, combat situations are "realistic" -- the enemy fires back and your ship can get seriously damaged or even destroyed. This is the first time where all that Maze-flying pays off; if you have learned to shoot on the run or manage that intricate balance between shields, engines, and beam weapons in the Maze, you stand a fair chance of survival.
It is in this level, too, that players first earn medals and promotions after successfully completing missions. The awards and ranks are based not only on whether you finish each mission -- in fact, you must finish the mission anyway -- but on how accurate your shooting is. X-Wing gives you a Mission Score report that tells you, among other things, how many enemy targets you destroyed, how many lasers and missiles you fired, and how many hits and misses you made.
(What I don't like about the scoring system is the all-or-nothing approach Holland and Kilham designed. While it is always good to have a not-too-easy scoring system that spurs players to do their best, I find it off-putting to play a game where I have shot down 10 of 11 TIE bombers and destroyed an Imperial freighter and its cargo, return to base, and find out that I don't get a Mission Accomplished award because of that single surviving TIE bomber or fighter.)
The toughest challenge, as in most games that have a similar structure, is the Campaign mode. Here Star Wars: X-Wing takes you out of the training realm and into the Galactic Civil War. In three Tours of Duty, you fly some 45 missions that range from evading the Empire's Operation STRIKE FEAR to flying a desperate last-ditch attack against the Death Star. (The Collector's Edition takes you even further, since Imperial Pursuit and B-Wing are the two Expansion Packs that are set between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back.) In the Campaign mode you fly until you (a) destroy the Death Star, (b) are shot down and captured by the Empire, or (b) are killed in action. (On occasion, if your ship is badly damaged and you eject close to the Rebel fleet, your side will rescue you and you're put into a bacta tank to heal your battle wounds -- I love the cutscenes for all the battle outcomes.)
Graphics, Sounds, and Music: As you might expect, Lucasarts did a great job of immersing a player into the Star Wars environment, even with the first version of this game. As has become a tradition with the company's movie tie-in games, Star Wars: X-Wing has the same "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...." card and Main Title crawl as the film Episodes. X-Wing (in the two versions I've played) has an exciting title sequence depicting the Battle of Turkana, reputedly the first engagement in which the X-Wing fighter first saw action. In slower 386 PCs, the scene where two Imperial officers are shown speaking on a Star Destroyer's bridge had the dialog in text only, while on faster 486s and Pentium Is the text was replaced by voice and the title graphics were more dynamic. The CD-ROM Collector's Edition had the more dynamic version, of course, and the graphics -- particularly the exterior views of the player's fighter -- were smoother and less, well, blocky. (Even so, for some reason my copy of X-Wing -- which was still Windows-based and came in the CD-ROM format -- never ran well on my Pentium I. It froze constantly, particularly in battles where there were things like asteroids and other flotsam floating about in space.)
The graphics of Star Wars: X-Wing are pretty good considering it's a game designed 25 years ago. They don't, of course, look anything as nice as those in later titles (Rogue Squadron, Jedi Starfighter, but they still hold up rather nice. The TIE family of Imperial fighters and bombers, with its simple geometric shape combinations, is nicely rendered, and battle scenes are full of red Rebel and green Imperial laser bolts, explosions, a nice blue-white "sparking" damage effect (mostly on TIEs), distant planets, and a variable starfield and debris cloud.
The music, of course, was adapted by Peter McConnell from John Williams' original scores from mainly A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. In the floppy disc version, the music sounded, well, like MIDI file stuff, melodically correct but not as stirring as the full orchestral sound from the film soundtracks. The Collector's Edition CD-ROM improves on the sound quality, but not to the levels achieved by later games, such as Star Wars: Rebellion, which used actual cues from the Star Wars Trilogy Original Soundtrack Anthology
Dialog plays a big role in the sound experience of X-Wing, as do actual movie sound effects. Not only are the Mission Briefings by General Dodonna and Admiral Ackbar more impressive with actual voice talents such as that of actor Clive Revill (the original voice of Emperor Palpatine in the hologram sequence from The Empire Strikes Back), but some of the cutscenes are impressive by the inclusion of spoken dialog. My personal favorite? I used to like being captured by the Empire, so I could be taken aboard Darth Vader's flagship and hear the Dark Lord say, "And now we will discuss the location of your hidden base."
