Every Star Wars space combat game ranked, X-Wing to Squadrons

The best Star Wars game about flying anything, and second on our all-time list behind only KOTOR. Totally Games took X-Wing's engine and fixed everything: missions with secondary and secret objectives that rewarded reading the briefing, power management between lasers, shields and engines that made every dogfight a resource problem, and a campaign that put you in the Empire's cockpit and made it feel like the reasonable side. The 1995 CD version added full voice acting and the Enemies of the Empire missions; the 1998 Windows rebuild lost the reactive iMUSE score and is the version to avoid. It has no Metacritic score because Metacritic did not exist; PC Gamer named it the year's best action game and the consensus has not moved in thirty-two years. It is $9.99, and the free Total Conversion rebuilds it in a 2026 engine.

The best console entry and the best-reviewed game on this page. Factor 5 shipped it as a GameCube launch title in November 2001, and it looked better than anything else on the system for years: the Death Star trench run and the Battle of Endor were the demo everyone used to sell the hardware. It sold over a million copies in the US and was the second-best-selling launch title behind Luigi's Mansion. The reason it is second here and not first is depth: Rogue Leader is ten superb arcade missions you can finish in an afternoon and replay for medals, where TIE Fighter is a forty-mission campaign with systems underneath it. It has never been re-released and the only way to play it is a GameCube or a Wii.

The one that started it, in February 1993. Larry Holland's team built the first real Star Wars flight sim, with the power-management system TIE Fighter perfected and a difficulty curve that people still complain about. LucasArts said about 500,000 copies had been ordered by that December, an enormous number for a PC game then. It ranks third because TIE Fighter is a better version of the same idea and Rogue Leader is more fun to play today; it is here because without it none of the rest exist. $9.99 on Steam and GOG, including the 1998 Windows version and both expansion packs.

Factor 5's first pass at the formula, on the Nintendo 64 in 1998, and the game that proved a Star Wars flight game could be an arcade shooter rather than a sim. It sold over a million copies, roughly a hundred times what its producer said anyone expected, and its Metacritic 85 on N64 is the best any Star Wars game scored on that console. The PC port survives as Rogue Squadron 3D on Steam and GOG for $9.99; Valve rates it Unsupported on Deck and it never got a proper widescreen fix, so expect to work for it.

The last and biggest of the sims, 1999: a full campaign as a smuggler family caught between the Alliance and the Empire, the Millennium Falcon flyable in the final mission, and a mission editor. GameRankings had it at 84 percent. It sits below X-Wing on the list for its own merits and above everything else on this page for what it became: the X-Wing Alliance Upgrade project has been remaking its models and effects for two decades, and the TIE Fighter Total Conversion runs inside it. Buy this one and you own the modding scene's whole platform. $9.99.

LucasArts' PlayStation 2 launch-window flight game, 2001, set alongside The Phantom Menace with three pilots and a story that was better than the film's. An 84 on Metacritic, an Xbox port, and an arcade version. It has never been on a modern digital store, and the PS2 disc is the only route.

Rogue Squadron's engine, Factor 5 again, the Phantom Menace setting, and a mix of air, ground and water vehicles. Its N64 version scored 84; its PC version scored 54, one of the widest gaps on Metacritic for a Star Wars game, because the port shipped with the console version's low-detail assets on a platform that expected better. Play the N64 one or do not bother.

Starfighter's sequel, 2002, with Force powers bolted onto a starfighter and a tie-in to Attack of the Clones. An 81. Fine, and the last time LucasArts made one of these internally. PS2 and Xbox only.

The only Star Wars space combat game of the last two decades, and the only one on this list built for VR and flight sticks from the start. Motive shipped it in October 2020 at $39.99 with a short campaign, 5v5 dogfights and Fleet Battles, and then, by design, nothing else: no expansions, no new maps beyond a couple of free updates. SuperData counted 1.1 million digital copies in launch month. It peaked at 35,721 concurrent on Steam and has averaged under fifty players a day for most of 2026; our tracker has caught between 45 and 85 since August. The cockpit is the best in the franchise and the game around it is a monument to what a live-service era does to a game that refuses to be one. Verified on Steam Deck, and on EA Play.

The multiplayer one. In 1997 that meant a dogfighting arena with no campaign, which is exactly what its buyers did not want, and the reviews said so. The Balance of Power expansion added the story missions it should have shipped with. The flight model is TIE Fighter's, which is why it is not lower, and the expansion is bundled in the $9.99 Steam and GOG release.

Factor 5's third Rogue Squadron added on-foot sections nobody asked for and a co-op remake of Rogue Leader's campaign that everybody did. The 75 is mostly for the former. Play it for the co-op and skip the walking. GameCube only.

A 1993 CD-ROM rail shooter, not a flight sim, but it is the game that sold CD-ROM drives, a million copies of it, and the first time most people saw full-motion video and Star Wars on the same screen. Both it and the 1995 sequel are on Steam and GOG in one $9.99 package. Play them as history.

Rebel Assault II, 1995, with the first live-action Star Wars footage shot since Return of the Jedi and a rail-shooter structure that had aged badly before it shipped. Bundled with the first game.