I finished WC 1 + expansions some years ago and had a lot of fun. But keep in mind that playing it with a mouse or keyboard was almost impossible to me due to sensitivity using DOSBox. I ended using a controller, it was not perfect but I could adapt myself.

Well, I have to say I love old DOS games, so maybe it's better for you to start with later entries in the series.

Edit: About the story: it's very light, but I like the forked structure od the missions whether you win or lose some of them. I guess you'll not lose too much if you skip the first game (I haven't played the second one yet).

Wing Commander and Star Wars X-Wing were made after the 1980s.

WC 1 and 2 are more arcade-y and have a nice story play them and then play Privateer as well (or its source port Gemini Gold).

Wing Commander is probably one of my all-time favourites and always will be. In hindsight, it hasn't aged terribly well and the gameplay is very 'arcadey' compared to other space sims. But I still love it. To this day I still claim Wing Commander 4 has one of the best plot twists and endings in a computer game. Both in terms of gameplay, how you actually 'do' the ending, and the story's conclusion.

It's a tough choice between these two. Both games are so cheap that I can't see a reason to choose one over the other. I find WC's story more appealing than Star Wars, so I'd pick that first. But Chris Roberts always said that the space combat scenes in SW is part of the inspiration behind WC.

I do highly recommend though that WC be played from start-to-finish to experience the story. It's more about context. You'll have no trouble catching up with what's happening through the story. In-fact, with technology leaps and going to full motion video in the 3rd game onward, the characters look quite different to their initial appearances. But you might find it a little more immersive and have some perspective and context if you play the other games first. These games prided themselves on being "interactive movies".

Especially true if you get into the WC spin-offs which include some decent novels, a space-sim/strategy hybrid (Armada) and a more open-world combat/trade sim (Privateer).

The WCs are slightly more arcade-ish.
The 2 might be the easiest of them all. The 1 (especially its expensions) was probably the hardest, although depending on how you play, the 4 might be hard at times. I would recommend the 2 as a starting point, unless the difficulty and the lack of cutscenes of the 1st scare you.

The X-Wing series is a bit more simulation-ish with the energy management. Tie Fighter was a bit easier in my memory. Don't start with X-Wing vs Tie Fighter as it's multiplayer-oriented. And don't use the 1998 version of X-Wing or Tie Fighter : although they have a higher definition and look less pixellated, the music isn't interactive, and the environments in the menus are dull.

One thing I would definitely avoid is starting the Wing Commander series by playing Wing Commander 2.

So much of the story depends upon having played Secret Missions 1 (and to a lesser extent Secret Missions 2). You can actually get away without playing the main WC1 campaign, because it has no story to speak of..

Skipping ahead to Wing Commander 3 is easier from a plot perspective, you just need to pick up on what the returning characters mean to Blair.

In terms of the gameplay that you would miss by skipping the first games:

Wing Commander 1 - more arcade than sim. Mission difficulty is accomplished by throwing waves and waves of enemies against you.
Wing Commander 2 - slightly less arcade. Playing it using WC1 tactics will get you killed. Capital ships are now threatening and back turrets means tailing enemies is dangerous. Try to avoid throwing your joystick through the monitor whenever you are assigned to an Epee.

In both games friendly artificial intelligence is absolutely rubbish. Wingmen will either do nothing or shoot you down if you get between them and their target. My tagline is not a joke.

It depends on how much you like Mark Hamill.
And the ironic part is, if you want to see him, you must choose Wing Commander, not Star Wars!

Hahaha! That's a good one XD



I've played both series, but far less so Wing Commander - I think equivalent games are graphically superior but I never liked the Flight Model as it always felt wrong somehow to me.


X-Wing is kinda fun and the iMUSE dynamic music makes it ooze atmosphere, but the difficulty jumps up in places - I've never completed it legit... I do love that it has a tie-in with the X-Wing books tho', and there is even a hint in the first book on how to get past that damned Korolev mission!
It is a lot of fun but the difficulty and the 320x200 make it hard to get into in this day and age - Worth playing just for the experience but its day is past and it's hard to get attached to it.


