zone.msn.com/en-us/home It still exists, but what is sad is they never did replace the Matchmaking Functionality that games like X-Wing Vs. Tie Fighter used. Mind that's also true for the Games for Windows Live stuff. I mean it was suppose to shift over to MSN Messenger, but that instantly disappeared when Microsoft bought Skype. Honestly I never understood why they didn't consolidate these services as they introduced new ones. Like it would've made sense had Zone evolved into [Games for] Windows Live and the current Xbox Live Ecosystem. Heck I thought that back in what, '99 when GameSpy launched and I thought that Microsoft really needed to properly compete in that space; then with the launch of Steam (and Direct2Drive) with their Xbox Marketplace still fairly new but in a decent form... where they'd hit the ground running with a solid service rather than something that they took what, another 12 years to finally get their act together on. All the time deprecating all of those old titles we love. Just silly, really as better Microsoft support would've meant they'd have dominated a market they realistically created and continue to innovate on but rarely capitalise. Still that seems to be the legacy of Microsoft post-2000 really.
+James Davenport I once played Jedi Knight, with your father. He wanted you to have this when you were old enough - but your Uncle wouldn't allow it. Your father's spork mod. It added a sweet grappling hook! Not as clumsy or random as that one DBZ mod everyone played. From a more civilized age... before the dark times. Before Unreal engine.
I spent nearly every day at a library growing up, and still go whenever I can! Being homeschooled before the omnipresence of the internet gave me quite an appreciation :)
Could you imagine if someone scalped the best young developers, some jaded gamer serious star wars fans who have been through the game developer grind as a job looking for a passion project who know those games inside and out and an office full of hr and support staff that love those games and the franchise like their children...... what a modern X-wing, Tie Fighter, X vs Tie - game series ultimately leading to the best online dogfighting space combat flight simulator in the history of the world would look like. I dream about it all the time.....
WHAT?! I bought the original and was highly disappointed by it, having come off of Tie Fighter and X-Wing before, and only now, *years later*, do I find out they actually released a full campaign as an expansion?! I feel sooooo jipped now...
+darkmage07070777 I bought the game, was hugely disappointed, bought the expansion and still thought it was meh because the presentation was dreadful since it used the same menu as the multiplayer missions. It was a really dumb move to make a multiplayer-only game when a single player game was FAR more in demand.
+redavatar , also.. they make you need to buy the multiplayer, especially if you bought Balance of Power first. As a kid I was confused by this, I only have SP & can't play it.
I played all four games in the X-Wing series as they came out, loved 'em all, but for slightly different reasons: X-Wing was any aspiring pilot's dream, and was amazing, even though crazy hard in some places, TIE Fighter saw the mechanics cleaned up to near perfection, and being able to see the Empire's point of view was great, XvT was all about the multiplayer, so it honed your skills and opened up the galaxy, XWA was mainly about the campaign experience, at least for me, picking up battle trophies was awesome, and being able to use transports was something I hadn't known I'd wanted to do, heh. When XvT first came out, I didn't know about TCP/IP, but the idea of multiplayer was amazing, so a friend and I figured it out, then joined a XvT gaming group online (I was surprised there were so many already, since I'd gotten the game just a few months after release), where they had already setup match finding rooms on IRC. The community evolved quite quickly, smaller groups of a few dozen combining into leagues with hundreds, then thousands, from all around the world (the first time I experienced anything like that). Very quickly tournaments were setup, and the community became well organized. Lag could be game breaking, and there were some people who exploited it, but for the most part, it was a great community, and most 1v1 matches weren't terribly effected. Trying to get more than 2 people in a game just increased the lag issues, so 1v1 furball was the most popular online (LAN parties were another story of course, lol). On a rare occasion we'd get a few people we knew all had solid connections (as time passed, some people got access to cable, DSL, or T1 lines, so games would usually be more stable if they hosted) to play a co-op campaign mission, which was amazing, but using voice chat increased lag on dial-up, so we didn't do that til everyone had cable. Most of us tried switching over to X-Wing: Alliance, which is prettier, but was much more susceptible to lag, so most stuck with XvT until Star Wars Galaxies came out and the Star Wars gamers moved on. I was really into the series already, but that XvT multiplayer turned it into my favorite game of all time.
"What are TIE fighters even made of, aluminum foil and scotch tape?" Yes. The Empire considered building the ships to survive getting hit to be more expensive than just replacing the ship and pilot when it exploded.
Aren't TIE fighters also supposed to be absurdly fast, too? It might have been more of a misuse of the TIE than anything else, as Anakin literally removed the shield generators from his interceptor that you see in Revenge of the Sith to save mass to go extremely quickly, so Vader probably wanted Imperial pilots to be extremely maneuverable but the bureaucracy went "They're so cheap they're disposable!", and promptly treated them as disposable. In A New Hope, only four TIEs are lost in the Battle of Yavin, and only about 4 when the Falcon escapes the Death Star. In Empire, the only time TIEs are lost is in the asteroid field, a pretty hazardous environment. It's only with Jedi that you start to see TIES get thrown at the Rebels like they're disposable, then from there Star Wars expanded continuity treated TIEs like Jedi does.
I also read somewhere that the Imperial Navy relied on their fleet of capital ships to do much of the heavy lifting, meaning their fighters were more for defending said ships. The Rebels, on the other hand, used their fighters in a more independent manner due to a comparative lack of capital ships.
