Join us as we conclude our retrospective look at the Star Wars videogame saga

It was inevitable that George Lucas would eventually form a games division of Lucasfilm, and what began as a bit of water-testing, alongside industry stalwarts Atari and Epyx, would lead the company to begin publishing its own games. Maniac Mansion was the first game Lucasfilm would publish under its Lucasfilm Games videogame banner (now known as LucasArts). It was a game that would come to mark the succinct style of pointand- click text-based PC adventure games that the company would become synonymous with. For a period, the PC would become the favoured platform for fleshing out the Star Wars universe while its hirsute creator baited the demand for a new trilogy. From Dark Forces to Masters Of Teras Kasi, join us as we conclude our retrospective look at the Star Wars videogame saga.

STAR WARS: X-WING RELEASED: 1993 FORMAT: MS-DOS, MAC Lavished in polygons and set inside a 3D Star Wars galaxy, X-Wing (set a few months before the events of A New Hope) split itself into a trilogy of lengthy campaigns that finally gave insight into a few of the events we weren’t made visually privy to in the films. Doing battle from inside the cockpit of X, Y and A-wings, in its rawest form, X-Wing is essentially a pretty reboot of the Star Wars arcade game, but with plenty more variety in its missions. Also, like the original arcade game, it splits itself into three parts. It begins with your usual dogfighting/ reconnaissance tours to set the scene, before tasking you with apprehending and delivering the Death Star plans and it then finishes with the Battle of Yavin. For the first time, players were entrusted the keys to the internal workings of an X-wing cockpit to impart a greater sense of realism. The game also made great use of the iMUSE music system – first used in Monkey Island 2 – which allowed the in-game music to respond to your actions on screen. It was a hugely successful PC release that went on to garner numerous industry awards and critical acclaim.

X-Wing would receive two expansion packs, Imperial Pursuit (1993) and B-Wing (1993) that would chart the Rebel’s escape from Yavin and attempt to seek solace inside the midconstructed Echobase on Hoth, setting the scene for The Empire Strikes Back nicely.

STAR WARS: TIE FIGHTER RELEASED: 1994 FORMAT: WINDOWS, MAC TIE Fighter begins after the Rebel’s escape Hoth and it covers the period in the films where Luke is being schooled by Yoda, all the way up to when the first drop of Ewok blood is spilled at the Battle of Endor.

Star Wars: Rebel Assault II, 1995

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