Missed this game so much!
To unlock your video settings go to
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Star Wars X-Wing Alliance\config.cfg
edit with notepad
Change screenres1 1 to screenres1 5
This will also unlock everything else
Then edit ddraw.cfg with notepad
change PreserveAspectRatio = 1 to PreserveAspectRatio = 0
To make it wide screen

Edit: Updated for 2024 and corrected my horrid spelling and grammar from before.

Please disregard Steam's claim that I have zero hours in this. My parents purchased the original boxed version of this game for me over two decades ago when I was much younger. I've played through the campaign many times and spent a lot of time experimenting with the combat simulator. I repurchased it on Steam so that I don't need to drag out the CDs anymore.

This is a great and very fun space flight sim. It's all fly-by-wire so don't expect the feel of Star Citizen or Elite Dangerous. It does give you some good control over your ships though. You can manage power between your lasers, shields, engines and beam weapons. Diverting energy from one to another. It is always so much fun when you've completed your objectives just in time as reinforcement Star Destroyers start pouring in from Hyperspace, and you now need to divert all energy from all other systems to your engines so you can GTFO before Tie Fighters smother you. There's even one great mission where you need to fly THREW them to escape, passing right over Vader's massive Super Star Destroyer as it bares down on you.
As well you can also set shields to focus on the front, back or equally both sides of your ship. Useful when heading straight into the madness, or when a fighter is stuck on your tail. When flying ships with turrets (like the Millennium Falcon) you can even jump into the turret and set the auto-pilot to chase your current target as you try to blast it. Just like the scene from A New Hope.

There are around 50 missions and they're all fairly unique, exciting, and lengthy. The story starts right after the battle of Hoth and ends with the destruction of the second Death Star. With you piloting the Millennium Falcon right into the mouth of the massive beast. You play as Ace Azzameen, a young freighter pilot for your family's transport business. There are two types of missions, Rebel Missions: where you'll be piloting various Rebel fighters in skirmishes for the Rebel Alliance and Family Missions: where you'll be piloting a Corellian YT series small freighter (similar to the Millennium Falcon) doing jobs for your family to help build your family's transport business.

The missions are more than just Go to point A, blow up Object B, and escort Ships C. There are capture, hunting, recon, infiltration and even base defence missions. It's pretty varied and I never found the game to go stale. Even played it recently.

This is where I get a little sad. The game is split into chapters with many small storylines that all relate to the two major arcs The war between the Rebel and Imperial republic and the story of your family. The family story arc unfortunately ends on a massive cliff hangar right before the battle of the Second Death Star. After that, the game is over. It's clear the developers had planned for an expansion pack or sequel to continue the family story but due to the poor sales of the game that never happened. You spend a lot of time with the characters and I became very invested in the story. I was disappointed to see it never truly finished.

There's a combat sim that lets you put together custom (all be it simple) skirmishes. I spent a lot of time on this. It was fun putting together these massive battles with Star Destroyers and Calamari Cruisers clashing while the space in between and around was filled with fighters from both sides swarming like mosquitoes.

I never played the multiplayer so I can't comment on that.

One negative I suppose is the graphics sure have not aged well. But for the past 2.5 decades, there has been a small loyal group of great people who have slowly been retexturing the whole game and have created some mods to allow it to run better on modern hardware. It's not Star Citizen but they've done a great job with it. The new textures they have created look great at 1080p. And I love what they did with the interiors of the ships. Their website is http://www.xwaupgrade.com/. It's been about a few years since I played the game. And I got the widescreen fix from another site but I think they have all the fixes needed on their site now.

The game runs great natively with an Xbox 360 or Xbox One controller. You can easily re-map the controls in the ESC menu. However, you will need to use the keyboard a bit still as there are just too many different hotkeys to all be mapped to those controllers. Don't worry though, in the thick of it the controller alone will be fine to adjust systems, swap weapons and do all the maneuvers needed to survive.

And that's it. As you've probably noticed I've a great deal of nostalgia for this game. But I've played it recently and I still love it just as much as I did when I was a kid. It's not too complicated yet not too simple. The missions are lots of fun, and the story is engrossing. I personally highly recommend it.