@@commscan314 yeah, the idea was essentially that their capital ships would do the heavy lifting, and a swarm of highly maneuverable TIEs would take care of anything the capital ships couldn't. The TIEs were also not designed for independent operation - they had no hyperdrive, and they needed external support structures built into the capital ships for efficient ingress and egress. Honestly, the design makes a lot of sense in the larger scope of imperial doctrine. TIEs are equipment for their parent ship.
This makes me suddenly want to see your input on the Unreal Tournament series. (Mainly 2004 because that was my jam, but any would be interesting in my book!)
Awesome! I hope you get around to reviewing more of the classic Star Wars games from the 90s. (Rebel Assault II, and Dark Forces II always stand out to me because of their live-action gameplay/cutscenes).
I purchased this game the day it was released. And the first manufacturing run mislabelled the discs. The "Master Game Disc" is actually the "Multiplayer Disc" and vice versa. Fun fact
TIE Fighter was actually my first experience with the Star Wars universe. Saw it on one of my dad's coworkers computers at the computer store where he worked. I was enamored, and was given it as a birthday present. Not knowing any better, I assumed the Empire were the good guys, since you play as them. When I first saw the movies years later I recognized a TIE Fighter and realized that that game and the movie I was watching were related. However I was very confused why the good guys were fighting against the Empire.
You continue to be one of the very best RUclipsrs out there. A lot of my favorites have been in slow decline for about a year, but you've been getting better and better ever since I discovered your channel. And the bits at the end, with the links, you go that extra distance and make it funny :D
I remember loving this when it came out, my brother bought the game and paid to have the family PC upgraded to a Cyrix PR200+ just to play it. It did need dial-up access for multiplayer (which I didn't even have Internet at the time) but one thing you could do was loan disc 2 to a friend, they could install just a basic version of the game, call into your PC via Modem and play skirmishes that way. The lack of a campaign was a downer though, makes me wish we'd picked up Balance of Power. Cool review!
+Miss Carnivora My library doesn't have pc games anymore :(. Though they asked for more money last year through taxes and now they have a lot of ps4/xbone games.
Thanks for reviewing this. The memories :) Went down the rabbit hole and went thru my own DOSBox collection. Just finished playing Hexen (if anyone remembers that one :) )
I remember back in the day, I customized all the sounds in the game. I mixed IRL missile and jet sounds to play when proton torpedos were fired for exemple, and added way more star wars music to play in the background than the music available in the game! That was awesome!
Oh god. I remember X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter: Academy Edition (or something like that it was named.) You start playing it, complete some tutorial, then is supposed to land in a bigger ship. Except you can never get the ship inside because the collision detection is faulty.
oh man I forgot just how frustratingly difficult this game was!!! Totally makes sense that it was made for multiplayer too! I love it when you review games that I had completely forgotten about from my 90's youth! Thank you Clint, big ol' thumbs up!
I have fond memories playing this. I remember this being the only game I needed a joystick for, but it was awesome back in the day. It's a shame that there aren't many games that use joysticks anymore, they were a cool feature.
I had a very similar experience. I LOVED TIE Fighter and couldn't wait to play this but when I finally got to I found it confusing and unimpressive. I never knew about the expansion. That would've helped.
I remember being in the top 10 on Case's Ladder for this game. My first competitive online game I played. One person would host for 5 minutes, then the other would host. The person hosting would be at a disadvantage because of the lag. When balance of power came out the advantage switched to the person hosting.
I saw this game at friends house played a few hours and hooked me so much I bought my first pc just to play this game it was a Pentium 166 with 16meg 1.2 gig hdd
I loved this game so much. It was one of the first "real" immersive games I had ever played. The fact that your keyboard felt like a spaceship control board was awesome. They combined action and simulation perfectly. It makes me remember Mechwarrior 3 by Zipper Interactive ( who always went for realism of simulation in action games ).
What’s so funny is your description of booting up and playing and working through the menus as confusing was exactly my experience. Thought i was buying a game just like the first couple. Would have been more fun if I knew someone else that had it and we could fly together and kill stuff.
I still love this game. It was my first Star Wars game on the PC, too!. Lots of hours spent on this game. Fond memories of multiplayer in a clan on MSN Gaming Zone.
Balance of Power was my all time favorite PC game I ever played. I spent hours playing that game. When internet access became more... accessible, I downloaded mods for it that made it even more fun. Somewhere in a tote full of old PC stuff, I still have the disks.
you should check out secret weapons over normandy. Really good World war II flight game made by totally games. Even has the X-wing and tie fighter as unlockables if you complete everything in the game
I liked this game back in the day and I played it solo only. My favorite fighter was the Tie-Advanced: maneuverable, fast, missile options, shields for durability, and 4 lasers instead of 2 lasers. I always shot with 4 lasers simultaneously - only then had I the feeling of being able to hit someone, instead of fast-firing one laser at a time.
I see these games and I ask myself. "Why is Microsoft not cashing in on a Windows Emulator?" When I mean that, I mean something that can run old window's software, in a DOS Box kind of setting which you can set limitations to through the program you're running the software through to slow them down, set compatibility, set emulated video rendering for old GPUs that no longer exist, etc etc. That would be so awesome. Imagine playing Simcopter with a Nvidia 970 and a i7 Processor flawlessly, just buy this program from Window's App Store. Bam...
