When I saw this game at the arcade for the first time, I really got hooked on it, just wish I had the budget to play it often. I can't tell you how sore my fingers got firing the lasers using that award air fighter type of control yoke. Using the mouse in this version sure makes it easier to play, got much farther in the PC version then the arcade version.
I am always looking for it at every arcade I visit and being disappointed when I do not find it.
At least this version is here, now and free. When my Dad got a copy of this game around 1990, I just had to have a XT computer set up to so I could play it (and he had several available). It was one of the first arcade games I played on a PC (used Commodore 64s before that). It was so cool to find this game here on this site; I downloaded it on the spot.
The other reviewers are correct, it’s a pretty simple looking game by today's standards but it was innovative when it came out in the early nineteen eighties (and still stands up well). The graphics are decent and the sounds are good for late 80's
PC technology. Granted, X-Wing its not but it is a challenge to get down the trench each and every time with more obstacles getting in your way (and doing so using the force, e.g. no firing of the lasers).
It is hard to predict where each opening is in one set of catwalks and where the opening is on the next set of catwalks (sometimes being set at the extreme corners and it takes precision to maneuver the X-Wing without crashing. In fact, the simple line graphics helps here since you can see obstacles farther ahead. One short coming of the game, other then its primitive four color CGA graphics is that when there is a lot of action on the screen, the game slows down (I.E. lots of Tie Fighters, Fireballs, etc), when there are very few, it speeds up.
Can be a challenge when you are zooming down the trench and things speed up and then slow down (and you have to dodge catwalks). This game may run on most of today's PCs but without a emulator like DOSBOX, it runs at WARP speed (and is unplayable unless you have an old XT or AT laying around). It was one of many early PC games that were CPU speed dependent and did not self correct for faster CPUs.
