space combat games

33 Years Later, X-Wing Still Defines Star Wars Space Combat

X-Wing cockpit view during a space battle with TIE Fighters and Star Destroyer, celebrating the 33rd anniversary of Star Wars X-Wing

Star Wars: X-Wing turns 33 years old, and honestly? A lot of modern space games still live in its shadow. Released in February 1993 on good old-fashioned floppy disks, this wasn’t just another licensed Star Wars title. It helped define what Star Wars flight combat should feel like — tense, tactical, and very, very deadly if you got cocky. For many players, this was the first time the fantasy of sitting in the cockpit of an X-wing felt real instead of arcadey. The Game That Took Star Wars Into True 3D Space Back in the early ‘90s, most space games still leaned heavily on sprites and tricks. X-Wing went another direction. It became one of the first games to use 3D polygon graphics for spacecraft, meaning ships were fully rendered objects in space, not flat illusions. That sounds basic now, but in 1993 this was cutting-edge stuff — especially on…

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