Agreed, never really got to play it multiplayer so I missed out on the big ass selling point. But Tie Fighter ...that was one of the best starwars games ever, it made you feel like you were actually part of the military of the empire. Doing missions around and during war, having a flagship and really intriguing story elements that unfolded as you played. It wasn't action railed to the ceiling all the time but, hell it was almost a rogue like with how fragile Tie Fighters are 1-3 hits and your character can actually die in the cockpit forcing you to reset your score or make a new character
Back ind the day I never had a chance to play this but played a lot of original Tie Fighter. My first SW game was Dark Forces - always will love this game.
I remember a friend having Tie Fighter and being like wow the PC has some really cool exclusive games. I never realized this was a Quake 3 esque styled game I thought it was well what Balance of Power turned out to be. Anyways great review, I liked how you borrowed this from a library! I don't remember a library here allowing you to try out PC games.
Well i played it since i was 13 or 14. Aaaaand i played it every day and it was the greatest what i ever played!!! In old times. Xwing ! Tie fighter and xwing vs tfighter
I used to watch my friends play this when I was younger. I was never a big star wars fan. But my times have changed. I've been following you guys on discord for over a yr. I keep putting this off in hopes of playing it when it's 100% complete. I'm playing x-wing now the 98 version on steam and having so much fun with it. Might have to play TFTC next :) It is installed and rdy to go thanks to angels easy install guide. I gotta give a shout out how you guys always respond on the discord. Angel and Phoenix answer me In minutes to get TFTC working proper.
I had this when I was younger, think I still do. It is hard to tell with how tightly everything is packed around the house. I played this very often along with X-Wing and later Shadows of the Empire for the N64. Also had the Dark Forces sequels. Anyone else feel like playing these instead of the new Battlefront?
I remember spending far too much for this game brand new at Toys R Us (more than I paid for X-Wing Alliance prior!) and having an absolute blast with the game regardless of the multiplayer-heavy focus. A long-time favorite of mine, and a game that I hope to be able to try out online sometime soon since I never even bothered with it back in the day.
This game was a major part of my childhood, I sadly missed the other entries in the series as a kid, but I thankfully had the expansion anyways. I loved watching my dad play then hop on myself and blast me some rebel scum. I really wish there was a new entry in the series. Space combat is my favorite thing in sw
My friends and I played this at work on their LAN. They had several Windows PCs and we surreptitiously installed this on several machines. Our job was to 'man the phones overnight for roadside assistance' but we would really spend the nights in dog fights that were occasionally interrupted by a ringing phone. Good times indeed!!!
This game along with Duke Nukem 3D, Total Annihilation and Warcraft 2... The LAN parties of the late 90s for me. Great memories. Though I used to lug 2 PCs around (plus CRT monitors ...) which kinda spoiled it a bit. Another great vid LGR!
Great review as always and thank you for the new lgr website re-design, it was fantastic CD\, DIR and finding your list of games, real throw back to the old days.
will we ever get to see anything more than just half made FPS star wars games ever again? EA is not the one I would choose the exclusivelly make star wars games.
The game was released while K-A was still a thing, but the box is the later edition which included the expansion pack, and by that point the E rating had replaced K-A!
+emacs The game came out in 1997, but K-A wasn't changed to E until 1998. I looked into it, and turns out, there are two versions of this box! One with the K-A rating, one with E. The rating is the only thing that changes. Then there's another box design for after Windows 98 was released. Weird...
Lazy Game Reviews Ah, that makes sense. I thought that maybe the game came out during the transition and they'd already pressed the discs K-A but didn't print the box until after E came out, but your explanation seems a lot more reasonable. :P
played a ton on the gaming zone (with AOL dial up). Also, I booted up a few years ago and played a few rounds with friends via Game Ranger. Still fun remembering the tips and tricks on some missions.
I started my personal PC experience way back in the day with X-Wing. I still have the boxed edition. I also have XvT in the boxed edition. Imagine those games done in modern state of the art graphics that could push a Titan RTX to its limits - it would be like flying in the original trilogy.
I loved that game back in the day. I got it as part of the collector's edition. It prompted me to throw a Star Wars themed mini LAN party using my then new Pentuim 3 with Voodoo 3 card and my frind on my old Pentuim 2 with Voodoo 2.
That first target you were shooting and the general look and feel of the game reminds me of _Independence War_. I need to review that game at some point...
I remember the game came in 2 CDs. One was for the main game and the 2nd CD featured a limited multiplayer version of the game, which you could install on your friend's computer. My version had an interesting manufacturing screw up. The labels between those CDs had somehow been switched in the factory. It caused some head scratching the first time I installed the game.
There was a group called Emperor's Hammer that created SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much content for this game....so many missions, campaigns, you could even pilot different spacecrafts if I am not mistaking...
Your childhood experience and my childhood experience with this game was basically exactly the same, except I somehow got my dad to buy me a joystick to play it with.
This game is/was really cool. I played it on my PC when it came out and had so much fun fighting in a TIE Fighter or X-WING. This game should be release again as a remake for the new consoles. That would be great.
I played SOO much Xwing vs Tiefighter back in the day. Many countless hours with friends in network play. One friend could rarely beat me much in any game we played, but playing XvT I very rarely won a match.
There was an old game I used to play around sixteen years or so ago named Cyberrace(Or Cyber Race?) Used to play it or Dune =P If you can find it you should check it out. Haven't seen the game anywhere since then, but likely some people remember it that watch this channel. Thanks for video. Much love.