X-Wing Alliance,

Probably the best X-Wing title ever made. It doesn't need a review and it doesn't need any judgement. It's still among the best of the best when it comes down to space combat (simulation).
And with the single player co-op campaign it's even better.
You have to download it over here if you want to go co-op:
http://amiralaria.free.fr/xwam_an.php

And just so you know: 3D Hardware is active in high resolution mode and multiplayer works just fine with standard TCP/IP.

And, also make sure to grab the X-Wing Alliance Upgrade Project which is free also. You can get that mod over here:
http://www.xwaupgrade.com/

Latest development regarding the XWAU project is that it won't support the Steam version. On their website they state that the .exe files are completely rewritten and that they don't know how to alter them to make it work with their mod. It's a shame, but at least they're honest and that's nice.

The game itself runs in 800x600, even changing the resolution in the config.cfg and write protecting it doesn't chang this, due to the fact that it's hard coded in the .exe file for some reason.

What you could do however is edit the ddraw.cfg and change the fullscreen mode from 0 to 1.
Depending on your resolution it might give you an acceptable experience. I run in 1680x1050 and it looks good enough for me.

NOTE:
Me, myself and I couldn't use those upgrades and enhancements with the Steam version, but others for some reason can. So, be warned if any of those custom changes crashes your game. With me, I'll have to wait for a fix from the creators end.

If you want to go multiplayer, make sure that the host has the following ports forwarded if using a router:
TCP 2300-2400
UDP 2300-2400
TCP 47624
UDP 6073

Hi everyone!

XWAUPGRADE is compatible with the steam version. :)
So you can set the resolution higher than 800x600.

About the game? It was the best Star Wars experience for me.

If you like Star Wars and space simulators, don't hesitate, buy this game.

This is the game I compare all current space sims to. Growing up this was the star wars game I always loved and while the graphics haven't aged well, the content is fantastic. The characters are believable and interesting and the depth to the game is amazing. The campaign fills in the gap of what the rebel alliance is doing between the Battle of Hoth and the destruction of the 2nd Death Star though technically this storyline isn't canon anymore. The one technical issue with X-Wing Alliance is even with steam you need a Joystick. It doesn't work on mouse and keyboard. Minor complaint but definitely worth noting before purchasing.

It's an older game Sir, but it checks out.

I wish Disney would just fund a company who would passionately create another game like this. A legit one.

The Best Star Wars Space flight simulator to date.
Quick disclaimer, I am by no means saying the TIE Fighter or X-Wing are lacking, far from it, they are very, very good games with great story and skirmish missions.
It’s just that Alliance took all that made its predecessors great then added more ships, options, tools and even an editor for us to create endless missions.

Unlike with X-wing & TIE Fighter you are not a member of a major faction.
This is the story of Ace Azzameen, the youngest member of a neutral family of traders and as such starts off a little slow, teaching you the basics, (more basic than its predecessors) but more importantly setting the story and struggle of being caught up in galactic conflict.


(a lot of these go for X-Wing & TIE Fighter too, on a smaller scale)

🔸 A Fully voiced, compelling story,
🔹 3D cockpits, with separate looking controls,

🔸 27 Flyable Ships
(This is a big up from any before, and is still the most to date, by far)
X, A, Y, T & B-Wings,
TIE Fighters, Interceptors, Bombers, Advanced & Defenders,
Assault Gunboats & Missile boats,
YT-2000, YT-1300 & a modified YT-1300 called the Millennium Falcon,
Z-95 Headhunters, R-41 Starchaser, Skipray Gunboats & Firespray attack Ships (the base ship that was used for the Slave 1)
Pluss others...

🔹 Turret control,
Any ship that has independent turrets (eg. YT-1300) has 3-4 options.
☐ You can pilot the ship and fix the guns forward,
☐ You can pilot and have the AI use the guns to fire on locked target,
☐ You can pilot and have the AI use the guns to fire on the closest enemy target,
☐ You can take control of the turret and let the AI/Auto pilot fly the ship (risky but fun)
This is a great function and offers needed control for the larger ships that support it.
(Using other players' turrets as a multiplayer function was shown to work prior to launch.
Unfortunately due to internet/LAN limitation at the time was cut from the game, until modders reintroduced it, gotta love modders)

🔸 53 single player campaign missions, (finalising at the Battle of Endor)
🔹 Multiplayer racing scenarios,
🔸 Various pilot proving grounds,