The designers also had access to Ben Burtt's library of Star Wars sounds, so you not only hear your trusty R2 unit beeping or the sound of your engines roaring, but you hear the unmistakable howl of approaching TIEs, the zap-zap of laser cannon, and the sharp crack of energy beams piercing your shields and hitting the hull of your ship. You also hear an occasional radio call ("Nice shooting, Red Two!") from the AI Rebels flying alongside in battle, giving you a "you are in the thick of the fight" ambiance, albeit with a Star Wars touch.
I never completed any of the Tours of Duty -- the game was a bit too difficult for me to master -- and I ended up giving it to a friend of mine because it overwhelmed my PC. Nevertheless, Star Wars: X-Wing is a simulation I remember fondly. Although exasperating in its scoring system and perhaps a bit too difficult for a casual gamer, it's never boring and nice to simply pop into the CD-ROM drive and take out for a quick let's-kick-some-Imperial-rear-end flight.
Designed by Lawrence Holland (Strike Fleet) and Edward Kilham, Star Wars: X-Wing first appeared in 3.5-inch floppy disk format for DOS-based IBM PCs and compatible machines which used the Intel 386 processor.
I couldn't afford it back then -- a brand new 5-disc set with manual and a copy of The Farlander Papers cost about $50 back in 1993 -- but my then-neighbor Geno Betancourt had a brand-new copy. Geno, knowing I love Star Wars and PC games, loaned me his Star Wars: X-Wing software and the manual -- he was both working and studying long hours back then, and he wasn't playing the game much, so he figured someone else might as well enjoy it.
Star Wars: X-Wing was, and still is, a single-player combat flight simulator that allows you to "hop into" a virtual cockpit of one of three Rebel Alliance starfighters: The X-Wing (made famous by Luke Skywalker in The Star Wars Trilogy), the Y-Wing fighter-bomber, and the A-Wing high-speed interceptor. Each fighter had a similar set of flight and weapons controls, but each had its own assets and liabilities; the X-Wing had four laser cannons but only six proton torpedoes, while the Y-Wing had two laser cannon, eight proton torpedoes, and two ion cannons. The A-Wing had two laser cannon, eight concussion missiles, and a faster sub light drive. (The B-Wing, which was only available in the B-Wing Expansion Pack, was heavily armed with laser cannon, ion cannon, and proton torpedoes but was harder to fly.)
 |
| Still photo of the main title cutscene. (C) 1993 LucasArts Games |
Like most flight/spacecraft simulators I've used, Star Wars: X-Wing has three basic mission types -- Training, Single Engagements, and Campaign. Ideally, you as a player would start out by practicing basic flight and gunnery techniques in the Training area, then get "combat experience" in Single Engagement (called "Historical Engagements") mode, and graduate to full Star Wars-level heroics in the Campaign against the Empire.
The Setting: The original version of Star Wars: X-Wing is set a few months before the events depicted in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. The game's storyline starts you out as a new starfighter cadet in flight school, and once you complete the Training mission and have fought a few single engagements, you can join the fight against the Empire in the first of three Tours of Duty that, if you should survive all the way to the final battle, culminate with an attack on the first Death Star.
The Collector's Edition CD-ROM: (Because this is the version I owned, most of my comments will deal with this version of X-Wing.) Although the first floppy disc-format version of the game was successful enough for Lucasarts to release two Expansion Packs (Imperial Pursuit, B-Wing), the growing dominance of the CD-ROM format meant that software designers could cram the data carried in five or more 3.5-in. diskettes into one CD, so when time came to roll out X-Wing in CD-ROM, Lucasarts decided to include Imperial Pursuit and B-Wing as the fourth and fifth post-Battle of Yavin Tours of Duty. The graphics and sound, particularly the music, were much improved, although the game's demands on my PC (by now a Pentium I machine and with, of course, a CD-ROM drive) didn't help matters much.
