With the big reveal just two days away, we thought it would be fun to look back to how the ORIGINAL space combat simulator was announced to the world. What follows is the text of Origin Systems’ 1990 press release for Wing Commander I, which was then called “Wingleader”:
Groundbreaking 3-D Graphics
Spatially Realistic Stereo Sound
A New Cinematic Game Experience
WINGLEADER
The 3-D Space Combat Simulator(tm)
Available Fall 1990: MS-DOS, 640K, VGA/EGA/Tandy graphics, sound board, mouse/joystick support
Chicago, IL — Consumer Electronics Show — June 2, 1990 — “You will never think the same way about space combat simulation again,” attests Chris Roberts, the designer of ORIGIN’s newest gaming innovation, WINGLEADER: The 3-D Space COmbat Simulator. Journalists and developers given an early peek at the revolutionary entertainment product have agreed with that assessment. All industry members will get their chance to see an dhear WINGLEADER for themselves as ORIGIN previews its Fall ’90 product line during the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago, IL during JUne 2-5, 1990.
Leaving behind the cliches of previous “space games,” WINGLEADER decisively launches a new generation of audio-visual gaming which looks, sounds and plays more like an interactive, multi-dimensional theater experience than any conventional computer game. WINGLEADER unquestionably redefines the state-of-the art in MS-DOS entertainment software, featuring explosive 256-color VGA, bitmapped, 3-D graphics and a suite of specially created stereo sound effects and musical scores which, together, leave the player wide-eyed and gasping for breath.
The compelling sensory elements and fast-paced action of WINGLEADER will captivate players weaned on ordinary flight simulators and arcade shoot’em-ups. To create the realistic animated characters and scenes found in the game, Roberts emulated the cinematic technique of rotoscoping, staging the actions with human actors and shooting them on high-quality video. The video images were then turned over to ORIGIN’s computer artists, who defined and enhanced each animation frame for inclusion in the game. These scenes make use of moving camera angles and multi-level action to convincingly thrust the player into the WINGLEADER story.
In the story, the player defends humanity from invading extraterrestrial fighter squadrons, gaining experience which ultimately qualifies him to command up to four classes of starfighter. In all, over two dozen unique spacecraft ranging from friendly and enemy starfighters, spacecraft carriers, fuel tankers and transports are portrayed, each having been created through a complex process of 3-D imaging and ray tracing technology. Extensive research went into flight dynamics and 3-dimensional scaling, rotation and physics, creating a truly riveting and memorable ride.
Professional sound engineers have produced an extraordinary coordination between visual effects seen on the screen and the multi-voice, synthesized sounds and music being pumped through the stereo channels over such PC sound systems as the Ad Lib, Roland MT-32 and Roland LAPC-1. WINGLEADER boasts a musical score which, in composition, complexity and mood-setting ability, rivals those found in contemporary films of the genre. Also, the sound barrier is pushed further through the game’s elaborately coordinated special sound effects. Explosions boom from one speaker or the other, depending on the point of origin spatially relative to the player, and the engine noises of the starfighters pan from one speaker to the other as they buzz pas the player’s ship.
In short…
WINGLEADER must be SEEN and HEARD to be believed!
Does this mean something about the new game? Will the new game be a replica like of Wing Commander?
Well Mr. Roberts, I hope you won’t be shit****g on your Freelancer fans totally by making this game strictly WC like or a 100% replica.
No one will be shitting on anyone
Its just a figure of speech
not meant literal!
Wing Commander is and always will be LEGENDARY.
Mr. Roberts Recipe:
1000 ounce of Wing Commander
1000 ounce of Freelancer
250 ounce of Decent: Freespace 2
250 ounce of X-Rebirth
20 tons of Chris ambitions for creating a new standard in Space sims.
Give it 24 months in Mr. Roberts care and you have a Legendary new space sim that blows all other space sims into another Galaxy.
