I Finally Gave Up on X-Wing Alliance

By Brian • 25 October 2024

I had a bad breakup. With a video game. But surely this has happened to you, too, right? This should be relatable. Unless you’re the baddest of dudes, you’ve broken up with a game at some point in your video adventures. Maybe it wasn’t the game you expected. Maybe you rage-quit for the last time. Or maybe you rage-beat the game after weeks or months of frustration, ripped the disc from the console, and crushed it in your bare hands, like Craig did with some poor NBA 2K game of the Xbox 360 era. To be clear, the Bad Enough Dudes do NOT condone violence against games, but we’ve had our dark days, our weak moments.

The worst part about this breakup? I said goodbye to one of my favorite PC games of all time. Let’s talk about Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance.

X-Wing Alliance is my favorite Star Wars flight sim game of the 1990s, and arguably my favorite Star Wars game, period. I was so excited about it that I bought it while I was on vacation with my parents, across the country in Portland, Oregon, because I happened to see it at the store and didn’t want to miss it. (And I didn’t have to pay sales tax, thank you very much.) It’s about an aspiring pilot, Ace Azzameen, whose merchant family becomes embroiled in a feud with another merchant family, the Empire gets involved on behalf of the rival, Ace and his family are displaced, his father is killed, and Ace ends up joining the Rebellion and becoming a key starfighter pilot in the events leading up to the Battle of Endor.

At first play, X-Wing Alliance instantly sunk its landing gear in me. I think it’s a little more accessible than X-Wing or TIE Fighter in terms of difficulty (emphasis on a little more—much more on that later), the story is good, and the experience just feels more alive than that of the previous two games. The additions of things like Ace’s crew quarters (and all the tchotchkes he accumulates on his adventures that he keeps in there), the interactions with his family, and receiving in-game email makes everything feel so much more immersive than the previous two games. Let us also not forget Emkay, Ace’s wise-cracking, trigger-happy droid copilot on the YT-2000 freighter Otana, which Ace flies on family business in-between missions for the Rebellion. Any time I play this game, I really feel like I’m a part of the Star Wars universe, really serving aboard the cruiser Defiance (had to double-check that—Star Wars has the Defiance, Star Trek has the Defiant), thanks to all of these well crafted details and extras.

One of the great bits of Star Wars lore that X-Wing Alliance covers, and probably my favorite part of the game, is the discovery of the second Death Star. Ace helps the Rebellion perform recon on Imperial convoys, which turn out to be carrying massive amounts of raw materials, so the rebels know something big is afoot. Later in the campaign, the Bothans peg an unassuming freighter as carrying the plans for the second Death Star, the rebels capture it, and all the pieces are put together. Ace and his mothership spend the next few missions pursued by Vader in the Super Star Destroyer Executor, and many battles are fought in the shadow of that massive ship before the good guys finally manage to escape. It’s a thrilling sequence of events, and I found the experience of taking part in the lead-up to Return of the Jedi to be a real treat.

In terms of gameplay, X-Wing Alliance is even more fun and feature-filled than TIE Fighter, and this time, I got to play as the good guys, which gives the game an even greater boost over its predecessor. Sure, every angsty and pubescent Star Wars fan has that brief phase where they decide the Empire is cool (and maybe even set up their bedroom like the bridge of the Star Destroyer Chimaera...who ME?!), but X-Wing Alliance did its part in bringing me back to the light side.

Sadly, I never finished X-Wing Alliance. Not in 1999, not even in 2009. The final mission—I just couldn’t do it. It’s an absolutely bonkers core run of the second Death Star, complete with a secondary objective of eliminating the superlaser power source, zero-gravity stormtrooper attacks (these guys are nearly impossible to bullseye), and plenty of other surprises. I was just never good enough to see it through to the end. Of course, it’s on YouTube, if you want to see a better player actually finish it. It’s a fun interpretation of the core run, just too tough for me.

Eventually, X-Wing Alliance stopped working. My PC’s operating system outpaced it, and I couldn’t play it anymore, and I wasn’t willing or educated enough to make it work. Luckily, some years later, X-Wing Alliance Upgrade, a massive fan-made modernization effort, came along, which enhanced the graphics and made the game playable on modern operating systems.