Flying in the Star Wars Galaxy: Although the game has an "outside the fighter" view option, Star Wars: X-Wing is basically a standard "in the cockpit" flight sim, albeit one that's set in the Star Wars galaxy. The default view, naturally, is the front viewport and interior control panel of one of the three Rebel Alliance starfighters, which includes such vital screens and gauges as Power Level, Targeting Computer/Starship ID screen, Shield Status and Setting, Laser/Ion Cannon Power Levels, and Missile Weapons counter. On the central cockpit canopy panel (at eye level) is a Heads-Up Display that is extremely useful in dogfights and torpedo runs; when using missile weapons you use the HUD's crosshairs to establish a lock on those pesky Imperial fighters -- when a TIE bomber or fighter is out of missile range, the HUD will be red and a lock-on tone will beep sporadically; as the range closes the HUD will change color from red, to yellow and finally to green, while the lock-on tone will be more insistent, increasing in speed and pitch until it's a loud BEEEEP! noise. The HUD also includes two threat screens that appear on the upper left and right corners of the cockpit; they provide positional information on Rebel, Imperial, and neutral spacecraft in the battle area.
You can, of course, "turn your head" and look around your ship (especially to "check your six" -- look directly behind you) and "out the windows" by using the numeric keypad on the right side of the keyboard.
Flying in X-Wing is done either with a joystick (the best way) or with the up, down, left, and right directional keys between the QWERTY part of the keyboard and the numeric keypad. You fly your starfighter like you would a "real" plane on Microsoft Flight Simulator: to go up, pull back on the stick or hit the down key. To dive, push the stick forward or hit the up key....and so on and so forth. Throttle commands are also easy; just hit the + key to increase speed, and - to slow down.
To fly in combat missions, though, you also need to master the fine art of power management. Although in standard flight mode your fighter's power is evenly distributed among Shields, Lasers/Ion Cannon, and Engines, sometimes you might need to increase power to one system. If, for instance, you have a pesky TIE on your tail and your shields are weakening, you can switch power from either engines or lasers to the shields. The trade-off is risky, of course, because as you watch your Shield Level increase and the back shields are strengthening, you'll notice that whichever system you are transferring power from is weaker. Either your speed is lower by a factor of 10 units or your beam weapons are being drained and you won't be able to fire lasers or ion cannon. Pray that either the Force is with you or that you have missiles left...otherwise your shield gambit is simply a stalling tactic and the Imperials will shoot you down.
Training: The training level is basically designed to give you the most basic of flight-and-gunnery schooling. Here, you must fly the Maze, a series of evenly spaced structures shaped like flat steel plates topped by two "gates" on each end. Your mission: to pass through as many gates as possible within a set time limit (I think it's about two minutes or so). At first, it's relatively easy, but the Maze's layout curves up and down in space, and as you get closer to the end, some of the "gates" will be defended by a turbolaser turret, which must be destroyed before it shoots you. The more "gates" you pass and the more turrets you destroy, the better your score is, but if you don't finish the Maze run before the time runs out, your R2 unit will beep at you and abort the mission. (Gamer's confession: Before I gave up playing this, I never, ever finished the Maze.)
Historical Missions Technically still part of training you to be a Rebel fighter pilot, Historical Missions are Single Engagements that ideally prepare you for the Tours of Duty. They are arranged by degree of difficulty and don't always place you in the seat of an X-Wing. Some missions pit you and your AI (artificial intelligence) wingmen against an undefended (for now) Imperial supply depot, while others send you in a solitary recce mission to find out about an Imperial fleet deployment. Here, though, combat situations are "realistic" -- the enemy fires back and your ship can get seriously damaged or even destroyed. This is the first time where all that Maze-flying pays off; if you have learned to shoot on the run or manage that intricate balance between shields, engines, and beam weapons in the Maze, you stand a fair chance of survival.
It is in this level, too, that players first earn medals and promotions after successfully completing missions. The awards and ranks are based not only on whether you finish each mission -- in fact, you must finish the mission anyway -- but on how accurate your shooting is. X-Wing gives you a Mission Score report that tells you, among other things, how many enemy targets you destroyed, how many lasers and missiles you fired, and how many hits and misses you made.
(What I don't like about the scoring system is the all-or-nothing approach Holland and Kilham designed. While it is always good to have a not-too-easy scoring system that spurs players to do their best, I find it off-putting to play a game where I have shot down 10 of 11 TIE bombers and destroyed an Imperial freighter and its cargo, return to base, and find out that I don't get a Mission Accomplished award because of that single surviving TIE bomber or fighter.)
