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[ChrisReid]

Yay, today's the 15th anniversary of the original Wing Commander game shipping. Time's gone so fast, yet a lot has happened in that span.

In the Distant Future, Mankind is Locked in a Deadly War...
Exactly fifteen years ago today, Origin Systems, Inc. made history when they shipped the original Wing Commander. On September 26, 1990, after ten months of development, the world's first interactive movie shipped to software stores and changed the world. At 5:00 PM CST on that day, during the release party outside Origin's old Wild Basin office, Richard Garriott announced that the game's creator, Chris Roberts, had been hired as Director of New Technologies.

In the fifteen years since that day, the Wing Commander saga set the high bar for quality in computer and video gaming. If your favorite video game today goes out of its way to make you feel like a participant instead of an observer, it is because of what Wing Commander did to gaming. If your computer plays sounds on a Soundblaster, reads games from a CD-ROM drive or makes use of 3d accelerated graphics, it is because Wing Commander pushed the envelope and made these things the standard.

The importance of the original Wing Commander can not ever be understated. For the industry it was a new way to make computer games, one that continues fully unabated today. For the fans - us fans - it was the most exciting adventure we ever experienced. Never before did a computer game offer such emotion and such interaction. We have a lifetime of war stories from that simple computer game: we struggled to save the Ralari, we were thrilled to fly the new Rapiers and any wingnut worth his salt will chew your ear off about the time he lost both his guns and both his VDUs and still made it home in that Hornet, given the opportunity.

The full tribute's at http://www.wcnews.com It's written for Wing Commander fans, so Freespace fans, Tie Fighter lovers, and everyone who has a different favorite game ever doesn't need to jump on it. Although the last completely new game was made way back in 1998, the site's on track to get more than three times as many regular visitors this year than in 2000. There's all kinds of big mods in development, people are writing fan fiction and groups are role playing still. The last Wing Commander game of any sort, a GBA version of Prophecy, just came out in 2003. So if you ever loved a Wing Commander game, and there's a lot of you out there, today's a big anniversary for you. If you never played a Wing Commander game, there's a little primer at http://www.wcnews.com/background to fill you in.

 

[blackadde]

*salute

 

[datruth29]

Crap, I think you actually put tears in my eyes. ::sniff::

 

[Blimblim]

Back in the days, Origin's games made people upgrade their computer more than any other game released since then. I still remember having to uninstall windows 3.1 from my computer to get Strike Commander to fit on my hard drive...
I certainly miss Origin. Damn you EA !

 

[Jive Turkey]

Back in the days, Origin's games made people upgrade their computer more than any other game released since then. I still remember having to uninstall windows 3.1 from my computer to get Strike Commander to fit on my hard drive...

You too? Haha I remember thinking "How the hell is anybody supposed to play this? The game is so freaking HUGE!" :lol

 

[Victrix]

*sigh*

My beloved space sim genre, reduced to X3 (and Derek Smart's rantings)

I totally loved Prophecy, and Privateer is still wayyyy up there on my fondest gaming memories list.

/commence threadjack

btw, for anyone who cares to try it, check out Freespace 2 Open Source

It's a pretty nice upgrade to the engine, and Freespace 2 is available FREE as well, Volition released it to the community awhile back

http://scp.indiegames.us/news.php

And next up on the kickass-space game-for-free list would be Star Control 2

http://sc2.sourceforge.net/

The Ur-Quan Masters is an opensource port of SC2, along with enhancements from the 3do version, and a few other random tidbits

 

[BorkBork]

This was one of the first games I played on my uncle's 386 :lol
It was soo satisfying taking out these:

with my slow-ass Scimitar's gatling gun.
The good ol' days!
Is Wing Commander Prophecy for the GBA any good? It's probably rare as hell to find a copy now I would imagine.

 

[Shaheed79]

*sigh*

My beloved space sim genre, reduced to X3 (and Derek Smart's rantings)

I totally loved Prophecy, and Privateer is still wayyyy up there on my fondest gaming memories list.

