Hi I was just wondering which one of these games I should choose? I'm looking for the game that makes you feel like you are in the star wars films the most or should I just go for one of the older x- wing/tie fighter games?

It depends a great much on what kind of games you like, and what attitude you have towards them.

First of all, you must understand that these are old school games. With that I mean that in these games you were supposed to lose and lose until you would improve as a player, succeed at the challenge, then move on to the next mission and repeat the process.
These games don't handhold you thru a fireworks show, as most AAA games do today. Instead, they tell you what must be achieved, and throw you in the middle of a battle, and it's your responsability to find your way around and get everything done.
Back then, it was considered a good thing that a game would "last" as much as possible, while still fit in the distribution media proper of the 90's. So, the only way to do that with the few 1.5MB disks that games came in was to have a difficulty high enough to keep the player entertained and sitting at the edge of their chair so that he or she would need to replay every piece of content just enough times to make most of it without overdoing it and making it feel old.
As time passed, distribution media became more capable and the games' length started to depend more on adding more content, than on how many times the player would need to play that content before they would succeed.

For the first X-Wing, the designers set their goal that every mission would need to be replayed around 5 times before the player would succeed.
For TIE-Figther, the amount of retries was greatly reduced to about 3.
I would say XWA has most of its missions at around 2-3 retries.

I don't cound XvT here because the design goals for that game were entirely different. But I'd say that playing the BoP campaign solo, the intended retries would be again around 5-6.

If you are a casual player, definitely go first to XWA. It has the best graphics and the campaigns have an adequate difficulty curve.

If you consider that you can look past the outdated graphics, and you have quite a hard skin for old school difficulty, I would recommend you to play them chronologically.
X-Wing (the first game) was what made me a StarWars fan, and go from knowing nothing about it to learn who where these characters mentioned in the missions briefings and cutscenes, etc. Make yourself familiar with how the missions work in the Historical Missions training area.
TIE Fighter is the best in the series, both in content, difficulty, variety and story.

Too bad, the best editions of X-Wing and TIE Fighter (the Collectors' CD editions) aren't available in GOG. The GOG DOS versions are really ugly, and the Windows (Collector Series) versions are maimed and tasteless pseudo remakes.

X-Wing is the first game in the franchise. While the basic mechanics of the game are strong and still in use in X-Wing Alliance, it misses some features that may be regarded as essential and it is very hard. It feels like a prototype.

TIE Fighter on the other hand is more advanced and it has all essential features. However, you fly for the Empire. You'll never fly for the Rebels, not even one mission. The Rebels are just regarded as crooks and criminals. The game has a very good story that has a lot of greys. It involves political intrigues, treason, etc. So, not every mission is "Kill them all! Wipe them all out!". You are just a pilot flying for the massive, all-encompassing Empire, that barely cares about you. To me, it feels like you are some kind of police officer keeping the peace by chasing after the "criminal" Rebels, smugglers, traitors, solving civil wars, etc.
Aside from primary objectives, there are also secondary objectives provided by the Emperor himself. If you do those secondary objectives, then you may enter the Secret Order of the Emperor and may even get into the Inner Circle. There are also secret bonus objectives that make you rank up faster. The game is considered a favourite among the players.

X-Wing vs TIE Fighter: Balance of Power is essentially a multiplayer game with a small campaign. You can fly the missions solo, but it is made for multiplayer, which is of course the advantage it has over the older games.

X-Wing Alliance is the last game of the franchise and my personal favourite next to TIE Fighter. It is the most advanced game of the franchise. The story is extremely well developed. It contains several characters, who all have voices. In this game you don't start off as a Rebel pilot or an Empire pilot. You are the youngest child of a family. You have a brother, a sister, a father, two uncles, etc and they all have voice over dialogue.
You don't immediately join a major faction in this game. You start off with so-called Family Missions that you have to do first and you still have to do them from time to time after joining a major faction. The transition from Family to a major faction is seamless.
This game has to most starships, space stations, etc. You can fly, for example, the Millenium Falcon. It also has multiplayer.

This game is dying for a branching storyline IMHO. Imagine having an actual choice whether to join Alliance or Empire after those initial Family Missions. I realize that would have doubled the workload for them but it would truly be great. Too bad Lawrence Holland never made another Star Wars space sim after XWA. I would kill for Tie Fighter: Empire. :)

As someone who is into Empire, my recommendation for the first game to play is Tie Fighter of course. Best story and great atmosphere. You get to see another side of the Empire sans all that Sith and Jedi business. While you appear to be just a nameless cog in the vast machine, Stele Chronicles and Ptima Guide flesh out you character. I like to read story excerpts in the latter book between missions. No reading about the missions just the story parts.

Thanks for the reply's ! After reading all your posts I think I'm going to go the XWA route and then try for the older games after! I have played through Wing commander 1 which of course is a difficult game at times , I know they are quite different flight sims but do you think wing commander 1 is more or less difficult then the tie fighter and x wing games?

I'd put it square in between X-Wing and TIE Fighter. Some of the missions in X-Wing are pretty ridiculous. Though nothing compares to Saving the Ralari...

Otherwise though, they have different paradigms. Several Wing Commander missions are explicitly designed for you to fail unless you're a very good pilot. X-Wing expects you to eventually persevere until you win, so nothing ever feels impossible. I agree though - an X-Wing game with a branching campaign depending on successes or losses in battles would be very cool.

Overall, I think TIE Fighter is the best game, but playing it first makes X-Wing a bit archaic in comparison, so you'd probably get the maximum enjoyment from playing X-Wing before it.

If you want the most immersive experience, either get XWing Alliance, or get X-Wing first, but make sure you read the strategy guide before or after each mission. It's a novel unto itself.

I think it's pretty systematic for people who played this series to recommend the first one they tried hehe :)
So I wouldn't rely too much on these subjective experiences. If anything, better play the old games first because playing them after experiencing XWA awesome (moded) graphics is going to be hard on anyone.

Hey, I know it's been a while, but the Collector's CD editions are available on GOG now. They just come with the games, even though it's unmentioned. I looked in my library, and there it is. Just wanted to let you know, unless there is some other weird change they've made to it, it does seem proper to the original Collector's CD, from what I can tell.

I don't know, could be wrong.

I tried X-wig first but I would NEVER advice anyone to start from that, Tie Fighter is the better starting point because it has LOADS of tutorials with on-screen explanations of what to do while the X-wing historical missions basically plopped you into a mission just without the Tour of Duty permadeath element. I can confirm, not that there is much to do with those apart from tewakking dosbox a bit but this is an old thread now that I'm looking at the dates, back then there were only the floppy and windows versions.

TIE Fighter is generally considered to be one of the top 10 video games of all time, largely in part because of the story that accompanies some really solid gameplay in what would otherwise had been a shallow flight simulator.

That said, X-Wing Alliance has much better graphics (even more so today with craft pack mods) and (arguably) better gameplay than its predecessors, but many find the story to be bland, and were hoping to have the option to join the Empire.

A few years ago there was a mod out there that took the XwA game engine and retrofitted it with missions, cutscenes and voice acting from TIE Fighter, I believe it was called TIE Fighter Total Conversion, and it was REALLY fun. Unfortunately, it's no longer available, and I doubt it would even work with the GOG/Steam versions of the game.