I never played Wing Commander. My first in the series was Privateer, followed by WC III.
I remember playing WC1 & WC2 at a friend’s house, before I had a computer. Those were the days.
My strongest memory of the game is returning to the Tiger’s Claw after a successful mission, but screwing up the landing. I had thought I was on the correct course, but at the last second, the displayed angle of the Tiger’s Claw shifted, and I realized I was going to crash into it.
I pulled up sharply, barely missing the carrier. I thought I was in the clear, but heard a large explosion - it turns out Maniac hadn’t been so lucky.
My friend and I were quite amused at the next scene, in which the crew members were paying their respects to Maniac, and ol’ Bluehair swore solemnly: “I’ll get the furball that did this to you”.
From then on, I imagined that Bluehair was involved in sabotaging Maniac’s ship, and covering up for that during the rest of the game.
I’ve wanted to make one for ages, although I’m but a peon unemployed game programmer so yeah.
Didn’t Square release a really crappy one for 360? Project Sylpheed or whatever?
I didn’t think my post would be so fortuitous but yes, it looks like on Sep 27 1990, Wing Commander was released according to Mobygames.
Me too… I just found myself listening to Iron Maiden, eating Cheetos and slamming a can of Jolt.
I remember paying $100 for the WC3 collector’s edition back in 1994. And then the UPS driver left it in a snow drift on my front porch, so after calling a few days after it should’ve been delivered and being told it was marked as delivered, I went out and dug around until finding it.
Jumping forward a couple of years… does anyone remember the voice expansion for Wing Commander II? It came on seven floppies, and required a Sound Blaster.
When I first heard Kilrathi talking trash, I thought, “man, it can’t ever be cooler than this.”
:-D
The era of the $19.99 voice expansion, yeah. Insane, but worth it.
I’ll always wonder what would have happened to the series if the whole “interactive movie” craze hadn’t come along and caught Wing Commander up in FMV-craziness along with Gabriel Knight. Because it worked pretty well in WC3, but WC4 was more of a movie with game interludes (bizarrely, it was a much better movie than the actual Wing Commander movie), and from there, the series’ path to doom was pretty obvious in retrospect.
My real question is, why were games like this - space action/sim games - only popular during the 90’s? Wing Commander launched it in '90. Freespace 2 was the end of the line in '99.
I suppose it depends how you define “space action/sim” games, but I wouldn’t agree that it launched with Wing Commander. You can go back at least as far as Elite (1985) or even Star Raiders (c.1981). Maybe you’re specifically referring to the mission-based, story-centered style that Wing Commander used?
“You cannot defeat the Drakhai!”
(followed promptly by)
“Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!”
I will never forget this game. It was one of the first my brother and I played together on a “new” PC we begged my dad to get that was hideously expensive. We took turns playing it and did everything we could until Wing Commander 2 came out. Then we took turns playing that, and our computer had such little RAM it took about 20 minutes for the game to process the landing on the carrier and ending the mission-sometimes it froze, sometimes it work, but we waited everytime. Finally we got dad to spend about $200 on 4 MEGABYTES of extra RAM to help us play, and off we went.
Some of my fondest gaming memories are of Wing Commander-all of them. I would give almost anything for a remake that is playable today.
Hahah! Yes the great technology moments.
The one after that was 3dfx and GLQuake-Colored lighting!!!
I love Wing Commander. I love a game i can lose, not just game over, but lose in a story sense. These games were ahead of the times and still really have not been matched in some ways.
What was it Secret Missions, where you keep seeing the Kilrathi stealth ship and everyone thinks you are nuts? Awesome.
And WC IV, there is what 6 endings? Good performance, Bad Performance, Traitor, Evil, good and meh you are boring.
Prophecy? Well, it flew better than all the others, but abandoned the ambitious storytelling for a ‘modern’ linear story.
Privateer, to me was the first sandbox game. I spent far too much time going port to port and just playing with money, killing pirates and having a good time. Never did finish the story there…
Privateer II never happened. OK, it had a great front end UI, but the game stunk.
My favorite game series ever, me and my dad played them many, many times. I preferred the feel of the combat in the first 2 games and list WCII as my overall favorite but enjoyed all of them. I remember downloading the free expansion pack to Prophecy, I was going out of town for the weekend, started the 100mb download over my 33.6kb modem and when I got back 4 days later it had about 30 minutes to go. Lots of great memories from all of the episodes, game and story ones. I still think they chose the wrong crew member to be the traitor in WC III dammit.
I was trying to soldier on with the C-64 in the months before WC came out, but the allure of 256-color VGA seen in the CGW ads was too strong. I actually bought M1 Tank Platoon and Battle of Britain:Their Finest Hour before even owing a PC, and I was in heaven just reading the manuals and dreaming of the possibilities these games presented.
Soon I got a 286/16 from a mom ‘n’ pop shop in town, with all of 40 MB of hard disk and 1 megabyte of memory, kids. Soon thereafter I added Red Baron to the collection.
I remember seeing WC1 being demoed at Babbages, and my jaw dropped. The “red alert, everyone to their ships!” cinematic, the actual in-game graphics, etc. were all incredible for their time. I HAD to have this. The actual game was even better than I expected, even with sounds coming through the PC speaker. An Adlib card was soon acquired to experience the sounds in a proper fashion.
A 386/40 and Soundblaster were must-haves before WC2 came out, and the speech during the cutscenes was another OMFG moment. Yes, this was well worth the $20 for the voice pack.
Needless to say, after M1TP, BOB:TFH, RB1, and WC1 as my first PC games, my batting average went down considerably.
Oh, and for greatest joystick ever, people keep misspelling “CH Flightstick”.
No it didn’t. It was just a really different animal.
It’s the intro to WC2, if nothing else.
(“Your ridiculous claims about a Kilrathi cloaking device–” “It’s true, sir. The Kilrathi have invisible fighters.” “Enough! The court already demoted you to captain, and as far as I’m concerned, your career in the navy is over.”)
the cut scenes in privateer 2 were interesting at the time, but the game itself sucked. big donkey testicles.
I broke at least two of these playing Speedball 2 on my Amiga. :)
Mine was a more modest 386/SX 25 (with a soundblaster, not an Adlib), but it still did the trick. What a great game.
I’d definitely love to see WC 1-3 rereleased.
Wendelius
God, yes. Hugely disappointing game. I hated the collision detection in that game, the boundary box was freakin’ huge around most ships and it would cause this derby-like piles of ships unable to fly past each other.