Star Wars: X-Wing (video game)

The time of the Old Republic is over. The Senate is no more. The Jedi Knights have been wiped out. Now, the Emperor is determined to crush any remaining resistance. A small but growing Rebel Alliance stands against the Empire's overwhelming power. Dispersed resistance cells are joining forces, gathering every available spacecraft and recruiting every possible ally. The most pressing need now is for skilled starfighter pilots. Will you enlist in their fight to overthrow this tyranny? Will you rise to become a celebrated hero of the Rebellion?

A fleet of Rebel Mon Calamari Star Cruisers is attacked by an Imperial Navy squadron near the planet Turkana. Admiral Gial Ackbar, leading the Rebel fleet, gives the order to launch the Alliance's new starfighter, the T-65 X-wing, resulting in an unexpected Rebel triumph.

As retribution for the setback at Turkana, Emperor Palpatine initiates a large-scale campaign called Operation Strike Fear. During a Rebel hit and fade strike targeting an Imperial convoy, the crew of the Imperial corvette Bixby choose to defect to the Alliance. The captain of the Bixby informs the Rebels about Imperial forces, under the command of the Imperial-class Star Destroyer Invincible, gathering in the Dellalt system to prepare for the impending operation.

Operation Strike Fear commences with an assault on the Rebel base situated on Brigia. Rebel starfighters provide cover for the evacuation of the base and the transfer of wounded personnel to the medical frigate Redemption. Building on their success at Brigia, the Empire launches an assault against the Rebel base on Orion IV, leaving the base devastated and leading to the capture of numerous Rebels.

The Empire then turns its attention to Rudrig, but the Rebels act swiftly to ambush a resupply convoy destined for the Invincible, delaying the next phase of Operation Strike Fear and allowing the Alliance time to secure a supply of critically needed R2-series astromech droids. Unbeknownst to the Rebels, the R2 droids have been programmed to seize control of any X-wings they are installed in and deliver them to the Empire. After three X-wings are stolen by the R2 units, the Rebels initiate a mission to recover them and their pilots before they fall into Imperial hands.

For quite some time, the Rebel Alliance has been trying to enlist the Sullustans to their cause. When the Alliance discovers that Sullustan technical staff have been abducted by Imperial stormtroopers, they launch a rescue operation. The mission's success prompts the Sullustan leadership to agree to a diplomatic summit close to Sullust. During the meeting, Imperial forces capture the Sullustan leader on the planet's surface. The Rebels organize a rescue mission, which ultimately leads to the Sullustans joining the Alliance.

In collaboration with General Crix Madine, Sullustan technicians devise a strategy to halt Operation Strike Fear by destroying the Invincible. To achieve this, the Alliance launches a mission to capture design staff from Cygnus Spaceworks during evaluations of their latest spacecraft. In a subsequent operation, the Rebels steal an Imperial explosive device. The captured Cygnus staff modify a Rebel shuttle to resemble an Imperial vessel. Rebel agents use the shuttle to deliver the explosive device to the Invincible, which detonates shortly after their departure, obliterating the Star Destroyer.

When two Rebel pilots break out of the prison world Stars' End aboard a freighter headed for Kashyyyk, the Alliance undertakes a mission to retrieve them before the Empire can. The pilots make the alliance aware of a freighter transporting Wookiee slaves to a clandestine Imperial military construction project. The Rebels once again launch a rescue operation hoping to gather more information about the project. Documents recovered from the freighter carrying the Wookiees lead the Alliance to an Imperial weapons convoy en route to the construction site. Alliance Intelligence deems it crucial to delay the project while they attempt to learn more, and starfighters are dispatched to destroy the convoy as it passes Orron III.

Alliance High Command conceives a plan to gather more intelligence by infiltrating an Imperial communications network. When intelligence discovers that a freighter transporting communication satellites has been stolen from an Imperial base, they act quickly to capture the freighter. The captured freighter comes under attack from the Star Destroyer Intrepid, but manages to reach the cruiser Maximus safely.

With the satellites secured, they are transferred to the corvette Jeffrey near a Rebel listening post in the Cron Drift, and deployed to replace several Imperial satellites. The satellites enable the listening post to intercept plans for the Death Star, an Imperial battlestation armed with a superlaser capable of obliterating planets. Given the importance of the plans, it is decided to send them via courier rather than risk transmission. However, the X-wing carrying the plans malfunctions near the Cron Drift, and the Rebels dispatch ships to repair it.

