I remember playing and enjoying Wing Commander (and possibly Wing Commander II) back in the day. But just a few short years later, X-Wing came out and blew Wing Commander out of the water. True 3D (flat shaded, but still infinitely better than sprites), and of course, set in the Star Wars universe :) Followed shortly afterwards by Tie Fighter, which introduced Gouraud shading IIRC.
Then X-Wing vs Tie Fighter came out, it was the first to use a 3D accelerator so the graphics were better, but it wasn't that good compared with the previous one. The series kind of recovered a bit with X-Wing Alliance (back to a mission- and story-driven campaign, and with much better art). And then it stopped.
TLDR: I miss X-Wing and Tie Fighter and wish there were new games like that with 2018 technology :(
Check out Freespace Open http://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/Source_Code_Project_ind.... The engine for Freespace and Freespace 2 was open sourced and has been under continuous development for ~20 years. They've remade the rendering engine about 3 times to keep up with AAA titles. All of the ships have been re-modeled and textured to look great. You can play the original campaigns with the updated engine and graphics but there are also about a dozen fully voice-acted campaigns made by fans, some of which like Blue Planet and Silent Threat Reborn are utterly amazing. For $4 on GoG, it's hard to beat the shear number of hours of (really impressive) play time you'll get with the community improvements.
I don't know that the X-Wing series really "blew Wing Commander out of the water," though. The two series ran concurrently and were constantly one-upping each other. Wing Commander III (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wing_Commander_III%3A_Heart_of...) came out the same year as TIE Fighter, but sported SVGA graphics, full-motion video segments between sequences and actual name actors playing the various characters. X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter brought multiplayer to that series in 1997, but Wing Commander had gotten there three years earlier with 1994's Armada (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wing_Commander:_Armada).
(None of which is to say that the X-Wing games weren't innovative and great, of course. Just that Origin gave them spirited and worthy competition.)
Both series were consistent, huge sellers for their respective publishers, so it's not like one drove the other into the ground. If anything, they both fell at the same hurdle, never really making the jump into the 3D-game marketplace that the newly emerging GPUs of the late '90s made possible.
X-Wing was the future in terms of using 3D, but it was there too soon. Wing Commander (not to mention WCII) looked better than X-Wing IMO because the ships had more geometric complexity.
One thing that did bug me about WCII was the lack of feelies; I still have the ship identification posters from WC I, and making the manual in the format of an on-ship magazine worked great.
I got the WC II special edition, which had roughly 15 3.5" floppies in it, and until I opened the box, I assumed much of the weight was from feelies, but instead it was a single cardboard keyboard reference card / install instructions.
There is a guy that is updating XWing game to use modern 3d acceleration with detailed 3d models and FX.
https://youtu.be/TLrqtmKazpI
Also, try Star lancer. I think that is the most modern game that follows the lineage of XWing and Wing Commander, and had a decent history.
Yeah, I started with X-Wing and Wing Commander always looked like a step back regarding the actual game mechanics and graphics style, too.
Shooting at enemies was more fun in X-Wing and TIE Fighter because everything seemed to move faster (except the laser bolts, see next point) and you had to aim with much greater lead, one of the most important skill elements. The production values of X-Wing and TIE Fighter were incredible, whereas the style of Wing Commander felt generic (I and II) or like Starship Troopers (III).
But just a few short years later, X-Wing came out and blew Wing Commander out of the water.
I think they mostly flew by each other and then went into separate directions and ended up not competing all that directly. X-Wing came out between the releases of WC2 and WC3. X-Wing continued down the 'space combat simulator in the Star Wars universe' path, Wing Commander became 'movie/adventure game with some space flying stuff'. WC3 had two hours of video, Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell and only got crazier from there.
Tie Fighter collectors edition (Updating to 640x480 iirc, also including enough missions to last like months of gameplay) was a mainstay for me for years.
X wing vs tie fighter was much later (1997 to tie fighters 94). It was both inferior gameplay IMO and a bit graphically behind, being not really much better than tie fighter while other things had gotten much better (descent and quake and mechwarrior 2 all better imo while half life and unreal werent released much after XWvTF)
Agreed! Bring back the X-Wing franchise! The X-Wing VR video clip in the Disney app in the Oculus store makes me think an X-Wing game could be the blockbuster that brings so many people into the VR fold that it becomes mainstream. A bit like the early X-Wing games were a reason for people to buy PCs :)
Loved the Wing Commander universe and specifically Privateer of all things (not Privateer 2 sadly). I think my fav of most of the games was Wing Commander III - I suspect many people thought it was cheesy having video integrated like that - it was becoming more popular in a certain timeframe in 90s video games, but man they did a good job.
I thought of Wing Commander III as the game demonstrating that video could be integrated into a game and it didn't have to be cheesy. The cast was top notch and for what it was, I really enjoyed the story (and even read the novelization). I can't think of many titles outside of pure RPG's that drew me into the characters and their interactions in quite the same way.
I was seriously bugged by the regression of Tolwyn in WC3. In Spec Ops, he was a fan of Bluehair, but they retconned him back into not liking Blair (nee Bluehair) in WC3 and he seemed gratuitously cruel towards; I was totally find with the characterization of him being a hard-ass and extremist, but it was out of character for him to not like Blair who was well established as a hero by this point.
But McDowell played it well as written and if you put John Rhys Davies in something, I will like it.
