STAR WARS: TIE FIGHTER anime-style short will leave you lusting for more

If Disney was really smart, they would hire this guy to make a bunch of traditional-animated films like this!

There was a shorter version that Paul Johnson released a few years ago, but this is the full-fledged vision: Star Wars: TIE Fighter.  And it is breathtaking.  I dare say that I speak for a lot of fans out there when I say that this... THIS... is what we want to see.  And see more of.

Here it is:

For all the wonder of CGI-animation, the traditional 2D style has more... I dunno... "character"? "Emotion"? How about "heart"? And that's what this video has in spades. This is as much of a Star Wars story as the live-action films, in my opinion. And it's one that I would gladly pay to see more of at the box office.

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GOG.com has released X-WING and TIE FIGHTER!

Today shall be a day long remembered...

Courtesy of the amazing folks at GOG.com (the GOG stands for Good Old Games), what are by far two of the greatest computer/video games ever wrought by mortal hands have gone on sale today, ready to be enjoyed by a new generation or by those who have longed to reminisce about those heady days of the early Nineties.

Stick it to the Empire in
X-Wing...

And I would be saying that even if they weren't Star Wars titles!

X-Wing was an astounding and revolutionary game in its own right and when it came out early in 1993 it took the industry by storm.  With a brilliant combination of 3D graphics, rich user interface, an immersive storyline and balanced yet incredibly challenging gameplay, X-Wing was the Star Wars experience that everyone wanted but few thought we would ever get.  This was the combat simulator of its time and even by today's standards it holds up incredibly well.  At last, players could join the ranks of the Rebel Alliance in the fight against tyranny, with a variety of fighters: the X-wing, Y-wing, the ever-slippery A-wing and the powerhouse B-wing.

...or blow Rebels to smithereens in
TIE Fighter!

But not to rest on its laurels, the following year LucasArts released TIE Fighter: still considered by some to be THE best computer game of all time.  TIE Fighter turned the tables and let gamers take to the skies against the scum and outlaws that the Rebels really are (the intro sequence alone are enough to make one giddy about blowing Rebel fighters out of the stars).  TIE Fighter improved on everything that made X-Wing work, and then some.  An even more interactive story/campaign and array of craft (including the TIE  Defender and my personal favorite the TIE Bomber) gave you all the tools you'd ever need to show them pesky Rebels what's what.

And as of today GOG has made X-Wing and TIE Fighter available and 100% compatible with modern systems!  If you're still playing these classics with old CD-ROMs (or even the original floppies), you'll never again have to juggle disks.  For $9.99 each you can download a DRM-free single-file installer and set up either game (or both) on any moderately-equipped system from Windows XP on up.

Incidentally, for the ten bucks you're actually getting two flavors of each game: the original DOS version and the "Collector's Edition" that ran on Windows and required a joystick (the DOS games could be played with a mouse).  The Windows-based Collector's versions have prettier graphics.  But the DOS ones have the iMuse MIDI score that changes dynamically as events in the game are triggered (i.e. the Imperial theme starting up as a Star Destroyer suddenly arrives on the scene).  The Windows editions have Redbook WAV audio instead (meaning it doesn't change per combat conditions).  Personally, I'm going with the DOS versions at least at first.  Having an iMuse score with the game itself more than justifies the price tag.

So what are we waiting for?  Mash down here for X-Wing and aim here for TIE Fighter!

These two games have been the most hotly-demanded on any modern game-delivery platform and now after years of yearning GOG has given both Star Wars fans and general gamers alike what they've wanted more than most.  And along with these two GOG is as of today also offering other classic games from the LucasArts vault: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (which some will argue is really the greatest PC game ever and not without reason), Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, The Secret of Monkey Island, and the very twisted Sam & Max Hit the Road.  More LucasArts games are promised for the near future (maybe I'll finally get to play Full Throttle...)

So there it is: X-Wing and TIE Fighter for modern computers at long last.  Go get one.  Or the other.  Or get both.  Now.  You know you wanna.

(I'm holding off until after I finish writing my book.  Getting to play X-Wing again is going to be a present to myself :-)

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Intro sequence from Star Wars: TIE Fighter

Star Wars: TIE Fighter came out in June of 1994. I'd been waiting months for its release: earlier that winter I'd bought the original Star Wars: X-Wing and played it like crazy on my then brand-new 486 25-mhz computer (with 4 megabytes of RAM and a 170 MB hard drive). Well on its release date I was at Babbage's in Four Seasons Mall right when they opened, plunked down the money and took it home, where I eagerly installed it (from like 6 DOS floppy disks). I spent the rest of the day blasting those bloody Rebels out of the sky, then I had to go to the seafood restaurant that I worked at. I think I spent five hours playing it after I got back from work that night.

Here's the first thing you'd see when you started the game. From the very first moments of this intro, I knew this would be one of my favorite video games of all time. Thirteen years later, it still is. Imagine: a game that lets you fight for the Empire... and let's you feel good about it too! Maybe someday LucasArts will make another good game like this that lets you give in to the Dark Side (The Force Unleashed sounds like it has potential). Anyway I found this a few days ago and thought it would be fun to post here...

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