I’d give it a little more X-Terran Conflict (not Rebirth- one ship only?) and Privateer
Defo agree! We need to be able to pilot ALL ships ;D
Mr Roberts I hope you add landing on planets and flying in Planets space. That will be really nice. You have made the greatest games ever. Wing Commander was a very big chunck of me playing my childhood.
50% of Eve Online or GTFO
Yes, +50% EVE Online please. Imagine the ability of changing all ship modules. I would very much like to launch torps at sub-warp speed.
nothing from EVE online at all please!!!
Maybe a bit more Freespace 2 Source Code Project in particular. Don’t forget the X-wing and Tie Fighter, either!
None the less, I trust Mr. Roberts’ vision above all!
If we can add 2 tons of Firefly I’ll be quite jazzed
@MByBee I’d like to see a cargo class pull a Crazy Ivan in Star Citizen!
I miss Hobbes and Ginger Lynn.
Add 250 ounces of Elite (the old one from the C64-era) and 250 ounces of Privateer to that and i will be very happy with the result. ^^
i would prefer at least 1 000 000 ounces of privateer
and then all rest ;p
You’ve got the wrong website for that.
Psst, check out Wing Commander Privateer.
Mr roberst please go ahead and shit all over the freelancer fans and make it a Wing Commander replica ^^.
Dear Avon – why not the best of both worlds? The Fighter experience of Wingcommander and the wide game-world of Freelancer? The original Wingcommander and Starlancer were linear – and that is out of time…
And by the way there is a fan-replica called Wingcommander Saga…
Just dicking around with Stefan
Hehe, I wouldn’t do that if I were you…
What the hell did you just say about me, you scum? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Libery Security Force, and I’ve been involved in numerous secret raids on Rheinland, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in nomad warfare and I’m the top gunner in the entire Liberty Navy. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the hell out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before in Sirius, mark my words. You think you can get away with saying that crap to me over the Neural Net? Think again, scumbag. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of LSF intelligence units across Liberty and your ship’s licence is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The black hole that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You’re dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my Starflier. Not only am I extensively trained in dogfighting, but I have access to the entire armory of the Liberty Navy Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the sector, you little scumbag. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you idiot. I will shoot Magma Hammers all over you and you will drown in them. You’re dead, kiddo.
@ Doj – You have a very vivid imagination. Calm down, you friggin’ lunatic.
This is a game forum, and it’s not Call of Duty or CounterStrike.
Hm . .. pretty nice Freelancer RP
@GreenGriffon Pretty late to the party here, but just wanted to let you know that Doj isn’t as much of a lunatic as you might think.
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/navy-seal-copypasta
Wing commander was not linear. Maybe WC2 was more linear than the rest of the Wing Commanders.
I almost wrote rest of the WCs
Could be interpreted differently.
Dilemma, heh?
Just do something awesome. Or…maybe it already done?
Anyway, I know I can’t change your plans,projects , etc, so…I’ll just wait
I didn’t realize we were allowed to use the word “shit”.
I have accepted that this will probably not be a WC installment. I am cool with it being a new franchise. I do hope that, if this goes over well, that Mr. Roberts will be able to work with EA and Microsoft to further the other franchises that fans like us have been so loyal to.
Also, shit.
OMG you just blasphemised (is that a word?) twice in one sentence. You hope that these wonderful talents should sell thier souls to the money grabbing evil overlords? Well, sorry if I’m speaking for myself here, but that would be the single worst move any dev company of this callibre could ever do. Look what happened to the Freelancer franchise – sold out by their publishers and assimilated into the Microsoft borg cube and ditching the freelancer project with no regard to anyone. That product was forced out too early and never received a full update.
My only hope is this game comes to fruition as a trully independant title and stays well clear of EA and the likes. You are already witnessing the revolution in game funding, Free to play and zero-sub programmes. This is the future of the gaming industry unfolding right here. Watch out for the impact on the big software houses as they realise they’ve got competition again.