TIE Fighter on the other hand, takes everything that as good about X-Wing and runs with it - Going from 320x200 to 640x480 make the game so much more pleasant to play since faraway things aren't just a single giant pixel as in X-Wing.
The sound effects and music are so perfect they started my worship of the 3 audio gods that are Clint Bajakian, Michael Land and Peter McConnell. They even composed their own music to fit the theme and they fit perfectly as if John Williams had made them himself, and this is MIDI audio! (Deffo use a wavetable MIDI or GUS when you play this!)
The game really sucked me into the story and plot; I loved how you start off as this lowly scrub piloting a shitbox TIE Fighter and slowly and legitimately worked your way up the ranks until you're piloting the best starfighters the Empire has to offer. It sounds a bit cliche but it felt so well done.
The way the game portrays the Empire is very cleverly and shows the other side of what's normally considered The Bad Guys - You don't play a heartless enslaver of worlds, but are part of a force trying to keep the peace in a galaxy full of subversive criminals and warring factions. One entire campaign is literally your taskforce trying to get two
The difficulty curve is nowhere near as spikey as X-Wing - It's far shallower, and you almost get trained in-game, but that's not to say it's easy - One mission has you taking out a minefield in an unshielded TIE Interceptor, probably one of the most iconic missions that anyone who's played the game will remember, but the game trains you so subtly that by the time you get there you have the skill and ability to do it, and it's so damned satisfying when you succeed.
TIE Fighter is full of moments like that - The missions and story and atmosphere really imprinted on me and to this day I still consider it one of the best games I've ever played.

It's not one single thing about the game that makes me think that, but the immersive atmosphere that I found myself being drawn into, to a level that I think I've only ever had in Baldur's Gate.


X-Wing vs TIE Fighter is a huge upgrade graphically, but it loses the iMUSE music and just has a looping CD audio track. The game mechanics/flight model is 'tighter' and faster paced compared to the previous two (Acceleration/Decell and Laser bolts and projectiles are much faster, which is partly why the lazy '98 version ports of XW and TF are so broken because all the careful timing is thrown out).
Also a major improvement is true multi-axis controller support - It's really hard going back to the DOS games after playing XvT with Z-axis rudder support!
However, it is all built around skirmish missions and multiplayer and compared to the previous ones, esp. the storylines in TIE Fighter, it's not so much fun as a single player game. The Balance of Power expansion adds some story missions, but it's not on the level of the previous two.
Still worth a play, and if you can get the multiplayer to work it's a bit of fun with some friends, but wouldn't have the longevity if not for one thing: XvTEd.

A shout out to Troy Dangerfield for both having an awesome name and for creating XvTEd, which I used to make some really cool missions - It is a very simple but powerful editor and I remember creating some awesome story missions for this in my day.



Lastly, X-Wing Alliance - This is a bit of a mixed bag; Graphically a slight upgrade to XvT but the cockpit UI is a bit janky and more advanced controls like ordering wingmates around and such are made much more awkard by the buggy MFD's you have to use compared to the way all the other games did it.
The audio is solid, and I think this is also the first LucasArts game (AFAIR) that had wave-based iMUSE instead of MIDI and it works pretty well. I don't think the music was as good as TIE Fighter's, esp. the custom tracks, but it's still very good.
However, the flight model/game mechanics are a mixed bag - I really enjoyed flying the freighters, but for some reason the starfighters don't feel as good as they did before and I get shot up a lot more too for some reason. I think they worked in a lot of new mechanics like clamping onto stuff and carrying it around and being able to dock/hyperspace to different 'areas' and continuing the mission without it just ending the mission like it used to do.
The biggest plus of Alliance (And it is a huge one) is the story of the Azameen family; It's very well done and full of twists and all the characters have lots of personality. I found it all very compelling. Lots of LucasArts regulars are there for the voice acting and they do a great job.
I did find the Rebel missions a bit jarring - They get intersperced with the Azameen family missions and tbh I didn't find them as good by comparison; They felt very generic compared to the plot-driven family missions. I dunno, maybe it's just once you've been flying around doing things other than just blowing stuff up, going back to an X-Wing on a go here blow this up mission feels tired.
Definitely worth some play time for the family missions alone.