While Circarpous Sector Command develop a strategy to deliver the plans to Alliance High Command, the Rebels learn that the Intrepid sustained damage in a collision with a frigate and requires repairs. The Alliance launches an operation to destroy the Intrepid. The initial phase involves intercepting and destroying freighters carrying replacement hyperdrive parts to the stricken vessel. With the repairs thwarted, the Rebels then move to eliminate the Star Destroyer's protective escort before finally engaging the Intrepid itself.

With the threat of the Intrepid neutralized, the Death Star plans are delivered to Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan aboard the corvette Tantive IV for delivery to Chief of State Mon Mothma. Organa intends to transfer to the cruiser Liberty, but is forced to flee due to the arrival of the Star Destroyer Immortal. The Empire, having discovered Organa's cargo, pursues the fleeing corvette in an attempt to recover the plans, and the Alliance dispatches urgent reinforcements to aid Tantive IV in escaping to safety.

The Gathering Storm: depicts the Rebels' path to the climactic Battle of Yavin, the trench run, and the destruction of the Death Star. This Tour includes two additional missions set on the Death Star. In these Death Star missions, the player assumes the identity of Luke Skywalker.

Expansion 1, Imperial Pursuit: Centers on the evacuation of Yavin 4 and the search for a new, secure location for a new base. The Rebels must withstand increasing Imperial pressure and the threat of the new Interdictor Cruiser.

Expansion 2, B-Wing: Focuses on the development of a new starfighter, the B-wing starfighter, and its delivery to the Rebellion. The tour concludes with the arrival on Hoth and the establishment of Echo Base, setting the stage for The Empire Strikes Back.

This edition featured bonus missions, including historical scenarios and "new" missions.

X-Wing utilized a custom-built graphics engine, employing 3D polygons rather than the bitmaps found in the popular Wing Commander series. Totally Games drew upon their earlier World War II flight simulators as the foundation for this engine.

Players are tasked with completing missions ranging from straightforward dogfights against Imperial starfighters, escorting or capturing freighters or capital ships, to assaulting larger enemy vessels. Each series of missions is structured linearly, with the player facing either death/capture or the option to retry upon failure.

Accumulating points led to advancement in the player's rank (Flight Cadet, Flight officer, Lieutenant, Captain, Commander, General). This allowed players to utilize their previous pilot profiles and assign them as wingmen, enhancing their AI performance based on the rank of the assigned pilot. However, this feature was removed from the Win95 remakes and the Macintosh version.

A significant part of the game's challenge involved managing power allocation (lasers, shields, and engines), directing wingmen, and employing weapons effectively.

By blending thrilling space combat with story elements presented through cutscenes and the interactive iMUSE music system, X-Wing created an immersive environment that mirrored the atmosphere of the original trilogy's space battles.

The game was divided into three tours of duty that followed a sequential narrative, although players could choose to tackle them in any order. The first two tours consisted of twelve missions each, while the third contained fourteen missions. Reflecting the Alliance's hit-and-fade tactics, the majority of missions focused on protection, salvage, intelligence gathering, and ambushing Imperial capital ships when possible.

Beyond the tours of duty, players could explore the Pilot proving grounds to practice and improve their scores with each of the three available ships: the X-wing, Y-wing, and A-wing. They could also fly 18 "historical missions" at the Rebel Combat Training Facilities for each ship before embarking on the standard scenarios. Additionally, players could examine ship schematics and review mission recordings captured in the memory cache during missions and subsequently saved to disk. A Tech Room was also available, showcasing schematics of the ships in the game, identifying many of the ships' systems and their manufacturers.

The cutscenes were typically assembled using screenshots from the movies, combined to form a new narrative.

X-Wing was brought to life for LucasArts by the team that would later become known as Totally Games, with the storyline crafted by Lawrence Holland, Edward Kilham, David Wessman, and David Maxwell. The original X-Wing game was launched on floppy disk for PCs running DOS in 1993.

A limited edition version was offered with distinctive packaging and a companion book titled The Farlander Papers, which detailed the backstory of Keyan Farlander, the player's character, who was also featured in the game's strategy guide.

Two expansion packs, Imperial Pursuit and B-Wing, were launched soon after the original game. Each provided an additional tour of duty with twenty new missions, while B-Wing also introduced the B-wing starfighter and six additional historical missions specifically for that ship. Two of these missions were remakes of the Death Star missions from the tour of duty, allowing players to pilot the B-wing instead of the X-wing in the attack on the battlestation.

