Star Wars: X-Wing

Star Wars: X-Wing was the first major attempt to put the player in the cockpit of a Rebel fighter in a way that wasn't arcade-like but a genuine space simulator. The campaign takes a pilot from training flights in the simulator through escort and reconnaissance missions all the way to the attack on the Death Star, and along the way offers three craft with very different characters: the nimble A-wing, the versatile X-wing, and the slow but sturdy Y-wing. The key to survival is managing power, that is, shifting output between engines, shields, and lasers, as well as redirecting shields forward or backward depending on where the enemy is attacking from.

Missions aren't just shooting galleries. The game works with convoys, checkpoints, transports that must be protected, and hyperspace jump timing, so failure often doesn't come from being shot down but from failing to complete the main objective in time. Technically the game ran on full polygons, which at the time allowed smooth ship rotation and readable dogfights even on ordinary machines with a 386 or 486 processor. The audio side was carried by the iMUSE system, thanks to which the music continuously reacted to what was happening around the player. A strafing run, a hull hit, and a victorious flyaway each had their own musical motif, and the atmosphere of the film source gained enormously from it.

At the time X-Wing became one of the standout titles of its year and set the bar for licensed Star Wars games. It established the idea that a simulator could also be a dramatic story-driven game without sacrificing the depth of its systems. Today the game is tough, missions repeat here and there, in-flight saving options were limited, and the difficulty of some deployments is merciless, but the cockpit, the engine sound, and the tension of escorting a defenseless transport still work. For fans of space simulators it's a mandatory stop and at the same time the best introduction to what came from the same team a year later. It also helps that the game was later released in expanded versions with additional campaigns that added dozens of missions and new situations, so there's plenty of content here for a long time.