I played X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter without balance of power on my voodoo² : the game had a 3DFX patch, witch was in fact direct3D patch optimized for 3DFX (I tried it with a virge Dx 2Mo but it was not working properly even in 320*200). The patch was distributed via internet and via PC gaming magazines, which was coming with CDs full of game patches and demos at this time. When first released in France, the game was in english (which is very unusual on our country), if the player wanted the game in French he had to send back the CDs to the French editor's office for a replacement, which I never did. The game was only running on Windows 9X/ME as any attempt to ply it on Windows 2000/XP will lead the game to detect a NT4 system and refuse to launch. Latter, I played a bit of it on the "microsoft internet gaming zone" with random guys, it was working fine with a 33.6k or 56k modem and 300ms ping (I thing it was supposed to work up to 500ms) but internet was expensive and much more important: time-limited. news.microsoft.com/1998/08/25/microsofts-internet-gaming-zone-brings-together-gamers-from-around-the-world/
Went thrifting today and found this for $2 Australian! No box but both the discs are perfect so whatever. Not sure if Balance of power is on there so definitely something I'll need to look into as is patching in Glide support for my Voodoo 2 :D And if it doesn't like my $12 Force Feedback pro I can use my $5 Precision Pro instead. Thank's for making those Thrifting videos, Man I love thifting!
I play this all the way through back in the day and then hooked up with a buddy of mine to try multi-player. Suddenly the bad guys AI got serious and we found it next to impossible to get anywhere! Their maneuvering suddenly got way better than ours and their shot accuracy was off the scale! We tried the most basic missions that should be fairly easy, or so we thought! Eventually, we quit trying and moved on to a WWII multiplayer flight sim where all the other pilots were human and thus easier to kill.
MSN gaming zone.
Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time. Fun times.
+phallll I read that comment in Sir Alc Guinness ' voice. :) "I haven't been MSN Gaming Zone since before you were born."
zone.msn.com/en-us/home
It still exists, but what is sad is they never did replace the Matchmaking Functionality that games like X-Wing Vs. Tie Fighter used. Mind that's also true for the Games for Windows Live stuff. I mean it was suppose to shift over to MSN Messenger, but that instantly disappeared when Microsoft bought Skype.
Honestly I never understood why they didn't consolidate these services as they introduced new ones.
Like it would've made sense had Zone evolved into [Games for] Windows Live and the current Xbox Live Ecosystem.
Heck I thought that back in what, '99 when GameSpy launched and I thought that Microsoft really needed to properly compete in that space; then with the launch of Steam (and Direct2Drive) with their Xbox Marketplace still fairly new but in a decent form... where they'd hit the ground running with a solid service rather than something that they took what, another 12 years to finally get their act together on.
All the time deprecating all of those old titles we love. Just silly, really as better Microsoft support would've meant they'd have dominated a market they realistically created and continue to innovate on but rarely capitalise. Still that seems to be the legacy of Microsoft post-2000 really.
+James Davenport I once played Jedi Knight, with your father. He wanted you to have this when you were old enough - but your Uncle wouldn't allow it. Your father's spork mod. It added a sweet grappling hook! Not as clumsy or random as that one DBZ mod everyone played. From a more civilized age... before the dark times. Before Unreal engine.
Those were some of the best times of my childhood. Playing on the ladder, and always going against the evil emprie TFA (Tie Fighter Alliance).
I fought for TFA (Phoenix Squadron) :D All these nights in weeks of war...
My heart lit up when you said you checked out XvT from a library. This makes me happy as a librarian.
I spent nearly every day at a library growing up, and still go whenever I can! Being homeschooled before the omnipresence of the internet gave me quite an appreciation :)
@@LGR Dude you were homeschooled!? Me too! Being bitten by the retro bug must just be a no brainer for homeschoolers...
I got to try Assassin’s Creed from my local library. 🙂
@@LGR younever plyedcstar warscstsrfighter and jedibstarfighters
If any game deserves a reboot, it's this one..
I want one but not with EA but with sherry Activision or Take Two.
imagine it in VR
Sure with loot boxes, DRM and live services.
Could you imagine if someone scalped the best young developers, some jaded gamer serious star wars fans who have been through the game developer grind as a job looking for a passion project who know those games inside and out and an office full of hr and support staff that love those games and the franchise like their children...... what a modern X-wing, Tie Fighter, X vs Tie - game series ultimately leading to the best online dogfighting space combat flight simulator in the history of the world would look like.
I dream about it all the time.....
Remake
WHAT?! I bought the original and was highly disappointed by it, having come off of Tie Fighter and X-Wing before, and only now, *years later*, do I find out they actually released a full campaign as an expansion?!
I feel sooooo jipped now...
+darkmage07070777 I bought the game, was hugely disappointed, bought the expansion and still thought it was meh because the presentation was dreadful since it used the same menu as the multiplayer missions. It was a really dumb move to make a multiplayer-only game when a single player game was FAR more in demand.
+redavatar , also.. they make you need to buy the multiplayer, especially if you bought Balance of Power first. As a kid I was confused by this, I only have SP & can't play it.
+George Pearson I did, 'twas awesome. Shame there hasn't been a game like those (or Freespace, or Colony Wars) since. :(
+darkmage07070777 When I was a kid, I had the choice of either buying XvT or X-Wing. Looking back, I was super lucky I picked X-Wing.
