Still great fun!

My all-time favourite PC game! (And my first one too!)

Ok, I still prefer Swotl but the bonus mission with the really large convoy to be destroyed (in cheat mode of course) is the real thing after a bad day at "work".

Is this the only PC computer game to feature the face and voice of the late Peter Cushing? Lucasarts used samples from the film in some of the cutscenes, but I don't know if they got permission form Cushing's family to use his voice and image.

They may not have needed to, since Lucas owns all rights to the films and subsequent games. At least that's my opinion, but I think it falls somewhere within there.

It's funny - the very original release featured samples of Cushing's voice straight from the movies - you can tell by the slightly odd Vader breathing which suddenly cuts off. Yet the Windows 95/8 version - part of the Collectors Series or the "X-Wing Trilogy" - uses someone doing a not inconsiderably good impression of Peter Cushing. (I should know - I'm THAT far into the game again. As someone in another LucasArts game [go on, guess which one] once said, "I don't need to practice - I'm gooooooooood!" )

My "StarWars Collection" (slightly improved X-Wing, Rebel Assault, SWSE on a CD) already came with an engineered super pilot who could play every mission/movie. A hexeditor can do the same. J

Hm, I should play it again...

But that pilot isn't compatible with the Collector Series Windows 98 version of the game, which I have (probably because it uses the XWvTF graphics engine). Indeed, in this version you can no longer assign other players' profiles as your wingmen, which is probably a good thing as they wouldn't like it if they loaded up the game only to find their character MIA. On the other hand, it means you're stuck with the same incompetent wingmen in each mission who do their job then run away rather than see the mission out. Or get killed in the first ten seconds.

For the Collector Series version of X-Wing, some of the missions were altered slightly because they were originally too hard. One example was mission 4 of A New Ally (Tour I), which is now possible to complete without resorting to cheating by sending the shuttles home immediately (I managed it on my first attempt this time). Other examples were the two Death Star surface missions, which are now ridiculously easy - I completed the first one on the first attempt (my wingman actually managed to survive all the TIE squadrons) and the second one (the Trench Run) also in one go. In comparison, the surface missions recreated as training missions for the B-Wing are set at the *original* level of difficulty, i.e. the shoot-the-towers mission is just about manageable, while the Trench Run is almost impossible. (By the way, I like the way that four of the Historical Combat missions in the B-Wing expansion are based on missions in Tours 3 and 4, performed in different craft.)

By the way, in the Collector Series version (and presumably the earlier Collectors CD-ROM edition for MS-DOS which used "TIE Fighter" graphics), General Dodonna is voiced by Clive Revill (the voice of Palpatine in Episode 5), while LucasArts regular Nick Jameson does the imitation of Peter Cushing's Tarkin. (I guess the movie samples didn't quite cut it the first time. )

With a hex editor you could revive any pilot in an easy way, because it's just one byte that determines the fate (active/MIA/KIA) and it's place is known. But that was the MS-Dos version.

My joystick arms hurts and I didn't even play the convoy mission.

I'll just stick to backing-up the pilot via Explorer (it's just an Alt-Tab away on my version ).

On the old X-Wing CD I would always make a backup copy of my pilot after each compleated mission (by going to DOS and just doing a simple copy comand) so that if I died I could bring him back.

It works, and it's not strictly cheating - "TIE Fighter" actually does it for you.

The only problem is Tie Fighter takes away all the points you've earned. That's why it's better to copy the guy with his rank & points intact.

"TIE Fighter" doesn't actually do this, as far as I know - it's "X-Wing" that does this when you "revive" your killed or captured pilot, which is very annoying. In "TIE Fighter" when my TIE pilot is captured by Rebels or KIA, I suddenly get a dialogue saying that my backed-up pilot is restored back to what it was just before the ill-fated mission was attempted (it has an auto-backup option, which is useful). My Imperial rank, battle points, position in the Emperor's Circle etc. remain intact.

Then again, the version of "TIE Fighter" I'm using is the Windows 98 3D-accelerated version (using the XWvTF graphics engine) from the "X-Wing Collector Series" which may have differed somewhat from the first two releases (the original and Collectors CD-ROM).

Was there ever the intention to make a Tour Six for the original "X-Wing" ("Imperial Pursuit" is Tour 4, "B-Wing" is Tour 5)? I remember a report about someone who hacked into his PLT file and managed to access medals and ribbons for a potential Tour Six. Indeed, now that I'm getting into the B-Wing expansion, I see that there appears to be space in the Medals Case for another medal and set of tour ribbons.

Has anyone also completed the six bonus Historical Missions in the Collectors CD-ROM edition? What battle patches, if any, do you get?