Star Wars: Starfighter

A good arcade flight game for six dollars, and the easiest way into LucasArts' Naboo-era flying. Three pilots, short missions, ships that each handle differently, and a story that works better than the film it sits beside.

The PC version is a port of the PS2 game, so it lacks the Xbox Special Edition's extra missions and multiplayer, and it reviewed lower than the console versions at the time. It runs on current Windows, with one catch: above 30 frames per second the screen shake goes wild and menus skip options, so cap the frame rate at 30. For widescreen without black bars, the community route is the dgVoodoo 2 wrapper plus a fan-made field-of-view fix. A gamepad suits it better than a flight stick.

Skip it if you want depth; this is a pick-up-and-play shooter you will finish in a weekend. Its sequel, Jedi Starfighter, is more varied but never came to PC; it lives on PS4 as a PS2 Classic.