I agree, please, please for the LOve of all that is good & holy, DO NOT align with EA or any other mega publisher on this!! they killed bioware’s swtor & they’ll try to kill Star Citizen too!
Thank God this is Chris Roberts we’re talking about here.
& thank God this isn’t his first rodeo.
this man knows what the score is
Nice
I’d read nothing into this at all – other than that it’s a look back at something awesome.
I still a get a kick out of reading things like “explosive 256-color VGA, bitmapped, 3-D graphics”. I remember reading an interview with T.C. Lee about the original Starflight (1986), and how the interviewer couldn’t believe the game had over two ~megabytes~ of data. Anybody else remember those days.
And just to conform, shitty shit shit shit.
Yes, when an entire game fit on a floppy disk to be played in the 5.25 drive.
WC was EPIC and I played it over and over and over.
Having one disk as the save disk and another as the game disk!
Wing Commander was nice and Freelance was… not as good as it could have been. Why is no one mentioning Privateer? That was an outstanding game! (and i mean the first part, not the crappy second)
Probably (and this is just my perspective here) it’s because when folks talk about Wing Commander, they’re talking about the entire series, of which Privateer is a part. Ostensibly P2 is also part of the WC universe, but I’ve done a fair amount of research on that game and I find it……problematic.
In any event, P1, P2 and Freelancer were all excellent games in their own right, though I’ll admit to only replaying P1 and Freelancer (P2 was a bit noir for my taste, and it turns out to be nothing more than a big family dispute involving the gayest looking handguns ever conceived by a propmaster).
For gods sake,
i’ll love all WC, P1/P2 and freelancer.. cant hardly count the time “wasted” on them
witch reminds me:
if got an old unused amd athlon staying arround…. *wheres that damn dos-disk, win 98 cd, and games* *grab* *grab*
gota to play some pieces again
happy time till star citicens
Wasn’t there a Wing Commander Armada or something? I’ll have to look on my computer room floor (residue from a “White Elephant” XMas DS power cable search).
100% agree. Freelancer was fairly unmemorable, the characters and back story especially. It was all quite bland and detached. The story and characters felt like an afterthought; I can’t even remember the player character’s name. Grayson Burrows, on the other hand… he did “Browncoat” before Firefly. He was a sneering everyman, someone you wanted to tag along with. The guy from Freelancer always just struck me as a clueless twit.
IMHO the notice show us how WING COMMANDER revolutionated its market sector and we can read about it nowadays with time perspective and perhaps, a nostalgic point of view
Nothing more to be interpreted. Of course, we FREELANCER fans cannot be disappointed with the new game under development, because simple logics indicate that WC (or WING LEADER!) was the 1st step in a long-time evolution chain (FREELANCER has been the last one). Now Mr. Roberts and his team are pushing the frontier beyond (and hopefully, we all will be part of that experience 
).
Damn straight. And shit.
Remembering back to 1990, I didnt even see Wing Commander coming, a friend got it for christmas, and showed it to me right after that, and I was hooked for life. It has been a very long time since I’ve been sitting around like this waiting for a space sim to come out. It doesnt matter to me if its a branching story line, a free form sandbox game, persistant online experience, or a mix in between, I’m sure it will be well worth the wait!
Remember, we are about two years prior to this document, relatively speaking, but it can be used as a template as what to expect. Long on tech descriptions and generalizations about game-play. Now, just because we are a mature audience, and some fowl language is permissible, let’s not over do it.
jeez…. it thought it was THE announcement already
Didn’t realize i was looking at the museum part of the site..
too many wishfull thinking i guess
Going to play Wing Commander, again, right now! Nudge me when you’ve made your new game
The Wing Commander games are what I grew up with here in the Netherlands. I loved part 1 en 2. I remember my late father and I going on a trip right before Christmas to get WC3. We got there right before the shop closed and I played WC3 that whole Christmas. Me playing and my dad watching and also staring in awe. Those kind of memories bring a tear to my eye even today. I am now 32.
