StarWarsClassics

 I think I've written before about the circular flow chart of Battletech, Star Wars, X-Wing, and Michael Stackpole. One of the points of contention in the original Battletech books (I haven't read any of the newer ones) is how action light they are. For the "core" books that actually advance the storyline, you tend to get 1 or 2 big (stand up 'mech fight) and maybe 3 or 4 (bar fight, near assassination, etc.) scenes in a book. There are individual books or sub series that go heavier, but that's the broad trend. The short scenes are often only a couple pages, and even the long ones rarely run into the double digits (and that's often with other stuff breaking them up). I mathed it out back in high school and they often come in at 15% or so of the whole book (30-40 pages in a 350ish page mass market.) Even after accounting for front and back matter, getting up to 30% would qualify as an action heavy book. Instead, as the Amazon reviews liked to complain about...

 The conventional wisdom in the EU is that Wedge Antilles is the only pilot to survive both Death Star runs. Luke is ON the DS2, and Han and Chewie are on the moon. In ANH, we see 4 ships leave. Luke and Wedge's X-Wings, the Falcon, and one Y-Wing. The consensus appears to be that Keyan Farlander (ironically from the X-Wing game) is the Y-Wing pilot. I thought that the "only man to survive both runs" line was from the first X-Wing book (which I read most of on a plane tonight) but the closest I can find is, "Commander Antilles might have gotten them all himself, but then he’s got two Death Stars painted on the side of his X-wing." More to come, I guess? There's also some guy in a prototype A-Wing who sometimes gets listed. This feels kind of bullshit to me.

 I'll do a larger Dark Forces  write up at some point. But I grabbed Nightdive's remaster on sale today and shot through the Avenger mission. Short version  Avenger  is one of the Death Squadron (Vader's personal fleet) Star Destroyers that pursues the Falcon  in ESB  (the one it attaches to, in fact). In this cut level, it has a copy of (at least part of the) the Death Star  plans. Kyle Katarn sneaks aboard and steals them. The level was originally used as a demo at trade shows and was going to be the first level of the game. It was cut for being too complicated/difficult for a first level. The replacement "Secret Base" level (and later Executor ) borrows some elements, but is definitely simpler (not counting the secrets). Overall, a good move, I think. As a tech demo, it does a decent job. Shows off the 3d, some light puzzle/platforming that you couldn't have done in Doom , etc. I'd have like to have seen them slide some Gands in, not only to break u...