Though we preferred TIE Fighter when it came to listing the best Star Wars games on PC, we did rate X-Wing quite highly on one important metric: it lets you fly a bloody X-Wing. The fantasy of flying to the rescue when a guy with a codename like Red Two shouts "I can't shake him!" is a highly specific one, but if you watched Star Wars at the right age you absolutely have that fantasy. X-Wing lets you fulfil it.

Unfortunately, it has some problems on modern PCs. The Special Edition won't even launch if you don't have a joystick plugged in, and while the Classic version and the Collector's CD-ROM version will let you play with mouse and keyboard, they run like butt. It's a 32-year-old game, but even on a high-end PC the framerate's inconsistent. And of course the spaceship models do look quite flat and blocky in the way you'd expect from 1993 graphics.

Which is why X-Wing Virtual Machine (XWVM) is such a glorious mod. At the base level it's a wrapper that lets you play X-Wing in Unity, meaning that it runs smoothly and at modern resolutions with adjustable settings—and it doesn't ask you to plug in a joystick even once. But add the HD asset pack on top, and you get new 3D models for not just the spaceships, but also the cockpits, and even the previously 2D planets that were there as backdrops. Oh yeah, and there's a full 3D model of the Death Star too.

Bonus features include VR support, a remastered digital version of the dynamic "iMuse" soundtrack, and improved in-flight mouse control. There's more to come, including support for TIE Fighter, but this first release is enough to get you playing. Note that if you don't install the HD asset pack you'll have menus replacing the 2D concourse and a virtual cockpit a la X-Wing Alliance, as apparently those were a struggle to get working at variable resolutions. So yeah, I highly recommend downloading the 2.5GB HD asset pack.

You'll need to own a copy of X-Wing, which you can find at Steam and GOG today, and then download the core mod for either Windows or Linux, and your optional extras (as well as HD assets there's a mod that adds additional in-flight mission dialogue). Unzip and run the downloaded exe to install XWVM, unpack the HD assets to the xwvm_Data directory, and finally run xwvm.exe. It should find your X-Wing install directory automatically, and then you'll be ready to enjoy X-Wing in glorious high-res 3D. At least, if you remember all the keyboard controls. Was it Alt-E to eject?

Apple's 2025 Worldwide Developers Conference, or WWDC,is just a couple weeks away. Like every year previous, it sounds like Apple is going to squeeze gaming into its software announcements.

According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple is planning to unveil a "dedicated gaming app" that "will serve as a launcher for titles and centralize in-game achievements, leaderboards, communications and other activity."

That sounds a lot like Steam, only this app will feature games from the App Store and, of course, the Apple Arcade subscription service. However, Gurman also mentioned that the Mac version "can tap into games downloaded outside of the App Store," so maybe it will connect to your Steam or Epic Games library somehow.

Apple also recently purchased RAC7, the studio behind Sneaky Sasquatch, which might hint that they're planning to do some in-house game development.

The past few years have also seen a handful of prominent games get ported to Apple's platforms, like Assassin's Creed Mirage and Resident Evil 4, and Netflix Gaming has made some admirable progress bringing over indie games like Hades and Death's Door.

While all of that is a step in the right direction, most gamers are still opting for a Windows PC or a console to play anything beyond mobile games. A new game launcher for Apple devices will probably make it more convenient finding and managing games on your Mac or iPhone, but it doesn't address the underlying issue of game compatibility.

Unfortunately for Apple, right now gaming on Linux is a better experience than gaming on Mac, which is really saying something. One has to wonder why Apple doesn't take a page from Valve's book and develop a compatibility layer for macOS like Valve's Proton platform, which has brought hundreds of Windows games to Linux.

A compatibility layer would reduce the hassle for developers to bring their games to Apple devices, or at least to macOS, and create a path to quickly grow the player base on macOS.

Right now, Apple has to work against the Catch-22 of no players vs no game developers: game devs aren't creating games for Mac because gamers are overwhelmingly playing on Windows, and that won't change until there are more games on Mac.

Ironically, MacBooks have gotten a lot better for gaming since Apple launched its M-series chips. The issue is that there aren't very many games compatible with macOS to really take advantage of that hardware.

Some sort of Proton-like compatibility layer, which could be built into Apple's new launcher, seems like the perfect way to bridge that gap and show how good gaming on macOS can be, potentially leading more devs to offer native Mac support.

Shirley Curry has affectionately been known by the internet as 'Skyrim Grandma' for the last decade thanks to the 100s of videos and streams she's uploaded calmly exploring all of Bethesda's evergreen RPG. And she's now taking her first steps in Cyrodiil's lush hills with The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered.

Curry put out her first two videos in Oblivion Remastered earlier this weekend, and they're just as tranquil as the countless videos that made her an online treasure. The first is called "Learning," and the second is, appropriately, called "Still Learning."

And they're exactly what the names suggest. Proving she's called Skyrim Grandma for a reason, Curry's first walkabout outside the Imperial City's sewers sees her both frustrated and enchanted by how darn different Oblivion is from its older sibling.

The different control scheme this time around had Curry exclaiming the game had "ugly movement... just ugly movement" in the opening 10 minutes, before slowing warming up to it over time.

Plus, there's nothing more satisfying than seeing someone really appreciate the finer details you'd sometimes stroll right passed, like the soft yellow flowers and landscapes she'd stop at to screenshot. "Sorry guys, you know I have to look at everything. I've never been here before," she told chat after planning a trail around the Imperial City. It's just so sweet.

You might remember Shirley Curry previously said she was going to retire from capturing and creating gameplay walkthroughs because it wasn't "fun anymore" and she was "bored to death with it." Skyrim Grandma seems to have been able to put aside some time for Bethesda games regardless as she's since, more sporadically, released Skyrim and now Oblivion Remastered clips.

Skyrim Grandma is going to be in Elder Scrolls 6 as an NPC