And what’s wrong with a linear game nowadays? It’s the perfect way to tell a story. And I don’t care when it’s a good story. I got all the original stuff right here, even the novels. A modern day Wing Commander would be…. pffff…
But I don’t see that happening. What about the rights to the product? Who has those?
Frack, i bet that pc in 1990 cost more that what you will need for this game holy cow poo moooooo^^^^
Wing Leader? OMFG! I had never bought that with that name…
After all… WC1 was great a variable storyline (even there was only one final ending), the interactions with Shootglas, Angel, Paladin, the briefings… I still would play it, if it runs under Win7…
I miss it…
It does. Just get DOSBOX or better, D-Fend Reloaded that includes the latest DOSBOX and you’ll be flying your copy of WC in no time. But if you don’t want mess around with D-Fend profiles, you can get WC1 and WC2 in a pack from gog.com
Ah, 1990. Wing Commander was really something. I can’t think of a more impressive game.
Oh, I so hope this is like Wing Commander!!!
Long live Wing Commander!
curious (and not trying to be an ass here) but are the typos from the original source or were they introduced in this post?
typos are a bit of a pet peeve of mine, i look at things and think ‘reall? did no one spell-check/fact-check/whatever-check this before it was sent out for public consumption?’
lol, i just caught ‘reall’ but decided not to fix it.
we’re only human after all (and i need to keep reminding myself)
Hell the first game i played in my life was wing commander 1 when i was 4 on my old win 95 bell packard and the second was starlancer when it came out some around my 5th birthday… yep got myself a copy of starlancer and sidewinder joystick, best birthday EVER
i played them all and i like freelancer the best out of all of them, yes the wing commander was legendary but freelancer running a private server from home was the best…. it was full for me had all 64 ppl online at all times….
I’m 29 years old and this comment makes me jealous…
Anyone know a good doctor?
I remember the first time i played Wing Commander – I too was excited about being in a space dog fight. After years of playing games there are always fond memories of playing the first versions of games – from Wing Commander to Homeworld they impact how other games lean towards. I hope the bar is set high cause as games evolve the stories become hard to be original – same with movies being made…..recycled off the classics
See you out there
I miss Wingcommander. I would like to see if it would give it some time, has a new edition of Wingcommander by Chris Roberts. Full of expectation, I am waiting for a rebirth.
I’ve had the priviledge of living through those early days. I still remember having to buy a decent joystick (a Thrustmaster IIRC), upgrading the PC, then the graphics card, then the joystick again coz I broke the Thrustmaster. My current joystick, the MS Sidewinder Force Feedback 2, has been collecting dust for almost 10 years but it still works! Just tested it on WC Saga.
Make us proud Mr Roberts!
And include the great sound tracks that made Wing Commander so memeriable!
Exactly one month after this press release, I was hired as Origin’s 40th employee.
httpL//www.TheGrinningSkulls.com
Along with certain Star wars, Space Sim in which you portrait a lovely imperiar pilot, I SHALL NOT SAY ITS NAME, TIE FIGHTER
; is Wing Commander my favorite Space Sim. I have expended lots of hours playing it.
God, I miss the good old days in which Space Sims where popular
None the less, Chris is back and finally after all this years we are getting what we have been waiting for.
FYI: I´m still waiting for a Kilrathi side campaing
Best Regards
Still got my original WC in its box, with it’s 11 5.25″ disks, the Claw Marks and the blueprints…
This series nailed me from the get-go. I confess I played the watered down SNES version first, then found out it was for PC. The sheer level of art they couldn’t squeeze on the ROM was incredible.
I’ve played every game to carry the IP name. Only one I can’t find is my 3x combo cd of Armada, Academy, and Privateer. Lucky I have my old Priv cd…with Rightous fire in it.