/commence threadjack

btw, for anyone who cares to try it, check out Freespace 2 Open Source

It's a pretty nice upgrade to the engine, and Freespace 2 is available FREE as well, Volition released it to the community awhile back

http://scp.indiegames.us/news.php

And next up on the kickass-space game-for-free list would be Star Control 2

http://sc2.sourceforge.net/

The Ur-Quan Masters is an opensource port of SC2, along with enhancements from the 3do version, and a few other random tidbits

Flight Sims in general have taken a serious hit and mech-sims (don't you dare mention Mechassault). You would think with the type of tech we have these days the market would be pooring with them like in the early and mid 90's. I think I miss Descent more than anything. Ah well. *Salutes*

 

[Vashu]

It's a shame, Origin was one of my favorite developers. Had a great time playing Privateer, it was so huge. And Strike Commander was awesome back in the day. Selecting your missions, purchasing your armaments. I've never actually found another flightsim with so much depth and story. It's a shame there will probably never be sequels.

I won't mention Crusader: No Remorse and No Regret (Oops, I guess I just ) but those were great games too. But, before this topic goes astray into laments of how Origin should come back, I only have to say that I salute thee, and the great Wing Commander series you created when I was only 7.

 

[blackadde]

Flight Sims in general have taken a serious hit and mech-sims (don't you dare mention Mechassault).

Sigh ... What I would give for a Mech2 graphical remake.

 

[Victrix]

It seems that in general, slower, more deliberate and complex games have taken a serious nosedive in production numbers. The public gets what the public wants, and that is not games with hotkeys that span your entire keyboard, rts games with the pace of Kohan, turn based strategy games, and games with a manual as thick as a dictionary.

This is of course, a gross generality, and thus not entirely accurate, but simmy type games, particularly for non 'realistic' genres have become rather endangered.

Oh, on a sort-of-space-sim related note, check out Nexus: The Jupiter Incident. Uneven gameplay, but jesus christ its gorgeous, and your inner nerd just might appreciate the amount of fiddly bits you can play with on your fleet's individual ships.

 

[Tim the Wiz]

btw, for anyone who cares to try it, check out Freespace 2 Open Source

It's a pretty nice upgrade to the engine, and Freespace 2 is available FREE as well, Volition released it to the community awhile back

http://scp.indiegames.us/news.php

I remember that, I just lost track of its progress. Awesome to see how far its come and that it still has a well-sized community behind it. Same with Wing Commander. That franchise definitely deserves the kudos it's received.

 

[stewy]

Thanks for the heads-up on the article. Wing Commander has always been one of my favourite series. I can still remember firing up WCIII the first time playing right through until sunrise the next morning.

Good times...

 

[Izzy]

Back in the days, Origin's games made people upgrade their computer more than any other game released since then. I still remember having to uninstall windows 3.1 from my computer to get Strike Commander to fit on my hard drive...
I certainly miss Origin. Damn you EA !

Haha, did you have to manually change autoexec.bat and config.sys, too? Good old days. :lol

 

[Blackace]

Wing Commander II is in my personal top ten list of best games ever.. that was the hotness.. not that one was bad at all.. 15 years man I feel old..

 

[GitarooMan]

Wing Commander 2 is without question my favorite PC game of all time. The combination of flight game, interesting story, branching paths, and great graphics and sound was fantastic. I was never as much of a fan of the FMV stuff, I really liked the art in the first two. I also loved how you picked out a call sign, saw your name on the board, and got promotions based on your performance. The music was also suitably epic. I think it's too bad EA dropped the series, but I guess the budget for a high-quality WC game is not worth it to them. I highly recommend people track down the Win95 version if they can.

 

[DarienA]

And in an effort to put a damper on some of the good feelings, here's a nice stain on the series.

 

[Dr_Cogent]

Wing Commander II is in my personal top ten list of best games ever.. that was the hotness.. not that one was bad at all.. 15 years man I feel old..

You are old.


As well as I am old


Ahhh, the memories.

 

[Ruzbeh]

How come no one does anymore space combat games on PC? I would love a space combat game on Revolution.

 

[dark10x]

I also miss the Origin of old. So many brilliant games that pushed the PC to the max. They also really pushed the CD-ROM format very hard and made yet another convincing case as to why everyone needs such a drive. Those were some of the best PC gaming days.

The Mech 2 mention also brings back memories. To think that the Activision we know today was responsible for such a classic. I'm feeling all nostalgic just thinking about it.

How come no one does anymore space combat games on PC? I would love a space combat game on Revolution.

Come on, that kind of thing has no place in this thread.

 

[Oni Jazar]

Origin > *. Seriously. Just about every game they put out was gold. Pacific Strike was the only game that I didn't play. But since this is a WC topic I'll focus on that.

