A lot of time has passed since then, but I recently began feeling pangs of nostalgia for X-Wing and decided to dig it out and play it again.  Horror of horrors, my disks were rotted out, and would not read.  I spent three days trying to revive them with various utilities before finally pronouncing them dead.  I decided to keep an eye out for a used copy of the game on CD.

That very weekend I found a copy of the Star Wars Collector's Series for $5 at Half Price Books.  I snatched it up and walked out beaming, but something was different about this copy.  I remembered all the ships and objects being flat-shaded and simple.  These pictures showed wonderful texture-mapped and light-sourced (To a degree) ships.  I thought these must be screen-shots from X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter which was also on the CD, and came out years later.  To my surprise I found that they had retrofitted the XvT graphics engine onto the previous games X-Wing and TIE Fighter.  This was wonderful, I could play one of my favorite games AND see it in a whole new light.

I started looking on the Web for X-Wing utilities.  I remembered tracking down mission editors and character reviving routines years ago, and decided to look for them again.  I couldn't find them to save my life, but I DID find something even better; The Rebel Squadrons.  There is a whole web community devoted to the LucasArts Star Wars game series.  They had everything I needed, and a new twist to the game as well.  A whole virtual battle-fleet of cadets, officers, ships and missions to play.  Ranks to advance through.  What could be mundanely referred to as a competition ladder welded to a level-of-the-month club is really so much more.

So, I joined the X-Wing Academy (Why not start at the beginning?), and invented a character for myself.  A section of my website will be devoted to the life and career of that character Wraith K'Lan.

I also set about writing a mission-launcher utility, something I couldn't believe no-one had done before.  The project is just entering public beta at this time, so go and pick it up.

Last updated 12/04/01 Site contents Copyright © 1999-2001 Mel Grubb II