And feel free to shit on the Freelancer fans. Though I confess to wanting some planetary landings and exploration. It doesn’t have to be EVERY world like Derek Smart’s Universal Combat and Battlecruiser franchise, but I’d like to see something implemented.
As Zero said, “I’d pay some real money for some daylight Maestro!”
And like Kmark, I still have my mint copies of the blueprints and Claw Marks. Not to mention Victory Streak, that was a fresh diversion past WC2′s lack of immersion documentation. Nevermind it though, plenty of immersion in the game itself.
TBH. LucasArts should hire him to FIX the Star Wars problems
I wore out 3 joysticks on Wing Commander!
Can’t wait to wear out some more!
All Hail Chris Roberts, Space King!
It was the 23rd centurie, mankinds darkest hour. The war had been raging for almost a hundred years, we had been fighting for so long no one could remember…..
)
There is no doubt in my heart when I say Freelancer was my favorite space opera of all times, and Im pretty sure I know the best of them all since Elite. This should give a hint of my age. My childhood friend and I are looking forward to this new adventure, but it is with some mixed feelings. The eager is there, the time and ressources is not, But I still want the game, and the coolest ship there is, but not if I have to pay for the ship by cash, but because I deserve it, I bought the game, I earned xp and game credits so I can get it……… So does that meen that since I would rather spend money on my kids diapers rahter than on a cool design, I would be outmanouverd by a kid with to much money in his pockets??? I just wonder… Cris Roberts, thank you for your beutyfull ideers now and in the past, for letting us become the spacepilot of our dreams, I hope for freeflight in space citizen like in Freelancer, since you call it a sandbox in space, planetary flight/visit and orbit could be nice, but no matter what I believe in your projekt and am willing to pay the same amount any pc collectors edition cost, If I had more money I could use then sure I would, but I do not, so then I hope I will not be left with a feeling of punishment while playing the game…. I hope you readers understand and can somewhat calm me down
Obvioulsy I could have posted this elsewhere…. But, no matter
I remeber seeing somewhere on the website, Chris Roberts saying, anything purchasable through microtransactions can be earned through gameplay. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
IN the GI mag this past month they referred to “GW2 Model” for a business plan. Microtransactions or cosmetics but nothing power changing, although I did NOT read exactly what you’re asking, I suspect based on the business modeling it’s not an Eastern MMO style cash shop.
Will you be adding the lovely Privateer tratorbeam cargo multiplier exploit in Star Citizen? Just kidding. In 1993, I accidentally found the exploit while trying to avoid a militia patrol cargo hold scan when doing an Ultimate and Tobbaco run between Pentoville and New Detroit. I just happened to have two tractor beams at that time, and used both at the same time to recover the jettisoned contraband. To my surprise, I had double the contraband in my cargohold! The game lost its difficulty after that.
Personally I’m curious about what happens if you fly close to planets. Stratosphere? Atmosphere? Landing someplace in the middle of absolutely nowhere, IF the ship is atmosphere worthy, something quite a few ships might not be?
I can see a situation where one ship might be the absolute best light fighter there is in space – but because it’s not aerodynamic, it is comparatively hopeless in atmosphere.
And that’s just talking about human-sized planets. What about gas giants? Would components have ‘pressure’ ratings, meaning a heavily armored battleship might be able to go lower in a gas giants atmosphere, possibly hiding in the upper layers of storms like the giant ‘eye’ of Jupiter, or the thing pretending it’s a storm at Saturn’s south pole? I could see a civilian freighter falling apart from trying the same things… and possibly components of the battleship falling apart too. Worst case, the things falling first is engines or thrusters…
256 color VGA? Wow-wee!!
Thank you for coming back. We need some love in this area.
