With the release of the Collector’s CD-ROM Editions of TIE Fighter and X-Wing on GOG, I figured it was time to revisit this post and play one of the best Star Wars PC games. Some of my advice has changed, and I’ve also had to troubleshoot another joystick problem with TIE CD.

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But the most important thing to know is that the definitive version of TIE Fighter is now available and you must play it.

Now which versions should I play?

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The X-Wing Collector’s CD-ROM doesn’t offer much over the original game. Even at the time, it was outdated as it was being released. I’ve played quite a bit of the X-Wing 1998 reissue and find it superior in every way, so it gets a hearty recommendation.

However, when it comes to TIE Fighter, the CD-ROM version is really the only way to go. It’s got all the expansion campaigns, and it uses the original flight model and not the slightly different flight dynamics of the 1998 reissue. More importantly, it uses the original MIDI score, which changed to match what was happening in each mission, which is what a musical score is supposed to do. So instead of having orchestral renditions of the John Williams score blasting 24/7, you’ll have the music get thoughtful and moody when you’re waiting for something to happen, triumphant when you have completed a mission objective, and frantic when you’re dogfighting.

But first we have to deal with a weird error I had with TIE CD’s joystick support.

What to do if your joystick won’t calibrate.

This was infuriating. When you launch TIE CD, you’re prompted to calibrate your joystick. But when I tried to do so, the game would not register any of my button-presses. I could use the DOSBox control panel to map my joystick as “joystick 2”, but that only succeeded in crashing the game whenever I touched a button.

The trick, then, is to ignore the first calibration screen. Just click through it with your mouse. When you get into a mission, however, after the engine loads you can hit ALT+C and it brings up the in-engine calibration window. That should work.

Why can’t I play TIE 98? I like the graphics better.

I didn’t appreciate this at the time of the re-release, but TIE 98 is actually kind of broken. The problem is simple: when they ported everything into the X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter engine, they upgraded concussion missiles to Advanced Concussion Missiles. So early in the campaign, instead of firing the regular missiles, enemies fire the ACM.

The ACM, in X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter was a doomsday weapon. One hit will knock out fully-charged shields. If your shields are damaged, a hit will destroy you. It’s also incredibly hard to dodge and, in some fighters, it’s essentially impossible. So the difficulty of all the missions gets screwed-up in the 98 version. X-Wing 98 doesn’t seem to have this problem.

X-Wing 98 keeps crashing at mission start!

Whatever you do, don’t turn on hardware acceleration. That doesn’t work correctly and crashed my game every time.

Old article

Now that I’ve had a day with the new TIE Fighter and X-Wingre-releases on GOG, there are a few issues that I’ve encountered and a few things I’ve learned about the editions available on GOG.

Most importantly, I had an odd and frustrating joystick issue that took me a few minutes to solve.

In order to play the 1998 versions of X-Wing and TIE Fighter, you absolutely have to have a joystick. There are supposedly some workaround out there to fake it with a mouse and keyboard or a 360 controller, but the particular problem I had was that the game did not recognize my perfectly good Saitek X-52. Every time I launched the game, I got an error message telling me to make sure my joystick was connected.

My first thought was that the GOG editions were having trouble with USB joysticks, and that I’d have to find some kind of emulator to trick the program into thinking I had a serial port joystick.

But actually, it turns out the “advanced” tab in the USB game controllers offers an option about which of your USB devices you’d like to use for older games. For some reason, Windows had decided my USB webcam was also a joystick, and that is what it was trying to use for TIE Fighter.

So, if you have a USB joystick and it’s not behaving with TIE Fighter or X-Wing, just make sure you have the right device selected in the “Set up USB Game Controllers” menu. Once I’d taken care of that, both the 1998 and original 1994 editions worked with my joystick.

Oh man, do I NEED a joystick to enjoy these games?

To play the more modern versions, you do. But the original versions worked quite well with mouse and keyboard, though it can be hard following more maneuverable craft by throwing your mouse around.

What surprised me, honestly, was just how good the joystick controls are for X-Wing and TIE Fighter. After years of playing games like MechWarrior Online, in which the joystick controls are simply not competitive with mouse and keyboard, or War Thunder and World of Warplanes, which require tons of tuning in order to get an adequate joystick experience, I’d started to lose faith in my trusty flight stick. Maybe joysticks weren’t as good as I remembered?

Nope. They’re amazing. It’s just that developers stopped viewing them as a primary control input, and started optimizing for other control schemes at the expense of the joystick and throttle. TIE Fighter and X-Wing offer about as much precision with a stick as with a mouse, and a hell of a lot better maneuverability. It’s been ages since I played a twitchy game that was so perfectly tuned for a flight stick, and it’s proving to be a revelation.

So you probably want a joystick.

OK, but what joystick should I get?

Good question, and one I’m trying to answer for myself.

See, my Saitek X-52 perished after just one afternoon of TIE Fighter. It’s about seven years old, so it was probably due for retirement. But that leaves me with a dilemma about what stick I’m going to buy to replace it.

If you’re just dipping your toe in the water of space sims, and want something that makes you feel like you’re Wedge Antilles without breaking the bank, then the answer is pretty straightforward: the Thrustmaster T-Flight HOTAS X. It’s a stick that gives you just enough control and versatility to enjoy flight sims and other space games, but it’s only about $50. It wouldn’t please a serious sim enthusiast, but it’s probably the best and most versatile entry-level stick out there. Plus, Thrustmaster have been making these things for ages and their build quality is some of the best around.

Above that level, things get more complicated.

Saitek’s replacement for the X-52 model is the X-55 Rhino, and at $200 with a dual-throttle control and an attractive military-style flight stick, it looks like the perfect purchase. The problem is, this stick has also been dogged by complaints about manufacturing quality. Across a number of sites and threads, it looks like a significant portion of X-55s have either been defective or dead-on-arrival.

Since it comes with a warranty, that may not be a deal-breaker. If you have the time, you can pester Saitek / Mad Catz until you get one that performs up to spec.

But based on my own X-52, which always had issues with calibration and a weirdly loose flight-stick, I’m not so sure that’s good enough. It’s certainly not a stick I could ever recommend without a lot of caveats, and the X-55 sounds like it

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