+fargeeks So was the second, especially if you stop to think about it for a bit.
I played all four games in the X-Wing series as they came out, loved 'em all, but for slightly different reasons: X-Wing was any aspiring pilot's dream, and was amazing, even though crazy hard in some places, TIE Fighter saw the mechanics cleaned up to near perfection, and being able to see the Empire's point of view was great, XvT was all about the multiplayer, so it honed your skills and opened up the galaxy, XWA was mainly about the campaign experience, at least for me, picking up battle trophies was awesome, and being able to use transports was something I hadn't known I'd wanted to do, heh.
When XvT first came out, I didn't know about TCP/IP, but the idea of multiplayer was amazing, so a friend and I figured it out, then joined a XvT gaming group online (I was surprised there were so many already, since I'd gotten the game just a few months after release), where they had already setup match finding rooms on IRC. The community evolved quite quickly, smaller groups of a few dozen combining into leagues with hundreds, then thousands, from all around the world (the first time I experienced anything like that). Very quickly tournaments were setup, and the community became well organized. Lag could be game breaking, and there were some people who exploited it, but for the most part, it was a great community, and most 1v1 matches weren't terribly effected. Trying to get more than 2 people in a game just increased the lag issues, so 1v1 furball was the most popular online (LAN parties were another story of course, lol). On a rare occasion we'd get a few people we knew all had solid connections (as time passed, some people got access to cable, DSL, or T1 lines, so games would usually be more stable if they hosted) to play a co-op campaign mission, which was amazing, but using voice chat increased lag on dial-up, so we didn't do that til everyone had cable.
Most of us tried switching over to X-Wing: Alliance, which is prettier, but was much more susceptible to lag, so most stuck with XvT until Star Wars Galaxies came out and the Star Wars gamers moved on.
I was really into the series already, but that XvT multiplayer turned it into my favorite game of all time.
Now that is an awesome story. A perfect time of new 3d games and the beginning of the internet. Truely an amazing time period!
"What are TIE fighters even made of, aluminum foil and scotch tape?" Yes. The Empire considered building the ships to survive getting hit to be more expensive than just replacing the ship and pilot when it exploded.
I've been bugged by that too. However, it seems that the Imperials had no shortage of men and women with a death wish to fly their TIEs.
Aren't TIE fighters also supposed to be absurdly fast, too? It might have been more of a misuse of the TIE than anything else, as Anakin literally removed the shield generators from his interceptor that you see in Revenge of the Sith to save mass to go extremely quickly, so Vader probably wanted Imperial pilots to be extremely maneuverable but the bureaucracy went "They're so cheap they're disposable!", and promptly treated them as disposable. In A New Hope, only four TIEs are lost in the Battle of Yavin, and only about 4 when the Falcon escapes the Death Star. In Empire, the only time TIEs are lost is in the asteroid field, a pretty hazardous environment. It's only with Jedi that you start to see TIES get thrown at the Rebels like they're disposable, then from there Star Wars expanded continuity treated TIEs like Jedi does.
I also read somewhere that the Imperial Navy relied on their fleet of capital ships to do much of the heavy lifting, meaning their fighters were more for defending said ships. The Rebels, on the other hand, used their fighters in a more independent manner due to a comparative lack of capital ships.
@@commscan314 yeah, the idea was essentially that their capital ships would do the heavy lifting, and a swarm of highly maneuverable TIEs would take care of anything the capital ships couldn't. The TIEs were also not designed for independent operation - they had no hyperdrive, and they needed external support structures built into the capital ships for efficient ingress and egress.
Honestly, the design makes a lot of sense in the larger scope of imperial doctrine. TIEs are equipment for their parent ship.
This makes me suddenly want to see your input on the Unreal Tournament series. (Mainly 2004 because that was my jam, but any would be interesting in my book!)
+TheDarkOne629 UT99 was pretty groundbreaking really. Amazing graphics for its time, and the gameplay was second to none.
+chipchip Quake 3 did some things better. It felt much faster even if you did not perfect your movement like you had to in UT99
Cry? What were you doin here??
I still love ut2k4 and ut99.....Great games.....
Still didn't happen :(
As much as I liked this game (without Balance of Power), I much preferred Tie Fighter due to having a campaign to play through.
makes sense that ties are destroyed instantly, they have no shields
Awesome!
I hope you get around to reviewing more of the classic Star Wars games from the 90s. (Rebel Assault II, and Dark Forces II always stand out to me because of their live-action gameplay/cutscenes).
I purchased this game the day it was released. And the first manufacturing run mislabelled the discs.
The "Master Game Disc" is actually the "Multiplayer Disc" and vice versa.
Fun fact
The mip mapping option is also inverted in the options.
fiereke Yes!
Thought I was the only one that had that problem lol
I’m happy for you that you can find fun in such a fact. 😜
This was one of the greatest games ever made. Complicated but fun as hell once you got the hang of it.
how did I not see this before? my god this really takes me back...
I loved this Game as much as X-Wing and Tie Fighter! With the Expansion it is unbeatable!
TIE Fighter was actually my first experience with the Star Wars universe. Saw it on one of my dad's coworkers computers at the computer store where he worked. I was enamored, and was given it as a birthday present. Not knowing any better, I assumed the Empire were the good guys, since you play as them. When I first saw the movies years later I recognized a TIE Fighter and realized that that game and the movie I was watching were related. However I was very confused why the good guys were fighting against the Empire.
