Right, so I need to tell you about the time Star Wars games actually meant something, back when LucasArts knew what they were doing and before Disney got their mitts on everything. I’m talking proper Star Wars games here, not whatever microtransaction-riddled nonsense EA’s been churning out lately.
My first proper encounter with Star Wars gaming wasn’t on some fancy home computer – we couldn’t afford that luxury in our house. No, it was down at the local arcade in Stretford, squeezed between a broken Pac-Man machine and one of those grabber claw things that was obviously rigged. The original Star Wars arcade game from 1983, all vector graphics and dodgy sound samples. “Use the Force, Luke!” it would croak through speakers that sounded like they’d been kicked down the stairs. I’d spend my dinner money on that bloody machine, stood on my tiptoes just to reach the controls properly.
Those vector graphics though – absolutely mesmerising for a ten-year-old who’d grown up watching the films on a knackered VHS player. The wireframe Death Star, the trench run, proper arcade stick controls that felt substantial, not like the flimsy plastic nonsense you get today. Course, it was harder than calculus. I probably saw the Game Over screen more times than I saw the actual Death Star explode, but that didn’t matter. Every 10p coin was worth it for those few minutes of feeling like I was actually piloting an X-wing.
Fast forward to 1992, and we finally got our hands on a Mega Drive. Couldn’t afford a SNES – that was posh kids’ territory – but the Mega Drive had its own Star Wars offerings. The Empire Strikes Back was absolutely mental, nothing like the film at all. Luke running around Cloud City with a lightsaber, fighting off about fifty Stormtroopers per screen. My younger brother Mark would sit there going “That’s not what happened in the film!” while I died for the hundredth time trying to get past that ridiculous Wampa cave section. Didn’t care though, did I? It was Star Wars on my telly, in my bedroom.
But the real revolution came when our family finally scraped together enough cash for a proper PC in 1994. Some beige monstrosity with Windows 3.1 that took about five minutes to boot up and sounded like a jet engine. That’s when I discovered X-Wing, and suddenly everything changed. This wasn’t just some side-scrolling platformer with Star Wars characters slapped on – this was the real deal. Proper space combat simulation, energy management systems, mission briefings that actually mattered.
I became absolutely obsessed with that game. Spent entire weekends learning the difference between laser cannons and ion cannons, figuring out when to transfer power from engines to shields, memorising the attack patterns of different TIE fighter variants. Had a notebook – still got it somewhere – filled with mission notes and tactical diagrams. “Mission 12: Take out the Interdictor first, watch for fighter waves from sector 7-G.” Mental dedication, looking back on it.
The thing about X-Wing that younger gamers don’t understand is how unforgiving it was. No quicksaves, no checkpoints, no hand-holding whatsoever. You’d fly a forty-minute mission, get shot down right at the end, and have to start the whole thing over again. My mum would come upstairs at midnight, find me still hunched over the keyboard: “John, you’ve got college tomorrow.” But I couldn’t stop, could I? Just one more mission, just one more attempt at getting a Perfect score.
Then TIE Fighter landed in 1994 and completely blew my mind. Playing as the Empire? Bloody brilliant. Better ships, better organisation, proper military hierarchy – suddenly the Rebels looked like a bunch of disorganised terrorists. The TIE Defender was an absolute beast of a fighter, made the X-wing feel like flying a brick with engines. Plus, the story actually made you think about things from the Imperial perspective. Proper morally complex stuff that the films never really explored.
The technical achievement of these games gets forgotten now, but they were pushing boundaries left and right. The iMUSE system dynamically changing the music based on what was happening in the game – revolutionary stuff that most modern games still can’t match properly. 3D environments when most PC games were still sprites and pixels. Voice acting that didn’t sound like it was recorded in someone’s bathroom.
Dark Forces in 1995 was another game-changer entirely. Doom had shown us what first-person shooters could do, but Dark Forces felt properly Star Wars in a way that the arcade games and flight sims couldn’t quite manage. You could look up and down – amazing technology at the time – and the levels had proper verticality instead of just being flat mazes. Kyle Katarn became this brilliant new character who felt like he belonged in the films but wasn’t just copying what we’d already seen.
I remember getting completely lost in the Anoat City levels, wandering around those industrial sectors for hours trying to find the right lift or corridor. No internet walkthroughs back then, no YouTube guides – you either figured it out yourself or you were stuck. Actually rang the hint line once, which cost about two quid a minute and resulted in a phone bill that my dad was less than pleased about.
The expansion of the Star Wars universe through these games was something special too. Before the prequels, before all the novels and comics became mainstream, these games were showing us new corners of the galaxy. New ships, new characters, new Imperial projects beyond just building Death Stars. They felt like proper extensions of the films rather than just rehashing the same three stories over and over.
Multiplayer gaming was a different beast entirely back then. Getting X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter working meant physically connecting two computers with serial cables, convincing parents to let you rearrange the entire house so both PCs could be in the same room. “It’s educational, dad. We’re learning about… networking.” Somehow that excuse worked more often than it should have.
Me and my mate Dave would spend entire weekends staging elaborate battles, creating our own mission scenarios, keeping detailed records of our pilot rankings in that same notebook I used for single-player tactics. The intensity was ridiculous – I went through about four joysticks just from gripping them too hard during dogfights. Dave still takes the piss about my Top Gun impressions from back then.
Looking at modern Star Wars games, they’re technically superior in every measurable way, but something’s been lost. Everything’s been mapped out now, explained to death, turned into content for streaming services. Those early games were filling in gaps, creating new stories within the framework we knew. There was mystery, room for imagination, space to create your own corner of the galaxy.
I actually went back and played some of these classics when they showed up on GOG a few years ago. Some have aged better than others, to be honest. The original X-Wing is rough as anything – no texture mapping, basic cockpit graphics, mission design that can be genuinely unfair by modern standards. But TIE Fighter? Still absolutely brilliant. The strategic elements, the mission complexity, the way you have to balance multiple objectives while managing your ship systems – it holds up better than most modern games.
The Super Star Wars trilogy on SNES gets mentioned a lot in these retro gaming discussions, but I never had a Super Nintendo growing up. Mega Drive territory, remember? Didn’t play those games until years later through emulation, which meant missing out on what was apparently a significant chunk of 90s Star Wars gaming. Still a bit annoyed about that, actually – another reminder of how your family’s financial situation shaped your entire gaming experience back then.
What strikes me most about revisiting these games is how they weren’t trying to recreate specific moments from the films – they were trying to make you feel like you lived in that universe. Modern Star Wars games are obsessed with letting you play through iconic scenes, but these older games were more interested in creating new experiences within that familiar framework.
My nephew thinks I’m mad when I try to explain why TIE Fighter was groundbreaking. He’ll humour me for about five minutes before going back to whatever 100GB monster he’s currently playing. Fair enough, I suppose – I probably rolled my eyes when older relatives tried to explain why their old games were special. But there’s something about those early Star Wars games, something about the combination of technical innovation and genuine respect for the source material, that modern efforts just can’t quite capture.
Maybe it’s just nostalgia talking. Maybe I’m turning into one of those tedious middle-aged gamers who won’t shut up about how things used to be better. But when I think about what made those games special – the difficulty, the imagination, the way they expanded the universe instead of just recycling it – I can’t help feeling like we’ve lost something important along the way.
The Force was stronger back then, if you ask me.
John grew up swapping floppy disks and reading Amiga Power cover to cover. Now an IT manager in Manchester, he writes about the glory days of British computer gaming—Sensible Soccer, Speedball 2, and why the Amiga deserved more love than it ever got.