On a slight tangent, if space combat sims are your jam, you need to get FreeSpace 2 - Once you've got it, goto http://www.hard-light.net/, install the SCP engine and enjoy the many many awesome mods and missions.

They're all great, but 2 top picks IMHO are the Blue Planet series, because they are pure epic awesome, and all of Axem's Just Another Day series, because you will laugh so hard you will lose bladder control.

If you are a fan of Babylon 5, get the B5 TC as it is amazing - I'd not get it right away as you really need to have gotten a basic feel for Freespace 2's controls and mechanics first before you try and fly a Star Fury.

There are a load of other TC's too - including Star Wars and Wing Commander! But the other stand-out one is the Diaspora Battlestar Galactica mod; They did an amazing job getting the feel of the Colonial Vipers just right!

just reinstalled freespace again with the kronos loader, i'll be sure to check those you mentioned out once i finished the main campaign!

If you want to play Wing Commander 1 & 2, then you definitely have to play both of them BEFORE X-Wing and Tie Fighter.

I finished playing Wing Commander in 1990 on a 286 with VGA graphics. I enjoyed it, but I was still a kid and the game was new. There was nothing better at the time. Thus WC1 was great for me at that time.
I started Wing Commander 2 on a 486DX 33 MHz. But I had already finished X-Wing, Tie Fighter and Privateer at that time on the same hardware. But I never finished WC2. I stopped before that. That was after a mission with Hobbes. I didn't get any further in WC2.

Wing Commander 1 and 2 were simply not as good after you had played X-Wing and Tie Fighter. That's why you should play Wing Commander 1 and 2 first before any other games.
Privateer has a trading element, which sets it apart from X-Wing. You can definitely play it afterwards.
Wing Commander 1 & 2 only offer a sprite engine and therefore haven't aged particularly well. The gameplay is also rather simple. X-Wing has exciting missions, which is missing in WC1.

That's why I would suggest the following:
Start with Wing Commander 1 and if you enjoy it, then keep playing it. If you lose interest, then watch the cutscenes on YouTube. Then continue with Wing Commander 2 and do the same thing there.
I would recommend you do exactly the same with Wing Commander 3. The cutscenes do have real actors, but in terms of gameplay it was worse than X-Wing. So you can watch the cutscenes on YouTube too.

I can't speak for Wing Commander 4, I haven't played it yet. But it should be similar here.
The same goes for Wing Commander 5.

I had the most fun with Privateer, X-Wing and Tie Fighter. You should play all of them. I also played Privateer 2, but it doesn't take place in the Wing Commander universe and my 486 computer at the time was actually too slow for it.

I started playing X-Wing Alliance around 2003, but never finished it. It just didn't appeal to me anymore.
Instead, I played X3 Reunion and that was the last space game I played seriously.

I recently played Elite Dangerous, but only for a few hours. I didn't pursue it any further. It must be a matter of age and lack of time. Interests also simply change over time. And when a game doesn't really captivate you at my age, you feel like you could have spent your time doing other things more meaningfully. I think if you're very young, then it'll be much easier for you, in which case you can play them all.

EDIT:
Oh, and one more thing. You need a joystick for all games, except maybe X3 Reunion. Without a joystick, you can forget about these games. A gamepad is not good enough. It has to be an analog joystick. And then it had to be one of the more robust types. X-Wing was the game where several of my cheaper joysticks broke just from the high stress of playing.

I'm sure that suggestion is going to be very helpful FOUR YEARS LATER.

Playing Wing Commander and X-Wing series side by side is like making love to a beautiful woman: multiple orgasms guaranteed!

So, how did you end up playing them, and how did you like them?

Or, are you still on the planning stage? Happens to many of us, I also have lots of games I was supposed to play years or decades ago already.

There are a bunch of Star Wars Games on sale they state they are system compatable with windows 10, will they play on the Atari CVS? (star ways x wing, Tie fighter etc?

This is old lol