And it was fab to see a Super Star Destroyer in these games for the first time ever!!!
It was significantly larger, but still not as big as in the movies - it would have taken too long to fly along its length to feel any excitement.
playing the campaign in coop was such a blast! Way ahead of its time.
They should also release a story-driven campaign expansion for *_Star Wars: Battlefront_*.
battlefront 2 had a campaign
I remember when libraries used to let you borrow PC games. They were the good old days.
Those Mechwarrior boxes look freaking awesome!
You continue to be one of the very best RUclipsrs out there. A lot of my favorites have been in slow decline for about a year, but you've been getting better and better ever since I discovered your channel.
And the bits at the end, with the links, you go that extra distance and make it funny :D
X-Wing vs Tie-Fighter was the death of the X-Wing (1993) and Tie-Fighter (1994) series of combat simulators.
+mitrooper There was one last hurrah after that, X-Wing Alliance (1999). Then the sci-fi sim genre sort collapsed at the turn of the century.
I remember loving this when it came out, my brother bought the game and paid to have the family PC upgraded to a Cyrix PR200+ just to play it. It did need dial-up access for multiplayer (which I didn't even have Internet at the time) but one thing you could do was loan disc 2 to a friend, they could install just a basic version of the game, call into your PC via Modem and play skirmishes that way. The lack of a campaign was a downer though, makes me wish we'd picked up Balance of Power.
Cool review!
Hoping for some Jedi Knight too. Great fun as always.
Videogames from the library were the bomb :D
Free games are good games!
+Miss Carnivora Oh my God, JC, a bomb!
.skyNet I remember only a big one having games, mostly for kid's and mostly educational but I loved those. :)
+Miss Carnivora My library doesn't have pc games anymore :(. Though they asked for more money last year through taxes and now they have a lot of ps4/xbone games.
Thanks for reviewing this. The memories :) Went down the rabbit hole and went thru my own DOSBox collection. Just finished playing Hexen (if anyone remembers that one :) )
That desktop at 1:54 - no words for it...its just....perfect...
I remember back in the day, I customized all the sounds in the game. I mixed IRL missile and jet sounds to play when proton torpedos were fired for exemple, and added way more star wars music to play in the background than the music available in the game! That was awesome!
Holy shit R2. I lost it at that man goddamn
Oh god. I remember X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter: Academy Edition (or something like that it was named.)
You start playing it, complete some tutorial, then is supposed to land in a bigger ship. Except you can never get the ship inside because the collision detection is faulty.
This game was absolutely my favourite! Oh man, I'm getting some good memories.
oh man I forgot just how frustratingly difficult this game was!!! Totally makes sense that it was made for multiplayer too! I love it when you review games that I had completely forgotten about from my 90's youth! Thank you Clint, big ol' thumbs up!
MechWarrior 2 series :)
I have fond memories playing this. I remember this being the only game I needed a joystick for, but it was awesome back in the day. It's a shame that there aren't many games that use joysticks anymore, they were a cool feature.
I do miss this so very much. Found some old players on Elite dangerous who remember me, The legendary" Blue Raja" also known as"Dances with A-wings "
I had a very similar experience. I LOVED TIE Fighter and couldn't wait to play this but when I finally got to I found it confusing and unimpressive. I never knew about the expansion. That would've helped.
It's crazy how similar Star Wars Squadrons is to the X Wing and Tie Fighter games. I love it!
I remember being in the top 10 on Case's Ladder for this game. My first competitive online game I played. One person would host for 5 minutes, then the other would host. The person hosting would be at a disadvantage because of the lag. When balance of power came out the advantage switched to the person hosting.
I saw this game at friends house played a few hours and hooked me so much I bought my first pc just to play this game it was a Pentium 166 with 16meg 1.2 gig hdd
What a great series. I'm up to over 470 games on GOG hehe.
+Classic Contagious Gaming OK your GOG is bigger than my GOG!
+daishi5571
Hehehe 660 on Steam. I collect games way too much.
Classic Contagious Gaming You may have a bigger GOG (409) but I have more Steam (873) lol.
+daishi5571
Haha awesome, shoot me a friend request if you so desire (Cncfreak).
I loved this game so much. It was one of the first "real" immersive games I had ever played. The fact that your keyboard felt like a spaceship control board was awesome. They combined action and simulation perfectly. It makes me remember Mechwarrior 3 by Zipper Interactive ( who always went for realism of simulation in action games ).
What’s so funny is your description of booting up and playing and working through the menus as confusing was exactly my experience. Thought i was buying a game just like the first couple. Would have been more fun if I knew someone else that had it and we could fly together and kill stuff.
I still love this game. It was my first Star Wars game on the PC, too!. Lots of hours spent on this game. Fond memories of multiplayer in a clan on MSN Gaming Zone.
Balance of Power was my all time favorite PC game I ever played. I spent hours playing that game. When internet access became more... accessible, I downloaded mods for it that made it even more fun. Somewhere in a tote full of old PC stuff, I still have the disks.
I had an unofficial expansion for this game too. One mission had you fighting a Star Destroyer that was constantly spinning on its axis.
Ace pilot from all three games here. I would have to say that this line of games was probably the best representation of space combat.
you should check out secret weapons over normandy. Really good World war II flight game made by totally games. Even has the X-wing and tie fighter as unlockables if you complete everything in the game
Will you do X-Wing: Alliance as well?