WC1 is still the game that sticks the most vividly in my memory of gaming. I remember drooling over everything that I could find about the game. I remember sneaking off to Babbage’s with my Dad and older brother to buy the game (couldn’t let Mom know what we were doing!). I remember seeing the live demo on the state-of-the-art 386 at the store and being absolutely blown away by what I was seeing… and wondering if our 286 would be up to snuff (it was). I remember those first few days after we got the game, school was such a terrible agony… counting down the minutes until I could get back home to play again! For my brother and I, every minute possible was spent on that game.
The follow-on WC games (especially Privateer, my favorite overall in the series) will always be fondly remembered, but those first few weeks with WC1 were absolutely unforgettable.
As far as space sim games go I was introduced via my love for Star Wars and so played X-Wing and Tie Fighter first. The first and only game that I played in the Wing Commander series was Prophecy. It became one of my favorite games of all time, and I think most people say that the others are better. All I know is that Star Citizen is the game that I did not know I needed until someone else provided proof. Cannot wait.
WC 1, 2 & Privateer = classics
Despite the fact that I grew up on F-15 Strike Eagle II and F-19 Stealth Fighter, I have to admit, this is a legend.
I still have the original WC + Secret Missions & WC2 + Special Operations 1&2 + Speech Accessory Pack in my Bookshelf remebering me of those good old days where you had to free up autoexce.bat and config.sys to get it running. I also bought a sound card for WC, my first Creative ISA Sound card and later a Roland 128 Midi module to listen that amazing sound in WC2. WC was/is on 11 5,25″ Disks 360kb each i could not remember that there was someting like patch as it is usual today.
I keept all my old games, WC3 WC4 Privateer I&II with all addons. Loved also FreespaceI which had an amazing Intro and FreespaceII to.
Over hee in Switzerland, I was sitting at my colleague, the one that could afford horribale telco costs dialing in to Rose BBs somewhere in the US. While browsing the new files of not so legally gathered games, I got caught by the name Wing Commander. I told him to download that game … when I got home and unpacked the stuff, I was blown away by what’s coming up on the screen … I remembered my early wish in the computer age to become a creator of a great game in space. In those days, I was fascinated by Odyssee 2001 (well, only the first half) where ships are docking to rotating wheel stations … silently with Strauss sound … then, I got only the Commodore C64 and had no idea how to pour my ideas into the small memory … and only several years later, I experienced Wing Commander. What a revelation! Since then, I bought and played most games of the WC universe, more inclined to Privateer and Free lancer, but not deniying any occasional dog fight …
I am really excited that Chris says “I do a game only for PC … but at its best”. Only this way a game can catch all of me and let me immerse entirely …
I had just finished Ultima 7 Serpent Isle when I received Wing Commander for Christmas.
I was 13 years old and I had no idea what to make of it. I had never heard of it, I didn’t ask for it, and I had no real idea of what a “space sim” was.
I looked at my father questioningly. He simply replied “Trust me.”
To this day I remember my favorite ship: the Raptor heavy fighter, with this incredible short-range punch thanks to dual mass drivers and dual neutron guns. It ate blaster power like crazy, but almost nothing could survive a full strike from it.
My father and I both loved the game. He upgraded the computer and purchased a Sound Blaster exclusively for it. He let me build the computer and install the sound card with him.
And thus began my career in computers. No kidding: Wing Commander is the reason I am the Director of Operations and Information Systems at a major University today.
Crazy.
Can’t wait for this game. Check that: I CAN wait for it to be done RIGHT.
Mr. Roberts is correct: it’s time for this genre to make a return. The children who grew up playing Wing Commander, Privateer, X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, etc. are all adults now, and we are ready and willing to spend our disposable time and disposable income to support this project.
I remember Obsidian for giving me Planescape: Torment, and I backed their new project for an isometric RPG. But even better than that, I remember Origin for giving me Wing Commander, and I’ll be backing this project too.
I’ll encourage RSI to do the same thing I encouraged Obsidian to do: shoot for the stars!
I loved Wing Commander on my third Computer (1stPC) and I also loved the Idea’s of Freelancer 7 Years later, even I was a bit disappointed Freelancer was stopped.
