Star Wars: X-Wing Collector Series

Simply put : 3 of the best space flying games ever made. All they need to do is revamp the format to work on XP and Vista without issue and Lucasarts will draw in a whole new generation of gamers. You want a classic space flying game with a great story line from a movie, buy this set. You won't regret it. Easy to learn the controls and easy to play. Hours of fun no matter your taste. Rebellion or Empire, the choice is yours.

X-Wing and TIE Fighter are definitely the best Star Wars games ever made. Absolutely. And this package has those both with all expansions and additional missions in same package. And top of that, both have enhanced graphics. Unfortunately they are not even at the level of X-Wing Alliance, but they are at least better than the original. The resolutions is 640x480 which is unbeatable compared to old 320x240 graphics. Music is real audio instead of some miserable midis. Many have complained about the lack of iMuse as in original DOS-versions, but I don't. If you don't have any versions of these games, but you like them, this is a HAVE TO BUY game.

The third game is worthless, and I haven't even tried that, so I'm not gonna say anything else about that. It's merely a bonus game, which you can toy with a while. It's not an actual game with story or anything.

Oh, and by the way, these both (XW+TF) DO work in Vista or XP, just use the compatibility mode from the properties, if you have problems.

I purchased this game for my son, who asked for this game specifically. After opening all of his gifts, he rated this game as his number 1 favorite gift! I appreciate the integrity of the individual from whom i purchased the gift from, as this was my first experience of buying from Amazon in this fashion, and I had been skeptical of the honesty of purchasing this way. I am convinced now! and I thank you!

I first played this game when I was in grad school in '93 on a roommate's computer, as a way to blow off steam during the week. It was very enjoyable then. So much so, I bought the X-wing expanded versions (with Imperial Pursuit and B-Wing) a few years later for my own computer, and then the whole collectors' series back in '00 (with the revamped graphics and music).

I had given that copy of the game to a fella in Australia, and eight years later, I've bought another copy to play on the machine I currently have. This is a period of time spanning 15 years (and four operating systems)! That's a testimony to the enjoyability of the game.

Other games have gotten technically more intricate, but oftentimes the current tech is exploited just for the sake of mere "eye candy." The fellows at Lucasarts really came up with a simple but effective combination of action and story to create a long-lasting winner with this one. It captures the essence of the original Star Wars trilogy very well.

3D hardware enabling is a little tricky with modern OSs, but happily, you can find fixes for this on some of the X-wing-related forums online. But even failing that, the software rendering is decent (made up for by the gameplay), and the majority of today's machines can well handle it.

I don't think there have been any other games that come close to the depth and richness of these games for simulating the "Star Wars" flight experience that we saw in the movies. Action games like Rogue Squadron and Starfighter are fun, but they're watered-down "set pieces" that run on rails when compared to this series. X-Wing was great, and TIE Fighter blew away everyone's expectations for what a space dogfighting game could be.

This collection isn't perfect - the resolution maxes out at 640x480, the 3D support is rudimentary, it's a pain to get it working with Windows XP or newer systems, and the CD music isn't as charming as the original dynamic MIDI soundtrack. Also missing from X-Wing is the option to assign wingmen to fly with you -- a minor omission, but a shame it wasn't included.

Does it hold up today? Not so well -- but these have been re-released so many times that we're probably not going to get an update of this old design ever again, so this is the best way to play the old dogfighting games if you have any interest. The price is certainly right!