Also awwwyiss I see those Mechcommander boxes, I hope we see a review of those games.
your vids truly are timeless.
I liked this game back in the day and I played it solo only. My favorite fighter was the Tie-Advanced: maneuverable, fast, missile options, shields for durability, and 4 lasers instead of 2 lasers. I always shot with 4 lasers simultaneously - only then had I the feeling of being able to hit someone, instead of fast-firing one laser at a time.
I'm now forever convinced that that is exactly how you sounded as a kid, Clint. It's just too perfect with the voice you have now.
X-Wing Alliance was one of my first games, and I had to get a Joystick for it too!
+MantroX Everyone always seems to forget about X-Wing Alliance. Best of the series by far, I thought, and the modding community was brilliant.
Aw yeah, Otana was awesome!
+MantroX
I still have, and use, my Sidewinder joystick that I bought just to play these games:)
I see these games and I ask myself. "Why is Microsoft not cashing in on a Windows Emulator?" When I mean that, I mean something that can run old window's software, in a DOS Box kind of setting which you can set limitations to through the program you're running the software through to slow them down, set compatibility, set emulated video rendering for old GPUs that no longer exist, etc etc. That would be so awesome. Imagine playing Simcopter with a Nvidia 970 and a i7 Processor flawlessly, just buy this program from Window's App Store. Bam...
Copywriters issues probably or some ownership being open sourced
Agreed, never really got to play it multiplayer so I missed out on the big ass selling point. But Tie Fighter ...that was one of the best starwars games ever, it made you feel like you were actually part of the military of the empire. Doing missions around and during war, having a flagship and really intriguing story elements that unfolded as you played.
It wasn't action railed to the ceiling all the time but, hell it was almost a rogue like with how fragile Tie Fighters are 1-3 hits and your character can actually die in the cockpit forcing you to reset your score or make a new character
I loved this game wayback when...
I loved the A-wing!
I remember playing this game on my old Compaq computer it was magical back then to me impossibly still is today
Back ind the day I never had a chance to play this but played a lot of original Tie Fighter. My first SW game was Dark Forces - always will love this game.
I remember a friend having Tie Fighter and being like wow the PC has some really cool exclusive games. I never realized this was a Quake 3 esque styled game I thought it was well what Balance of Power turned out to be. Anyways great review, I liked how you borrowed this from a library! I don't remember a library here allowing you to try out PC games.
Well i played it since i was 13 or 14. Aaaaand i played it every day and it was the greatest what i ever played!!! In old times. Xwing ! Tie fighter and xwing vs tfighter
God I remember salivating over Voodoo2 gfx card ads like they were centerfolds.
I used to watch my friends play this when I was younger. I was never a big star wars fan. But my times have changed. I've been following you guys on discord for over a yr. I keep putting this off in hopes of playing it when it's 100% complete. I'm playing x-wing now the 98 version on steam and having so much fun with it. Might have to play TFTC next :) It is installed and rdy to go thanks to angels easy install guide. I gotta give a shout out how you guys always respond on the discord. Angel and Phoenix answer me In minutes to get TFTC working proper.
Loved this game in the old days. Looking forward now to Squadrons which seems similar.
I had this when I was younger, think I still do. It is hard to tell with how tightly everything is packed around the house. I played this very often along with X-Wing and later Shadows of the Empire for the N64. Also had the Dark Forces sequels. Anyone else feel like playing these instead of the new Battlefront?
I remember spending far too much for this game brand new at Toys R Us (more than I paid for X-Wing Alliance prior!) and having an absolute blast with the game regardless of the multiplayer-heavy focus. A long-time favorite of mine, and a game that I hope to be able to try out online sometime soon since I never even bothered with it back in the day.
This game was a major part of my childhood, I sadly missed the other entries in the series as a kid, but I thankfully had the expansion anyways. I loved watching my dad play then hop on myself and blast me some rebel scum. I really wish there was a new entry in the series. Space combat is my favorite thing in sw
My friends and I played this at work on their LAN. They had several Windows PCs and we surreptitiously installed this on several machines. Our job was to 'man the phones overnight for roadside assistance' but we would really spend the nights in dog fights that were occasionally interrupted by a ringing phone. Good times indeed!!!
This game along with Duke Nukem 3D, Total Annihilation and Warcraft 2... The LAN parties of the late 90s for me. Great memories. Though I used to lug 2 PCs around (plus CRT monitors ...) which kinda spoiled it a bit. Another great vid LGR!
Great review as always and thank you for the new lgr website re-design, it was fantastic CD\, DIR and finding your list of games, real throw back to the old days.
Thanks, glad to hear it!
will we ever get to see anything more than just half made FPS star wars games ever again? EA is not the one I would choose the exclusivelly make star wars games.
Yeah, well, we ot enough open world games as it is.
Agreed. No company should the exclusive rights to make Star Wars games. Competition will mean better games.
Rated "E" on the box but "K-A" on the disc/manual? Weird
The game was released while K-A was still a thing, but the box is the later edition which included the expansion pack, and by that point the E rating had replaced K-A!
+emacs The game came out in 1997, but K-A wasn't changed to E until 1998.
I looked into it, and turns out, there are two versions of this box! One with the K-A rating, one with E. The rating is the only thing that changes. Then there's another box design for after Windows 98 was released. Weird...