I remember buying The Savage Empire and checking out the latest Origin catalog included with the game and looking at the Wing Commander add thinking OMG this looks too amazing to be true!

It doesn't get much better then the world of Wing Commander. The Terran-Kilrathy war seemed endless and pervasive, invading every aspect of the known galaxy. It was The Great War. WC1 introduced the world to characters never seen before in a video game. Soldiers and heros doing their part to save humanity. The cutscenes really brought a human touch making all the battles filled with meaning. Not that the battles needed much help, because they were an amazing combination of fast speed, detailed visuals, and awsome dynamic music. Creative owes Origin and Wing Commander tremendous gratitude for making them what they are today.

Wing Commander 2 continued the success of 1 with aplomb. More missions, better story, larger ships, Voice Acting! Hearing the Kilrathy speak for the first time blew me away.

WC3 and WC4 is when the gameplay took a backseat to the FMV and story. The gameplay was still good, not as great as the first two IMO but still good. The FMV was excellent though. It's got the best FMV production and quality found in any video game to this day. All star cast with branching storylines and multiple endings made it a really amazing experience. Checking out the behind the scenes footage (I wish I still had) made me see how hilariuos and cool Tom Wilson (Maniac) is.

A big peeve of mine is though that they should have never ended the Terran-Kilrathy war. That was the WC experience to me and once it was over it felt like there was a lack of direction to the series. Prophecy tried to pull the focus back to war with the introduction to the insectoid aliens which I forget the name. By then it was too late and the quality suffered. It was a good game but a mere shadow of it's predecessors IMO.

But enough of that lets move on to one of the most kickass experiences on all of PC gaming ...

Pirate - "Who are you that flies so good? Are you insane?!"

Privateer - "I'm just a guy with a load of cargo in the hold and a load of bills to pay at home."

Pirate - "And I the same! You shouldn't kill me just for attacking you!"

Privateer - "Oh I don't mind that you tried to kill me, but protecting myself from your type gets expensive...

...and I'm on a budget." *blows ship to hell*

It doesn't get any better then this.

 

[dhendren13]

Wing Commander, as well as Ultima, were the games that defined gaming for me as a teen... I remember tweaking my autoexec.bat and config.sys and purchasing QEMM memory manager just to squeeze the maximum RAM out of my system for these games... those games made me buy my first VGA card/monitor, my first soundcard (AdLib), maxing out my RAM to 1MB, buying a bigger HDD (10MB)... good times...


...and I can still remember my shock (yelling at the monitor "Stop! Noooo!") when Spirit died... stuff like that just didn't happen in games back then...

 

[tetsuoxb]

Did someone say derek smart?

 

[wonderfuldays]

I miss Origin~

 

[shuri]

Wing Commander 3 had MARK HAMMIL! Wng Commander 3 had Mark Hammil having his chest and belly RIPPED OPEN by his best friend, a Kilrathy, who was once favorable to the human cause.

That cutscene was simply awesome and my 15 years old mind was blown away when I saw that :lol

 

[Borys]

How come no one does anymore space combat games on PC?

Because nobody would buy it. Games are like fast-food nowadays. Buy shit and play shit. Who the fuck reads manuals today? 80 keyboard bindings?

Second part of your post isn't welcome in such a sad thread.

 

[tahrikmili]

Wing Commander Series
Freespace Series
X-Wing Series

*salute*
...
*moment of silence*
...

 

[Shinobi]

And in an effort to put a damper on some of the good feelings, here's a nice stain on the series.

:lol :lol :lol I've tried to watch this movie twice and found it impossible...just complete and utter rot. On the other hand I didn't mind the Wing Commander Academy cartoon, as cheesey as it was.

My dad traded in the beloved Amiga 500 for a 386 PC simply to play Wing Commander 2. It's one of a handful of games that became an experience for me, one that I'd think about non-stop, one that I'd go to sleep and have dreams about (Fate of Atlantis, Tomb Raider and Shenmue 1 & 2 are the only other games I can think of that made me feel this way). It was just mindblowing to play back then, and fun as hell to boot. A new Wing Commander with online battles is one of those things I think about with drool trickling down my chin, only to get snapped back to the sa reality. Really, the death of Origin is reason enough to say fuck EA and any roach who defends them.

 

[Tamanon]

I still fondly remember leaving Maniac to die many a time, or sometimes even shooting him out of the sky.

And Spirit and Iceman rocked!