Not including the Collertor's CD-ROM is actually a deal-breaker for me :(

I found a post on xwaupgrade.com/phpBB3008/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=4848&p=60937 which links to another post (to an unfortunately down forums.xwlegacy.net/viewtopic.php?t=2164&sid=09acceebfaa36382177432b62f2524c1. It mentions:

[...] that the IMUSE system might still be intact, but turned off. The table of IMUSE midi music is still present in both XW95 and TIE95 [...]

Perhaps with the right modtools the iMuse system can be restored on the windows releases (1998)?

Maybe porting the 'advanced graphics' from 1998 version to TIE95 would be just enough :)

Just a heads up to avoid confusion: TIE95 and XW95 are usually what the 1998 versions are called... they are basically Win95 versions of the games.

I'd love to have the '95 version of TIE Fighter, but GOG has a spotty track record with missing content and versions. It can take anywhere from a few weeks (Windows Leisure Suit Larry 6) to years (Police Quest 1 EGA, EA expansions) to never (Space Quest 1 VGA, King's Quest 1 enhanced) to get missing content added to the game.

Hopefully the people at GOG see this thread, it'd be nice if we could hear something from them about it...
Any chance this could get stickied?

I have the DOS Collector's CD versions of both XW and TIE working great under DOSBox for a while now. These were the games that followed me through high school, and Tie Fighter still ranks as my #1 game of all-time. I'm glad to see I'm not alone in my opinion that the DOS Collector's CD versions of these games are hands down the definitive versions of each game.

I personally hated the 1998 remakes. They were the only games I ever took back to the store (back when they allowed you to do those things). I think texture maps are not worth losing iMUSE for, especially when you consider that by today's standards they are a minuscule improvement over the original graphics.

I personally don't have a reason to purchase this simply because I already have working copies of every version (including the strategy guides etc. though PDF versions sound nice).

The most unfortunate thing for me though, is that while I think it's great that these amazing games are finally available to a new generation (or those who weren't able to preserve their old copies), I cannot in good conscience RECOMMEND their purchase at this time to my friends.

The "magical/Goldilocks" versions of these games are the DOS Collector's CDs, and for 90% of the people who have these titles on their "top game of all time" lists, those versions are the ones they are referring to.

If GOG were to have only one version available of these games, it's the version that's currently missing.

I'd love to hear how you got it working under DOSBox. I own both 95 DOS CDs and tried to get them up and running this morning and the install program wouldn't let me install it saying it couldn't run it off the hard drive, eventhough I was indeed running it off the CD. I'm baffled.

If GOG put the 95 DOS CD here, I'd buy it in a second. I was actually excited to buy these until I read the reviews saying it wasn't the version I was buying. Deal breaker for me.

Purchased X-Wing and TIE from GOG yesterday while on the road, finally had the time to sit down and install everything, full of nostalgia-driven anticipation. Set up the joystick, optimized DOSBox config for pixel-perfect graphics and passthrough midi and ... *extremely* disappointed to discover neither games are the objectively 'ultimate' Collector's CD-ROM versions... :\

So: another request to GOG to please try everything to add the CD-ROM versions*. I really hope this is possible.

*) Please keep the diskette versions as well though, at least of X-Wing, for it's superior MT-32 soundtrack.

I know Laserschwert, the 1998 version has some improvement on graphics, with textures. TIE95 has a bigger resolution (640x480) only and speech, of course (don't mention that crappy new intro lol).
The bad thing for me is the need of Joystick to play the 1998 version, so, my hope is that someone do a 'merge' with these two versions some day :)

Not sure how JMLouden did it, but Mark Egger's site has some compatibility fixes that might help if you have the CDs - http://www.markusegger.at/Software/Games/Default.aspx

Edit: Looks like this only works for the X-wing Collectors Series, which is the 98 releases of the games.

I went back and used a combination of Jmlouden's and MWNN's Dosbox instructions/BAT files and got my Tie Fighter Collectors Edition up and running off of the HDD. I guess I'll be holding out for the XW94 if it ever becomes available.

It's been a while, and you may run into issues I haven't, but basically what you need to do is copy the entire contents of the CD to a separate folder from all your other DOSBox stuff. You can then mount that folder as a CD-ROM drive from within DOSBox. I use it as drive D, and I have all my other games in a folder I have mounted as drive C. You can do that with the command "mount d [entire path of the folder you copied the CD to here] -t cdrom"

Then you can switch to that "drive" in DOSBox and then install the game to your "C" drive (the virtual C drive you have mounted in DOSBox, if you do it that way). After it's installed, there should be a file in the root of your C drive (again, the DOSBox one) called TIE.CD. This is the game's copy protection, basically telling it to look in drive D for the disc.

For launching the game, I created a batch file that I just run from the C prompt, though you could also have a game specific .conf file if you want to go that route. Here's my batch file, which I named tie.bat: That's basically how I play any game that runs off a CD. I have a folder called "CDs" on my actual D drive, and the CD from whatever DOS game has its contents copied there in its own subfolder, then I make a batch file in DOSBox that mounts it as a CD-ROM drive, sets any other unique config parameters I want, launches the game, then unmounts the drive.

If you have any questions/issues PM me, or we might want to start a different thread so technical issues don't get lost in here.

Works just as well with an image too - such as the DOS collectors one I linked in my previous post.

> A new install of DosBox 0.74
> An image of the your Tie Fighter CD (tiefighter.iso) at the root of your C:\ drive

mount c c:\
imgmount d c:\tiefighter.iso -t iso
d:
install (to default path c:\tiecd)
c:
cd tiecd
tie

> Do a maximum install
> In DosBox config change sensitivity=100 to a higher value for faster mouse movement or use a joystick - I'm using a value of 300 atm.
> Alter the video settings to your liking

Should work first time without any extra steps.

Someone wrote a guide once, on how to install various versions of X-wing, Tie Fighter, X-wing vs Tie Fighter and X-Wing Alliance.
Here:
http://www.savingcontent.com/2014/08/09/guide-play-x-wing-tie-fighter-series-on-windows-7-windows-8-windows-8-1-with-an-xbox-xb1-playstation-ps4-controller-flight-stick/

This has worked great to help me install the DOS Collector's CDs of X-wing and Tie Fighter.

Here's the reply I got from GOG. Not very optimistic...

"Hello, I am afraid that we were able to release only those versions with the bonus content that are currently available. We might get the rights to release more in the future, but I am unable to predict or promise anything.

Regards,
Natalia
GOG.com Support"