Real men played TIE Fighter where your ship didn't even have shields to begin with.
Any time they put you in a basic TIE... the first wave of an engagement was terrifying since just a couple of shots could end it right there.
Remember playing this quite some time at a friends. But I think we played Wing Commander even more for some reason.
And way before that: Elite on a C64. That blow my mind at the time. Connected lines in 3D! Wow. And yes, I am old.
But my favorite of all time has to be Privateer II - The Darkening. Relatively open world with a cool background story and incredibly immersive with fitting prerendered cutscene visuals and lots of real actors doing the keyscenes.
Nothing like sitting in the lounge of the TCS Tiger's Claw, discussing the recent battle or the state of the war.
The fact that Elite was made to work with that amount of complexity on a C64 was absolutely mindblowing at the time. So often we forget how far things have come.
Was this written by an ai? Yeah xwing was good but so was wingcommander for the same reasons. Every good space combat game done since then has basically duplicated the experience.
Tachyon was the best space fighter game ever. Even had Bruce Campbell doing some of the voice work. The physics were awesome and the storyline was good.
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