Star Wars X-Wing Collector Series

Published by LucasArts/Activision
Platform: PC CD/ROM
Price £14.99 Released: Out Now

System requirements
Windows 95/98/98SE/ME
Pentium 90 or better
16MB of RAM

Back in the days when the popular processor was a 486 and a graphics card only had 1MB RAM there were two Star Wars games that took the world by storm with their graphics and superb playability. The first of these was Star Wars X-Wing. This game put you in the cockpit of the famous X-Wing fighter and when it was coupled with a decent joystick it allowed you to imagine that you were Luke Skywalker. Its popularity was amazing and it soon had an expansion that allowed you to fly an A-Wing, B-Wing and a Y-Wing. The game was only bettered by one other, Tie Fighter. Star Wars Tie Fighter put you in the opposite role of an Imperial fighter pilot. The X-Wing was swapped for a Tie Fighter and the game amazed everyone by actually being superior to X-Wing.

Now I remember about four years ago trying to play these games on a Pentium 2 233MHz PC and was horrified at just how fast the action was. The game was uncontrollable so I put those floppy disks away for good. However when I was playing them again a few days ago (from this Collector Series) I was amazed at how LucasArts have corrected the speed problem. I now use an AMD 900MHz PC and both of these games play fine, at the correct speed too. LucasArts have also added support for 3D accelerator cards which makes the games look so much better. As well as X-Wing and Tie Fighter you also get a cut down version of X-Wing vs Tie Fighter which although this game wasn't as good as the other two it is still a worthy addition to package.

All these games are fantastic and have subtitles too. The only point that I would mention is that I couldn't get a USB joystick to work with the games so bear that in mind. A joystick that plugged into the gameport (on your soundcard) worked fine. This collection is a steal and highly recommended if you like Star Wars or space combat simulations.

Click the thumbnails to see the big picture.

Recommendation: Highly Recommended. Contains 2 of the best Star Wars games ever.
Suitability for deaf gamers: Suitable.