More than three decades after Star Wars: X-Wing first placed PC players inside a Rebel cockpit, a fan team is still working to make that experience feel at home on modern hardware. The XWVM project has released a new July 2026 development video looking back at its public launch and showing what the team is currently building. And no, this is not simply someone increasing the resolution and declaring victory. XWVM is rebuilding the original game’s experience inside a modern engine while preserving the missions, mechanics, and structure that made the 1993 classic matter in the first place. X-Wing Rebuilt Rather Than Replaced XWVM is not a standalone game or a total conversion. Instead, it acts as a modern way to play the original X-Wing, requiring players to own the original product rather than distributing Lucasfilm’s copyrighted game files. The team is also independent and has no official connection to…
TIE Fighter
The Ultimate Star Wars Gaming Quiz: 30 Medium Questions
You survived the beginner round. Congratulations. The training remote has been switched off, the difficulty slider has moved one step to the right, and the questions are no longer legally required to mention Cal Kestis every five minutes. This medium-level Star Wars gaming quiz covers companions, developers, planets, factions, mechanics, obscure characters, classic PC games, console titles, and a few details that may have quietly escaped your memory sometime around 2007. There are 30 questions, four possible answers each, and one simple rule: No opening another tab and pretending you were only checking the spelling of “Teräs Käsi.” New readers should begin with our Ultimate Star Wars Gaming Quiz: 30 Beginner Questions. For a broader challenge covering movies, television, books, comics, and lore, try the original Ultimate Star Wars Quiz: 30 Questions. And when a question sends you hunting for some forgotten release, explore our complete list of every Star…
Star Wars: X-Wing Academy Is Hogwarts for New Republic Pilots
A new Star Wars comic series is on the way, and it sounds like somebody finally looked at the old space-sim games and said, “What if we added more school drama and fewer immediate explosions?” Star Wars: X-Wing Academy is arriving next year and will take place before The Force Awakens. The series follows a group of students at a pilot school that has already been described as a kind of Hogwarts for New Republic pilots. Which, to be fair, is a pretty efficient sales pitch. X-wings, young recruits, rivalries, training, and probably at least one reckless overachiever who should absolutely not be cleared for live flight yet. The concept almost sells itself. And for Star Wars gaming fans, it hits a very familiar nerve. The X-Wing Fantasy Never Really Went Away Long before this comic was announced, Star Wars games had already spent decades teaching players the essential fantasy…
TIE Fighter Strategy Guide: When Star Wars PC Games Needed Manuals Like Sacred Texts
There was a time when playing a Star Wars game did not begin with a tutorial popup, a glowing objective marker, and a cheerful reminder that your spacebar can make things happen. Sometimes it began with a manual. A real one. The kind you actually had to read. Star Wars: TIE Fighter launched in 1994, and it was not built for players who wanted to casually drift through the galaxy while the game quietly solved itself in the background. It was a space combat sim from LucasArts, and it expected you to learn how to fly, manage shields, cycle targets, redirect power, understand mission briefings, and survive long enough to make the Empire proud. Or at least slightly less disappointed. That is why TIE Fighter: The Official Strategy Guide still feels like a perfect artifact from the golden age of Star Wars PC gaming. Published by Prima in July 1994…
Star Wars: TIE Fighter (1994): The Imperial Flight Sim That Still Feels Elite
Some Star Wars games are remembered because they were huge commercial events. Others live forever because players never really stopped talking about how good they were. Star Wars: TIE Fighter belongs in the second category. Released in 1994, it put players in the cockpit of the Imperial Navy, cast Darth Vader’s side as the playable perspective, and built a space-combat sim that many players and critics still treat as one of the best Star Wars games ever made. Star Wars’ official support page describes it as a game where you “join the Imperial Navy” under Vader, while a 30th-anniversary retrospective from heise online notes that TIE Fighter still usually sits near the top of all-time Star Wars game rankings. That reputation was not built on novelty alone. TIE Fighter mattered because it took the foundation of X-Wing and sharpened it into something cleaner, smarter, and more confident. Where a lot…