So if you put a good Portion of WC and FL into it the Game can only get awesome
A really free explorable Space without too much Story Restrictions would also be fair. And of Course the Option to dock at Stations and Ground Bases is needed.
Perhaps really put a good Amount of Time into the Development of Planets, Moons, Asteroids and Stars so the Player can interact with them.
I’m feeling like a little Kid on Christmas Evening ^^
Just love it “featuring explosive 256-color VGA, bitmapped, 3-D graphics” hahahaha
Awesome! Those days, lolz *feeling Nostalgic*
I would be happy if we had the choice to play the game Wing Commander style, but not necessarily locked into it. Sounds like that will be the case, but I’m still crossing my fingers.
In any event, if any alien races are eventually included in Star Citizen, there MUST be one overly aggressive cat-like race added to the universe.
The Kilrathi deserve an homage!
The first time I heard about Star Citizen was through a text sent to me by a mate I had not heard from in years. It simply read “Star Citizen from Chris Roberts – check it out”. This was from a friend with whom I played Freelancer on 24/7 private servers way back in the days and so that brought back a lot of good memories. Considering the plethora of games being released across the main platforms which are either copycats of each other in order to secure a profit on an existing market, or simply re-hashed sequels who promise a lot but in fact offer nothing new in terms of actual gaming experience, hearing that Chris Roberts was masterminding a brand new massive space sim brought a smile to my face. Although there are space-based games out there, there are either RTS which, interesting as they may be, do not immerse the player, or games like EVE which, although looks absolutely fabulous and offer a very complex environment to thrive in, still leave some player yearning for the days when space flying was done with a thrustmaster in one hand and a keyboard in the other.. ie flying by the seat of your pants so to say. Reading all the blogs on Star Citizen, it looks like it is taking the best bits of various games that have been around and interweaving this in a WC / Freelancer expanding universe. All I can say is that I am now hooked and cannot wait til release day to give it a proper go.
Wing Commander 2 got me in trouble with a kid. One of the first games I played with my new sound blaster and had the expansion pack. My parents didnt like it when the wingmen yelled “shit!!!!!!” as they died very much. Good times!
Lol… I remember that… Yeah I had the first soundblaster card in 1988-89 and my parents would get pissed at me for having the volume up loud. Definitely good times. Good post
hehehehe played every wing commander ever released since almost birth and loved each one, favorite will always be a tie between heart of the tiger and prophecy, but freelancer was always my facv space sim, cant recall how many times i’ve replayed that game, but for the love of god Chris Roberts, dont turn this into another Eve online, i dont want to have to get a diploma to play one of your games…
Still play WC5 and FL time to time, but having said that they ARE of nestolgic value only really. Now this may be asking a bit but something to consider in this day of MMOS. Currenty SWTORs space conflics REALLY BLOWS however their interactive NPC scene cuts remind me a lot of the WC23,4,& 5 series and I think is wonderful. Blizzards graphics suck and their story lines and redestruction of their world over time has gotten dull, lifeless and boring. Many of the MMOs today are rounded on a armour and weapons war of end game go for the biggest battle set and bosses so once oyu get their what is left? OH! we will raise the levels and add more goodies to grind for. Please stay away form this mentality in the long term. Level base is nice to consider IF you want ot track your progressions, but in real life it is not based on missions completed but cash flow and credits / items owned. I could have the best armour or weapon or ship in a game but if I max out at a “LEVEL” which I thnk is simply a mental barrier anyway, one tends intodays MMO world to get the feeling of a loss of accomplishment. Also a nly space based game has just so much appeal to a limited number of people. SO, It would be nice if when not “in Space” you can land on Planets and go to the bars and such. However the real factor behind it and one that I missed in previous WC / FL style games, was why not have your avatar ALSO in the bar WITH your friends Avatars? Yes many look for the cookie cutter style of MMO interaction simply because well that is the standard now.