Lazy Game Reviews Ah, that makes sense. I thought that maybe the game came out during the transition and they'd already pressed the discs K-A but didn't print the box until after E came out, but your explanation seems a lot more reasonable. :P
Lazy Game Reviews Ah, so there are two editions. That explains it better, then.
Love this game, Watto song never left my head ever since I played it. Glad to hear it's in GoG
played a ton on the gaming zone (with AOL dial up).
Also, I booted up a few years ago and played a few rounds with friends via Game Ranger. Still fun remembering the tips and tricks on some missions.
I started my personal PC experience way back in the day with X-Wing. I still have the boxed edition. I also have XvT in the boxed edition. Imagine those games done in modern state of the art graphics that could push a Titan RTX to its limits - it would be like flying in the original trilogy.
Wow now this game looks friggin good. Love to play Star Wars games with space battle! Awesome review as always!
I loved that game back in the day. I got it as part of the collector's edition. It prompted me to throw a Star Wars themed mini LAN party using my then new Pentuim 3 with Voodoo 3 card and my frind on my old Pentuim 2 with Voodoo 2.
I wish they still made this series. Definitely one of my favorites as a kid.
That first target you were shooting and the general look and feel of the game reminds me of _Independence War_. I need to review that game at some point...
I had the same experience. Spawned in and was annihilated immediately. After X-Wing and Tie Fighter, this game broke my heart.
I remember the game came in 2 CDs. One was for the main game and the 2nd CD featured a limited multiplayer version of the game, which you could install on your friend's computer. My version had an interesting manufacturing screw up. The labels between those CDs had somehow been switched in the factory. It caused some head scratching the first time I installed the game.
Oh man, now I really want to buy that whacky Farm Simulator control panel and play some flight sims with it.
There was a group called Emperor's Hammer that created SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much content for this game....so many missions, campaigns, you could even pilot different spacecrafts if I am not mistaking...
Your childhood experience and my childhood experience with this game was basically exactly the same, except I somehow got my dad to buy me a joystick to play it with.
So many hours playing that game. Best Star Wars flight simulator.
I played X-Wing, Tie Fighter, and X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter... all among my top 5 favorite games of all times.
This game is/was really cool. I played it on my PC when it came out and had so much fun fighting in a TIE Fighter or X-WING. This game should be release again as a remake for the new consoles. That would be great.
Awesome review. Would love to see a play through.
I played SOO much Xwing vs Tiefighter back in the day. Many countless hours with friends in network play. One friend could rarely beat me much in any game we played, but playing XvT I very rarely won a match.
Do you have X-Wing Alliance in your collection?
On GOG, yes! But physically I actually do not, I've been on the lookout for a complete copy.
Lazy Game Reviews Hope you can find one :)
+Lazy Game Reviews please do alliance.
You should do X Wing Alliance! I honestly think it's not only the best star wars game ever made, but also the most underrated!
Never really liked X-Wing, but Tie-Fighter got me hooked. They have the better ships anyway. ;)
I still have this awesome game... Came out with the expansion too.
AWESOME!! i almoust seer a tear! almoust. the sound and the soundtrack we unique at that time!
There was a mission editor that we got hold of. EPIC! you could make any mission you wanted. Also we played over lan, Good times :)
There was an old game I used to play around sixteen years or so ago named Cyberrace(Or Cyber Race?)
Used to play it or Dune =P If you can find it you should check it out. Haven't seen the game anywhere since then, but likely some people remember it that watch this channel.
Thanks for video. Much love.
I played X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter without balance of power on my voodoo² : the game had a 3DFX patch, witch was in fact direct3D patch optimized for 3DFX (I tried it with a virge Dx 2Mo but it was not working properly even in 320*200). The patch was distributed via internet and via PC gaming magazines, which was coming with CDs full of game patches and demos at this time.
When first released in France, the game was in english (which is very unusual on our country), if the player wanted the game in French he had to send back the CDs to the French editor's office for a replacement, which I never did.
The game was only running on Windows 9X/ME as any attempt to ply it on Windows 2000/XP will lead the game to detect a NT4 system and refuse to launch.
Latter, I played a bit of it on the "microsoft internet gaming zone" with random guys, it was working fine with a 33.6k or 56k modem and 300ms ping (I thing it was supposed to work up to 500ms) but internet was expensive and much more important: time-limited. news.microsoft.com/1998/08/25/microsofts-internet-gaming-zone-brings-together-gamers-from-around-the-world/
Oh yes i loved that game, the graphics...your experiences were just like mine.. simply awesome
Went thrifting today and found this for $2 Australian! No box but both the discs are perfect so whatever. Not sure if Balance of power is on there so definitely something I'll need to look into as is patching in Glide support for my Voodoo 2 :D And if it doesn't like my $12 Force Feedback pro I can use my $5 Precision Pro instead. Thank's for making those Thrifting videos, Man I love thifting!
X Wing vs Tie Fighter along with the Balance of Power expansion was my fuckin jam back in the good ol days.
I play this all the way through back in the day and then hooked up with a buddy of mine to try multi-player.
Suddenly the bad guys AI got serious and we found it next to impossible to get anywhere!
Their maneuvering suddenly got way better than ours and their shot accuracy was off the scale! We tried the most basic missions that should be fairly easy, or so we thought!
Eventually, we quit trying and moved on to a WWII multiplayer flight sim where all the other pilots were human and thus easier to kill.
kudos for theme hospital on the shelf. that game was the bomb
Played the heck out of X-Wing and Tie Fighter back in the day.