I've used cursor keys and mouse, so you're not alone in remembering that. I suppose you just have improperly configured controls or something else erroneous.

Thank you! Now we just have to figure out where I'm going wrong...

MrD wrote on 2026-06-08, 18:47:

I'm certain I wouldn't have been using the super heavy mouse input and constantly dragging the mouse over the desk?

Tie Fighter is sensitive to CPU speed and one symptom of that is how mouse controls get slower and slower the faster the CPU is. It needs to be played at around 486/66MHz speeds to avoid issues.

My most vivid memory of the game is how I nearly wore a hole through my disk fighting A-Wings with at Tie Bomber and I DID play it with a 486/66MHz system 😁

I'm using a Pentium MMX 200 so I suppose that isn't helping 😀 (it is a "speedeasy" board so perhaps underclocking would help)

If you're playing the Collector's CD-ROM edition and can do the 640x480 mode, then just going down to around 100MHz on a pentium should help solve the speed problem while also letting everything look nicer. As for controls, everything but actual flight is done on the keyboard, so it's not hard to see how you could misremember that.

TIE Fighter in VESA mode is quite a joy, but it was a pain to get working. I think there's emulation in DOSBox for that now, but I stick to the 3D remake for X-Wing: Alliance, which blows the old DOS version away.

IIRC I had the disk version installed and it had the voices and definitely used keyboard inputs, so it wasn't limited to the CD. If you want to play the CD version I think you can just copy the CD.ID file from the disc to the root of your boot drive.
Unless I'm confusing these with X-Wing or something else!

I think i played it on a pentium 233 before without issues... X-Wing and Tie Fighter are two games I intend to play soon. Though probably on my 486 and with a flight stick . I used to use a combo of a gamepad and keyboard to fly .

Ignoring the slow mouse input - does anybody have any more concrete memories of flying with the keys, maybe a specific mod or crack for XW or TF?

I think cursor control may have been possible, but I doubt that you could make any substantial progress in the game (and even less in X-wing). The flight and combat was very fast and dynamic and cursor controls just were wat too slow and imprecice. I think you need a joystick to have fund with this one.

A sidenote oddity you might find interesting. More info here if you're curious.