So why not have ground based missions, Planetary flybys to take out ground defenses. So 1 or two in the party engages in a flyby to take out vital radar and shield defenses the rest of the party then advances on foot to take the enemy strong hold or a dual scenario, of take out the defenses from the air THEN land and take on the interior enemy as a full group.
NOW you manage that bit of cross genre engineering and I can guarantee you will not only pull in the older WC FL crowds and space simmers, but as well would give Blizzard, EA, and Origin, something to think about as their customers also move over to what I believe the majority of MMO players are seeking anyway. So go and release the space sim initially since people have to explore first anyway, but please PLEASE consider also a grouund based interactive avatar setting as well so that the game play is simply not one sided as we find with all current MMOS. Speaking of which I REALLY liked the Privateer concept fro Privateer 1, Go and buy map sections of currently explored regions to add to your own ships GPS Nav system. It always seems odd ot me that IF the starter or core systems were SOOO WELLLL known and populated why did I have to fly to every blooody statoins and post to “Discover” it?. So please have the initial core worlds already mapped and known. Debree fields, astroid fields and such could also be listed, BUT!!!!! if someone wanted to find all the hidden space goodies they would stuill have to go explore the regions to find such items. So traders could right off get trading, explorers would know where safe havens and bad guy spots were and still get out to explore the debree fields, astroid fields and such. Miners would know where the astroid fields were and could then head out immediately to go and find those rare astroid treasure troves of ores and gems. I do not think this owuld distract form the game at all having this option at start up. Even when I buy a GPS today it still HAS the maps for my country or region on it. it does not say, OH Want to find Berlin?? ok go there first and THEN I will tell you where it is, ROFLMAO!!!! So my 99 cents worth form a gamer that started with PONG and the evr popular, “It is dark! You were eaten by a gru!!” Gods I still hate that gru…..
Sorry for the typos thought I had got them all
Buy will it run on my 486DX2-66 with 2MB of RAM?! You really push system limits with your games Chris.
Yeah it ran on mine.. it used Expanded memory… My 486 was SVGA and my Tandy was not. The game ran on both but preferred the 486 since it was better. I still have my original 486 and just played WC on it the other night. Hard to believe I was a Junior in high school in 1990. Now I am 40.
Since last week, I’ve downloaded all of Chris Roberts space flight games and a bit more. I’ve finished Wing Commander 1, 2, 3, and I’m on 4. I must say that these games are some of the finest I have ever played in my life. I have forgotten how old they are and I have been sucked in. Dosbox runs the games quite well with the games. I can easily say that I’ll be occupied for the next two years. I can also easily say I will be very experienced by the time SC comes out. I recommend the series to anyone who interested in this upcoming masterpiece called Star Citizen. Dosbox runs the games quite well with the games.
Hi..I still have my original Wing Commander Box…. They used what looked like a screenshot for the cover. Hey do you all remember that the game used Expanded Memory? Depending on how much memory you had you couldn’t see the joystick/flightstick graphic in the game. I was running Wing Commander on a Tandy 1000TL 768K with 2 megs of Extended memory. Had the first Original Soundblaster card…IRQ 7 people..ahh yeah. Had a Tandy 16 Color monitor. Yep that was back when you had to know how to build computers…no color codes. Then I build my 486 DX/66 with an AWE 32 sound card…Wing commander and X-wing VS Tie Fighter were my main too games… Long live WC
Hi together,
I played everything I got in Germany form Chris and I can say: If every computer game was so good as Wing Commander etc. the problem of software piracy would not exist.
Games from Chris didn’t need a patch to work. When you buy a game nowadays, mostly it is short, the story is not interesting and there are more bugs in it than flea on a dog. So its hard for me to wait for star citizen. Maybe I will start playing again on a Friday evening and how long I’m sitting there when the birds start to sing outside – so it was when I played WC III.
Good Luck to Chris and his team !!