A year later, in 1994, X-Wing was re-released as Star Wars: X-Wing Collector's CD-ROM, which included the expansion packs. This version refined various aspects of the game, incorporating bug fixes, easier versions of some earlier missions, enhanced graphics, reworked cutscenes, and bonus missions, as well as voiceovers for the mission briefings (unlike the in-game radio messages). The in-flight engine was upgraded to the standard of the later Star Wars: TIE Fighter game, which itself was an improved iteration of the original X-Wing game, featuring Gouraud shading.

X-Wing underwent a significant overhaul for its release as part of the X-Wing Collector Series (1998) and X-Wing Trilogy (1999) collections. The game was updated with the X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter graphics engine, which utilized texture mapping instead of Gouraud shading. The concourse graphics and some cutscenes were also updated, and the game was now compatible with Windows 9x.

On October 28, 2014, Disney Interactive announced a new partnership with GOG.com, a DRM-free digital distributor, that would allow for more than twenty classic Lucasfilm video game titles to be re-released digitally for modern computers. Alongside Star Wars: TIE Fighter and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Star Wars: X-Wing was made available for digital download at a price of $9.99.

As the first Star Wars game with a substantial storyline, X-Wing initiated the game-contributed C-canon. Consequently, several contradictions with other sources emerged, necessitating retconning or alternative explanations.

• The abbreviated designation for the Imperial I-class Star Destroyer in the game is "STD," which differs from later games in the series, where "ISD" is used instead, following the introduction of the Interdictor-class cruiser (INT), Victory II-class Star Destroyer (VSD), and Super Star Destroyer (SSD).
• Although the game is set before the Battle of Yavin, it includes elements that canon establishes were created after the battle, such as the Mon Calamari cruisers, TIE/IN interceptors, and RZ-1 A-wing interceptors, which frequently appear in missions. The A-wing inconsistency was later addressed with the R-22 Spearhead retcon. The existence of the Interceptors was supported by West End Games' The Star Wars Sourcebook, which stated that, at the time of Yavin, standard Imperial Star Destroyers carried (among other things) one squadron of Interceptors (12 craft). Another inconsistent appearance is that of the fully functional Executor appearing in a cutscene if the player is captured; however, this cutscene is non-canon.
• The Twi'lek homeworld is referred to as Twi'lek instead of Ryloth.
• The game introduces some confusion by depicting the historical battles simulations as genuine re-creations in space, without showing the pilot entering a simulator but rather leaving the mothership. It remains unclear whether the pilot proving grounds are also simulations or actual flights in Rebel space, with contradictory briefings.
• While the game alone might suggest that the player character (Keyan Farlander) destroys the Death Star instead of Luke Skywalker, The Farlander Papers (included with the strategy guide) clarified that, in the final mission, the player actually controls Luke Skywalker flying in Farlander's borrowed ship as Red Five. Farlander flew with the Gold Squadron in the battle.
• In the game, proton torpedoes are slower than concussion missiles but inflict more damage. However, numerous canon sources indicate that both proton torpedoes and concussion missiles are general categories of weapons with varying yields.

If the player launches the game with their BIOS clock set to December 25, a Santa Claus figure will appear in the Independence concourse.

In at least the 1998 Collector's Edition of X-Wing, the first time the player visits the Independence concourse after installing the game, an animated figure resembling Marilyn Monroe can be seen standing near one of the hangar doors, striking her iconic "flying skirt" pose.

Many names of ships, particularly freighters, are English words or names spelled backwards or are simply anagrams. The most prominent examples include Nigiro, Arreis, Orcim/Esorp, and Diputs (Origin, Microprose, and Sierra were all well-known software companies in the early '90s, while "Diputs" is "Stupid" spelled backwards). This approach was continued in the sequels, but to a lesser degree.

Some capital ships, such as Halifax, Fugazi, and Tone, have names that reference real ships or slang terms (often Japanese from World War II or other historical periods) related to warfare.

Some ship names pay homage to existing characters, such as the space transport group Renhoek and the Mon Calamari cruiser Stimsenj'kat in the first bonus mission of the X-Wing Collector's CD-ROM. These names reference the main characters Ren Höek and Stimpson J. Cat from the cartoon The Ren & Stimpy Show.

Other names and locations were taken from Han Solo at Stars' End.