Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance

A Star Wars space fighter sim released for the PC in 1999.

While X Wing and TIE Fighter had covered epic campaigns, their successor X Wing vs. Tie Fighter had initially not included a campaign at all, and when was put in place for the expansion, it was deliberately set in an out-of-the-way part of the galaxy to avoid impinging on the main events of the film trilogy. It was not until now that Lucas Arts decided to once more cover the epic storyline, now from a different angle.

There's No Campaign for the Wicked as you play only as the character Ace Azzameen, halting the AFGNCAAP attitude of the previous games (the X-Wing and TIE Fighter protagonists were named, but only in the manual). Ace is the youngest scion of the Azzameen family of traders, some of whose members have ties with the Rebel Alliance. Their enemies are the Viraxo family, who similarly have ties with the Empire. Initially you play training and trade missions (neatly shoehorning in the tutorial) but soon the Galactic Civil War starts impinging. Though your father tries to keep the family neutral, the Azzameens end up getting dragged into the war, their home station is taken by the Empire, and Ace joins the Rebels as a starfighter pilot.

The rest of the campaign consists of battles mostly with ties to the film trilogy or at least the Expanded Universe, with the occasional family mission. It culminates in the Battle of Endor, at which you fly the Millennium Falcon.

X-Wing Alliance allowed a far greater range of craft to be piloted than previous games, especially X-Wing Vs. Tie Fighter, and had an extensive multiplayer mode.


 * Achilles' Heel: Shield generators on various larger craft.
 * Breakable Weapons: Turrets can be destroyed by shooting them. This also applies to the turrets on the ships you fly in family missions, as you can find out by fighting said ships in Skirmish mode.
 * Cool Ship: This is Star Wars, don't be so surprised. The YT-2000 (the Otana) is an introduction to this great tradition.
 * Crowning Moment of Awesome: Several, including the battle.
 * Crowning Music of Awesome: It's Star Wars. What were you expecting?
 * Goddamned Bats: Oh lawd. The family missions are FULL of 'em.
 * Deadly Training Area: The salvage yard, and it is awesome.
 * Heroic Mime: A step up from AFGNCAAP, but all you really know of the player character is from the context of his family.
 * Killed Off for Real: You know things are real bad when the ship that holds  succumbs to the Imperials.
 * Most Wonderful Sound: The scream of the TIEs zooming past you.
 * Mighty Glacier: The Super Star Destroyer ship class has insane shields and health. It takes more than half an hour to kill it even if you destroy its shield generators first.
 * No Campaign for the Wicked
 * Oh Crap: Several instances. Two happen during the battle of Endor ("It's a trap!" and "That thing's operational!"), and a host of smaller ones happen before that. A memorable one involves your ship getting out of hyperspace in an Imperial weapons testing range guarded by four Star Destroyers due to your robotic co-pilot entering the wrong coordinates.
 * Robot Buddy: Emkay.
 * Shout-Out: At one point you end up surrounded by an Imperial fleet whose ships' names are all taken from The Thrawn Trilogy, implied to be Thrawn's personal flotilla. There are plenty of smaller ones, including blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearances by Boba Fett's ship and the famous smuggler ship Wild Karrde.