Like a sleepy patrol rocked into action by a Star Destroyer dropping out of hyperspace in-system, I took notice. I gave the upgrade a shot, and...it almost worked! The game loaded and everything looked great, but I struggled with my controller. As a flight sim fan, but not a true aficionado, I only owned a gamepad, not a flight stick, and I just couldn’t get the configuration right. My starfighter rolled uncontrollably, or drifted, or bounced around while trying to aim my lasers at a target. Nothing I did quite got it right.

So, I shelved X-Wing Alliance again, dejected. I grew weary of tinkering with it. In frustration, I uninstalled everything so I wouldn’t be tempted to futz around with it anymore.

Fast-forward some years later, when the itch returned. Blast it, I just wanted to fly an X-Wing. I reinstalled everything. I don’t recall what I did differently this time with the controller, absolutely no memory of it whatsoever, but it worked. The Force was with me, after all. At last, X-Wing Alliance on a modern PC, waxing TIE fighters and ripping through space with the bonus of gloriously upgraded graphics.

So where did it go wrong? You saw the title of this post, which means you know this doesn’t end well. All this struggle and years of frustration, followed by a solution, followed by just giving up?! What happened?

That’s easy. I’m 40 years old now, and X-Wing Alliance is a mission-based game. What does that mean? Well, let’s say I’m engaged in a particularly difficult mission, and maybe that mission lasts 15 minutes. If I get 13 minutes into that mission and fail, I have to do the mission all over again. If I really get mired in it, I might have to play that mission over and over again before I finally get it right. Before I know it, my time for gaming is up for the evening, I’ve accomplished nothing, and I might not get time to play again for another week, for all I know.

So? Git gud, right? Practice, get better, keep trying until I win? Nope. That is great advice for 15-year old me, with no job, spouse, or kids, and minimal responsibilities. In those days, I could play games like this. Today, I can’t. I can’t use my limited time for games to fail a lengthy mission over and over again. It’s not like getting stuck on a level in an NES platformer, where I can fail and adapt quickly. The time commitment for one difficult mission is too much. If you’re an X-Wing Alliance player and wonder which one did me in, it was this one. Battle 5, Mission 2: Attack Imperial Convoy. I got so mad at it that I actually skipped the mission (which I have never done in all my years of playing this game), and then the next mission, Battle 5, Mission 3: Break Emon Out of Brig, was the exact same deal—I made it 12 or 13 minutes into the mission and gagged. Mission failed. I took a break from the game and found that I didn’t want to go back. That was a rough moment.

The older I get, I find myself coming to terms, more and more, with playing less games, and no longer being able to realistically play certain games I used to be able to play. I only have one life (in the real world, I mean). While I appreciate a good challenge in a game, the older I get, the less patience I have for excessive frustration. That is, unfortunately, the point I reached with X-Wing Alliance, so I parted ways with it. It’s a game of a different era, one not compatible with my current lifestyle. It’s really a shame, because it’s such an amazing game. It’s not a matter of getting good; it’s a matter of time, a commodity too precious to waste on multiple long, failed attempts at beating a mission, with no guarantee that the next mission won’t bring more trouble. It’s a good thing I have all these Rogue Squadron novels from the 90s to fill that X-wing-shaped void in my heart.

Before I go, I do want to point out a couple of bugs I encountered along the way that were frustrating at the time, but pretty amusing in hindsight:

• One of the other Azzameen family ships was supposed to pick up a container, but instead ran into it and destroyed it, causing us to fail the mission. Oops. I guess these things even happen in the Star Wars universe.
• My squad of Y-wings was supposed to use ion cannons to disable a freighter for capture. Instead, my AI-wingmen all opened fire with their lasers and destroyed the freighter outright, causing us to fail the mission. Did you guys not go to the briefing? The next time I ran the mission, they behaved normally.

Truly, X-Wing Alliance and I are, and maybe forever will be, star-crossed lovers. It was meant to be, and yet clearly, it wasn’t. I have great memories with the game. I highly recommend it to any gaming Star Wars fan. But at this moment in my life, I can’t commit. Maybe when I have more time. Maybe when I retire (if that’s still a thing when I’m of-age). In the meantime, maybe all hope is not lost, because there is another....

Thanks for reading, and see you next mission!

Screenshot Credits: LPhoenix on YouTube
Cover Art Credits: MobyGames

Stage Select

• Play By Play
• The Second Quest
• Top XX
• The Arcade Archivist
• Classic Entries
• Commentary

Instruction Manual

• About Us
• FAQ
• Contact Us
• Notes

Our Other Projects

• 
•