🔹 Other notable but none controllable ships, stations and other objects;
TIE Experimental M1 to M5, (the original TIE Experimental before the lore was destroyed)
Corellian Corvette, Nebulon-B2 Frigate, MC40 & MC80 Star Cruisers,
Dreadnaught-class Heavy Cruiser, Lancer-class Frigate & Interdictor Cruisers,
30+ Transports & Other Craft, 15 Containers, 20+ Stations, various Mines, Buoys, Arrays,
Imperial & Victory-1 & II class Star Destroyer (VSD I & I) & (ISD I & II)
and not forgetting the Executor-class Star Dreadnought (Super Star Destroyer)

🔸 Hard-points,
This applies to all big ships & stations.
Larger craft don't just have a shield/hull rating, each Laser, Turbo laser, Concussion missile Launcher, Torpedo Launcher, Shield Generators, Weapon System node, Targeting Sensor … can be individually targeted and destroyed, on really big ships these can leave a ‘safer’ area to make attack runs.
This is rarely utilized in modern games or is done so in such a way that its not worth targeting them over just hull damage Here thought it provides many tactical options to dealing with large opponents.

🔹 Customizable skirmish missions, (This is huge)
23 templates, playable in single or multiplayer modes (not sure if MP still works),
Upto four regions of space can be utilized in each mission, so you can move between areas to respond to new threats, events can occur in real time in all regions simultaneously.

I spent many an hour setting up ‘impossible’ scenarios and playing them.
A favorite of mine was me and a few AI wingmen taking down a ISD II with a full complement of fighters & one taking down an Executor-class Star Dreadnought (Super Star Destroyer), 14km of turrets, missile launchers, 100’s of fighters and one very dead joystick, but a fight that I will never forget, or attempt again, I beat it but it took its toll on me and my hardware’

🔸 Additional control options over X-wing & TIE Fighter;
Like X&T you have an overall power level that can be split between Engines, Lasers, Shields and Beam (if on ship), This is more control than the new (2020) Star Wars Squadrons! and allows you to easily balance what you require when you need it.

🔹 The feel of flying;
I'm not quite sure how they have done this, but you can tell the difference between piloting a quick and nimble fighter over a YT-1300 light freighter.
It's not as if the larger ships are unresponsive, but you can tell your in a bigger vesal, your wary you pose a larger target, especially when you see TIE’s zooming by your cockpit after an attack run, and yet through brute force of the quad guns and stronger hull’s you can put up a fair fight (this is what you see in the movies, the underdog coming out on top) and after the final laser has vanished into the darkness of space and your still alive the you will feel just as smug as Solo.

🔸 Over the top detail?
There are loads of lovely little details in this game. One of which brings an ethical dilem.
Whenever you destroy an enemy fighter or bigger ship you can find survivors floating in sealed suites or escape pods. These can even be docked with & taken away or … blown up!

🔹 For the future - X-Wing Alliance Upgrade[xwaupgrade.com] ;
I highly recommend (once you enjoy the original game) you take a look at the amazing work so many have put into a complete overhaul to keep this game current. This is not just graphics, but reimagining the main champagne and utilizing modern hardware to go beyond the capacity of the 1990’s To a level it deserves.


This game is a masterpiece and should be a benchmark for any/all future (not just Star Wars) space simulators.

In order for you to graduate your filthy peasant status you must:

1) Buy the game
2) Download Tie Fighter Total Conversion mod
3) Follow the install instructions
4) Profit.

You won't play this using the steam overlay because the mod doesn't work well with it, however this mod effectively brings the game up to a modern playable level. Highly recommend Beam Eye Tracker and a joystick or two.

Happy to see this game again. Wasn't very happy when my mother threw out my old (toaster) laptop with disc 1 still in it.
Anyways the game is exactly how I remember it from when I was a kid. Loads right up with no problems on windows 10 (home and pro).

Also if you want to change your screen resolution to "stretch" (1600x1200) then you need to change a config file here:

F:\Steam\SteamApps\common\Star Wars X-Wing Alliance

Obviously your install location might be different ( C:\Program Files (x86)\ ) but look for a file named "ddraw.cfg" and change line 7 value to 0

PreserveAspectRatio = 0

Good luck and have fun. :D

(Desktop)
I7 -4930K
32 gb ram (a little overboard but some games have massive memory leaks)
GTX 780

(Toaster laptop) - too lazy to turn on and look up exact specs
I5
gtx 680m (I think)
12gb ram (mix and match)