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X-Wing, TIE Fighter 95 Fixed, Lego Yoda Revealed

Posted by simoniker on from the not-easy-being-green dept.

Swifti writes "Ever since Windows XP was released, the classic games, TIE Fighter 95 and X-Wing 95 [the X-Wing Collector Series and X-Wing Trilogy versions of X-Wing & TIE Fighter], were left incompatible with the new operating system. The issue refused to be addressed by LucasArts whose basic solution was 'Deal with it.' Luckily, a fix was recently released for these two PC games over at LucasFiles, obviously made by a fan. These great games are now compatible with NT/2000/XP systems." Elsewhere, an anonymous reader points to a movie-annotated fan report on the previously mentioned "LEGO Star Wars game being demo'ed" at last week's Comic-Con, including footage of a whirlin' Lego Yoda.

12 of 33 comments (clear)

  1. Better then Lucasarts' modern games by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    These games came out damn near 10 years ago, and still have better game play then some of the more recent Lucasarts games.

    I still remember screaming along on my 386-33Mhz machine.

  2. Ah! Relief! by Rallion · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I hope the fixes work with the versions I have...there are a few versions of each and I can never keep them straight.

    Best three space sims ever, IMO? Freespace 2, TIE Fighter, X-Wing. In best-to-least-best order. And now I can (maybe) play every one of them. I thank whoever did this. I really do.

  3. Fond memories.. by Taulin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I met one of my best friends because of X-Wing. He was playing a mission over and over and over again... His dormroom door was open when I walked by, and I just had to know WTF he was doing. Being an Amiga man myself, I was overcome, and just had to get a PC. Thanks Lucas Games!

  4. Doesn't work, at least with the original DOS games by Hamster+Lover · · Score: 4, Informative

    The only fix that does work for the original DOS based Tie Fighter and Xwing, at least for my system, was to turn all sound off.

    I also have the Windows versions of Xwing and Tie Fighter called the "Collector's CD-ROM" and while I love the graphics and sound updates of these versions, I detest the fact that mouse support was removed so I have never attempted to install either on my Win XP system.

    If I recall correctly, there are three versions of Xwing and Tie Fighter released in this order: the original DOS based games and their separate add ons released on floppy disks, the DOS floppy games re-released on CD-ROM with CD-ROM music and the "Collector's CD-ROM" with revamped graphics and music (including all the later add ons) intended to run under Windows. I think I have that right. Someone correct me if I am wrong, please.

    Anyway, the patch only works on the last version, the "Collector's CD-ROM". Try turning the sound off if you can't get the original DOS version that came on floppy disks to work (due to extended/expanded memory problems).

    FYI

  5. Re:Doesn't work, at least with the original DOS ga by swmccracken · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Do the dos versions work under dosbox?

    http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/news.php?show_news =1

  6. Mission Editing by Xetrov · · Score: 3, Interesting

    One of the best things about the original X-Wing (DOS) game, was the mission editor I downloaded.

    I spent months creating and playing my own custom missions, and I think this was probably the start of my desire to customise everything which evolved into a love for hacking.

  7. and better cutscenes by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 4, Insightful
    perhaps it was because they could only do very basic animation (in fact really like animation, move images along each other to create motion) that they really had to think about it. But I enjoyed the cut-scenes in X-wing and tie-fighter a hell of a lot more then in later lucasarts games.

    Oh well just call me an old dinosaur who can't keep up with modern times. Except one tiny little problem Lucasarts. I BOUGHT all the old games. Now I don't anymore because while I now have far more money coming in I think your games are not worthy of me spending money anymore. Should lucasarts care? Only in so far as any company should care about losing a once loyal customer.

    --

    MMO Quests are like orgasms:

    You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.

  8. Re:It's time for a new XvT game. by RogueyWon · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I believe X-Wing alliance didn't sell so well, despite it being, in my opinion, the best of the series (TIE Fighter was great, but degenerated into rather annoying supership-wars towards the end). I think the final Wing Commander game (Prophecy?) also bombed commercially around about the same time. Since then, Space Flight Sims haven't been seen as mainstream and as, I suspect, they're quite expensvie to develop, nobody really wants to take a chance on them.

    I really hope Lucasarts do reconsider making another X-Wing game at some point, provided it is actually a PC-based, flight-sim modelled game like the old ones. I've noticed a bit of an upswing in the quality of Lucasarts games over the last year or two. They're not back to the dizzy heights they were in the days of Sam & Max and the X-Wing/TIE Fighter games, but things have come a long way from Force Commander and "Episode 1: Gungan Yoda Adventure Cash In". The Rogue Squadron games on the Gamecube aren't bad at all, even if the focus is a bit too much on repeating missions for my liking and Jedi Knight 2 was a competent fps (hated Jedi Academy though). He's hoping they're feeling brave enough to re-open an old genre.

  9. Virtual PC was a savior by figleaf · · Score: 3, Informative

    Since some of my favorite LucasArt games not compatible with XP I have been using Virtual PC to play the games.
    So far all my games have worked without any problems.

  10. Re:Privateer by Haeleth · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Now we need a patch like this for Wing Commander Privateer. Every year or so I get to itch to want to play it again, but it hates XP too.

    This is for the Windows/DirectX remakes of the games - Privateer was only ever a DOS game, so it won't be patched so easily. However, DosBox should be able to emulate it soon if it doesn't already.

  11. Re:Doesn't work, at least with the original DOS ga by Rallion · · Score: 2, Interesting

    On my system, at least, I can get them to run in DOSBox, technically, but....eh, it's not even worth playing. So slow...This is on a XP2100+.

    I have TIE95, but X-Wing CD! Argh.

  12. Why didn't Lucasarts do this fix? by EnglishTim · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I suspect that the reason Lucasarts didn't fix this themselves was because it's quite possible that they could no longer build the game. Certainly I've worked at games companies where we've wanted to do a build of an old game and suddenly foung it much harder than we'd expected. Sure, you manage to find an old version of the code somwhere, but it's not been packaged alongside the art assets. Suddenly you need to work out which version of the art assets go with which version of the code. You then find out that although somebody took care to save the source code, nobody thought to make a copy of all the libraries that you were using at that time. Or perhaps the incompatibility was due to a third-party library, and they don't do a 2000/XP version of it any more, and maybe have gone out of business.

    The thing is that unless you take a lot of care when backing up your old code, it can be very easy to find yourself in a tricky situation, especially if the person who did it originally has left the company.