Moments in Gaming is where we look back on gaming experiences that have left a particularly strong impression on us over the years: mainly for good reasons, but sometimes for bad ones.

As it’s Star Wars Day (Fourth of May be with you!) we figured it was time for a couple of moments from LucasArts oldies, of which this is the second. (Here’s the first, plus one from the archives, too, for good measure).

While the protagonist of 2009’s The Force Unleashed may be able to pull a Star Destroyer into the ground with a mere look to the sky and some mild facial discomfort, for the mere mortals sat inside a one-man fighter during the early 90s, it was a fearsome battleship that would require the efforts of a coordinated attack group, and no small amount of luck, to bring down.

The simple polygons of 1993’s X-Wing may not be able to compare with the visual spectacle of Starkiller’s one-man destruction spree on Raxus Prime, or even the woolier, video-heavy charms of relative contemporary Rebel Assault, but for those of a certain generation the sight of that solitary, familiar, triangle shape in the far distance still stirs feelings of vague dread. You suddenly know the feeling that Red Leader, Gold Leader, Porkins et al. must have had in the pit of their stomachs as they commenced their final attack run in A New Hope.

The Death Star trench run is included in, and the natural finale of, X-Wing. But here the limitations of the technology are more evident, even though the trickiness of the task itself creates ample tension on its own.

It’s still not the most difficult mission in the game, though, for my money. In a game stacked with extremely punishing moments, my vote for that particular title would go to Tour II, Mission 10: Destroy the Intrepid.

***MILD SPOILERS/FAIRLY USELESS TIPS NOW FOLLOW***

The second Tour of Duty has been building to this moment: you previously battled to stop the replacement of the Intrepid’s hyperdrive, and then to destroy its escort. Now comes the moment to take down the ship itself. To say you’ve supposedly weakened its defences, it’s still a mightily tough ask.

So tough, in fact, that I must have replayed it at least 50 times, muttering (or worse) several times an evening, “it must be impossible” (or worse). Resolving not to cheat, but desperate for at least some guidance, moderate internet research brought about a handful of suggestions for the best way to beat this mission, and my dogged pursuit of one particular strategy – to ignore all fighters along the way in favour of getting to the Star Destroyer as quickly as possible and taking down its shield generators – ended in repeated failure, despite occasionally showing promise.

Such an approach does at least allow you to get close to the Intrepid and fire off a few torpedoes at the generators [the big golf ball type things either side of the bridge – Star Wars Ed.] – which is, after all, your part of the mission, according to your briefing: you take down the shields in your X-Wing, and the Y-Wing bombers will do the rest.

Some clearly experienced success with their ‘fast attack’ plan; others reported that your Y-Wing colleagues do in fact finish off the Intrepid, as long as you make sure to take out as many TIE Bombers as possible on the way in and again on the way out.

Whether by accident or design, however, in X-Wing strategic plans are frequently abandoned in favour of making you, the player, do pretty much everything. Try as I might, the only way I could see a way to success was a belt-and-braces approach: head for the Star Destroyer at a reasonable speed, take out as many fighters as possible along the way without getting too distracted, destroy the Intrepid’s shield generators while avoiding its lasers using the patented barrel-roll technique, and then head for the underside of the ship and keep blasting away until it finally falls.

Mindful that some notes on a successful strategy for this particularly tricky mission might be as helpful to the retro gaming public than my own much-delayed ramblings on the merits of the game, I did attempt to commit exactly what I’d done to memory, after abandoning efforts to capture the moment on video once it started to pose a risk to available hard drive storage.

But, sadly, it all became lost in the brief exhilaration of success and a backdrop of what seemed like an infinite number of failed attempts. It wasn’t exactly a fluke, because I’m not sure you can complete this mission with a fluke, but I must have relied on an element of good fortune, having tried to do exactly the same thing many times before.

If it hadn’t been for a certain grim determination to finish X-Wing, and the many hours already invested in overcoming some other head-scratching moments earlier in the game, I might well have given up before then. And it may be that the same combination of nostalgia and euphoria has contributed to a more sympathetic view of mega-hard missions like this and of X-Wing in general.

But at the risk of imbuing these oldies with more power and significance than they might perhaps merit in the eyes of modern gamers, taking down the Intrepid is a great feeling: a moment where the little guys bring down the big guys, against all the odds. Which is kind of what Star Wars is all about.

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Half-hearted giveaway: for once, if you write in, you could actually win a prize.

If you fancy a key for an old Star Wars classic, I have a few duplicates to give away to a good home (by which I mean, you actually want to play the game yourself and not sell it on for cash). Drop me an e-mail for more details.