The toughest challenge, as in most games that have a similar structure, is the Campaign mode. Here Star Wars: X-Wing takes you out of the training realm and into the Galactic Civil War. In three Tours of Duty, you fly some 45 missions that range from evading the Empire's Operation STRIKE FEAR to flying a desperate last-ditch attack against the Death Star. (The Collector's Edition takes you even further, since Imperial Pursuit and B-Wing are the two Expansion Packs that are set between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back.) In the Campaign mode you fly until you (a) destroy the Death Star, (b) are shot down and captured by the Empire, or (b) are killed in action. (On occasion, if your ship is badly damaged and you eject close to the Rebel fleet, your side will rescue you and you're put into a bacta tank to heal your battle wounds -- I love the cutscenes for all the battle outcomes.)
Graphics, Sounds, and Music: As you might expect, Lucasarts did a great job of immersing a player into the Star Wars environment, even with the first version of this game. As has become a tradition with the company's movie tie-in games, Star Wars: X-Wing has the same "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...." card and Main Title crawl as the film Episodes. X-Wing (in the two versions I've played) has an exciting title sequence depicting the Battle of Turkana, reputedly the first engagement in which the X-Wing fighter first saw action. In slower 386 PCs, the scene where two Imperial officers are shown speaking on a Star Destroyer's bridge had the dialog in text only, while on faster 486s and Pentium Is the text was replaced by voice and the title graphics were more dynamic. The CD-ROM Collector's Edition had the more dynamic version, of course, and the graphics -- particularly the exterior views of the player's fighter -- were smoother and less, well, blocky. (Even so, for some reason my copy of X-Wing -- which was still Windows-based and came in the CD-ROM format -- never ran well on my Pentium I. It froze constantly, particularly in battles where there were things like asteroids and other flotsam floating about in space.)
The graphics of Star Wars: X-Wing are pretty good considering it's a game designed 25 years ago. They don't, of course, look anything as nice as those in later titles (Rogue Squadron, Jedi Starfighter, but they still hold up rather nice. The TIE family of Imperial fighters and bombers, with its simple geometric shape combinations, is nicely rendered, and battle scenes are full of red Rebel and green Imperial laser bolts, explosions, a nice blue-white "sparking" damage effect (mostly on TIEs), distant planets, and a variable starfield and debris cloud.
The music, of course, was adapted by Peter McConnell from John Williams' original scores from mainly A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. In the floppy disc version, the music sounded, well, like MIDI file stuff, melodically correct but not as stirring as the full orchestral sound from the film soundtracks. The Collector's Edition CD-ROM improves on the sound quality, but not to the levels achieved by later games, such as Star Wars: Rebellion, which used actual cues from the Star Wars Trilogy Original Soundtrack Anthology
Dialog plays a big role in the sound experience of X-Wing, as do actual movie sound effects. Not only are the Mission Briefings by General Dodonna and Admiral Ackbar more impressive with actual voice talents such as that of actor Clive Revill (the original voice of Emperor Palpatine in the hologram sequence from The Empire Strikes Back), but some of the cutscenes are impressive by the inclusion of spoken dialog. My personal favorite? I used to like being captured by the Empire, so I could be taken aboard Darth Vader's flagship and hear the Dark Lord say, "And now we will discuss the location of your hidden base."
The designers also had access to Ben Burtt's library of Star Wars sounds, so you not only hear your trusty R2 unit beeping or the sound of your engines roaring, but you hear the unmistakable howl of approaching TIEs, the zap-zap of laser cannon, and the sharp crack of energy beams piercing your shields and hitting the hull of your ship. You also hear an occasional radio call ("Nice shooting, Red Two!") from the AI Rebels flying alongside in battle, giving you a "you are in the thick of the fight" ambiance, albeit with a Star Wars touch.
I never completed any of the Tours of Duty -- the game was a bit too difficult for me to master -- and I ended up giving it to a friend of mine because it overwhelmed my PC. Nevertheless, Star Wars: X-Wing is a simulation I remember fondly. Although exasperating in its scoring system and perhaps a bit too difficult for a casual gamer, it's never boring and nice to simply pop into the CD-ROM drive and take out for a quick let's-kick-some-Imperial-rear-end flight.
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