My problem with III was that the gameplay quality took a nosedive in comparison to II mostly due to the integrated video. It was clear that it was the focus of the title, not nailing the game dynamics.
It was still good though but, combined with some clunky characterization issues (continuity of that is hard moving to real actors), just turned me off the game.
For me the peak was WC2, and Privateer, but WC3 signaled where it lost... something important about the series.
I grew up on Wing Commander! I had WC1 and got all the add-ons. I guess I'm one of the few who LOVED the branching missions and even played through the game so many times and purposefully lost at certain times to make sure I'd experienced every mission. Heck I even created a branch diagram for all the missions. I was only 15 at the time!
I then played through the game with such "anal" tenacity. I had to have EVERY kill for the killboard that was possible. If my wing man ever got any.... I'd dump out and try again!
Then WC2 came out... holy moley! Yes I had to have it all, and as the article pointed out... I also promptly saved my pennies until I could afford my first sound blaster card and picked up the Voice pack too!
Played and loved and enjoyed EVERY WC game in the series. The sense of wonder that I got... I wonder if kids have anything even close to those experiences today.
I got into Wing Commander very late (WC 4), after having spent probably thousands of hours in the X-Wing series. So when I failed a mission and the story kept going, I was blown away. It's THE feature I remember most fondly, looking back. And this was a game with branching paths in full motion video! I was blown away.
> The sense of wonder that I got... I wonder if kids have anything even close to those experiences today.
I have 3 kids, and I can honestly say yes, they do. Minecraft. It has simple mechanics, but can be pretty deep too if you want it to be. You can also build anything your mind can imagine. Add on all the fan created stuff, mods, etc. and it definitely provides the same stuff for the new generation.
Before my time, sadly. But am familiar with the title from Masters of Doom, the id Software story
In 1990, Richard Garriott's company Origin, released a space-themed combat flight simulator called Wing Commander, which became a favorite around the id lake house. Carmack figured he could do better. Flight sims, he thought, were painfully slow, bogged down by their heavy graphics and leaving the player to snail through the game play. What he and others preferred was the fast action of arcade games such as Defender, Asteroids and Gauntlet. Carmack tried to see how he might do something that hadn't been done before: create a fast-action game in 3D
Privateer was my personal favorite because of the exploration / trading / upgrade system. There are similar experiences today, but most of them fail to replicate what was special about this game (maybe I am just wearing nostalgia goggles though)
I remember getting it into my head one day as a kid that I _had_ to have WC II right away. Would probably would have been several years after it came out, though - I think I might have gotten one of the later re-releases.
I also remember being deeply moved by the story of Spirit and her captured husband, and her suicide run on the Kilrathi starbase at the end of WCII.
The article has some valid critiques of the merits of the story and the gameplay, but I've always had extremely fond memories of the game.
Funny, I had a similar experience a few years later. Saw the WC4 box in a store, very imprssive looking - I knew I had to have this. That was back when I had to save two months worth of allowance to afford it as a kid.
This was the game that taught me what system requirements were. My parents got it for me for my birthday or Christmas - went to install it and my Leading Edge purchased from Crutchfield just laughed at me.
Be sure to find or download a copy of Wing Commander I & II: The Ultimate Strategy Guide [0] because about a third of the book is a great set of interviews with the development team about the making of the games, and the company culture at Origin in the late 80s and early 90s.
One of the Wing Commander developers visited our computer science class at Rice in the year 2000 and I'll never forget him mentioning how 80-hour weeks became common leading up to a release and they even hit 100 hours for a couple of weeks and he had to be hospitalized temporarily. I know the long hours are common in many game studios but I wonder how many get that bad.
I deeply miss games that had massively branching storylines. I understand why gamers dislike them (especially the completionists), but the branching gameplay was what set the first three WC games apart. (And maybe WC IV? I don’t remember much about branching in IV....)
I can’t believe no-one is mentioning the difference between Elite, WC and X-wing in terms of flight controls.
If you know your classic Elite, it’s basically roll and up/down. WC had (as basic controls) left/right up/down. Easier to control but felt very artificial. X-wing was the best of the three, where we had up/down and then left-roll-move and right-roll-move. Not only did it look much like in the movies, it was also excellent for actually dodging people on your tail.
Everyone thought I was some self taught computer genius. The reality was I wanted to play Wing Commander without having to choose between having sound or a using joystick. Autoexec.bat, config.sys, and himem.sys and an insane amount of time is all it took.
" Like so much else about Wing Commander II, the speech, voiced by members of the development team, is terminally cheesy today, but in its day the Speech Pack drove the purchase of the latest Sound Blaster cards, which were adept at handling such samples, just as the core game drove the purchase of the hottest new 80386-based computers."
I am pretty sure they got some deals for that too. I got Wing Commander as part of a "Multimedia Kit" from Creative (CD Drive, Sound Blaster 16, Speakers), which bundled Wing Commander, Strike Commander, Syndicate Plus and Ultima VIII. All excellent games.
Whilst Origin likely used Wing Commander II as a huge cash cow to subsidize Ultima VII - much to WC2's detriment I distinctly remember a few short years later Origin gave Wing Commander III a lot more resources. At the time (1994) the gaming press declared Wing Commander III the most ambitious and costly game ever made at $4M.
Its sequel upped the ante even further with a budget of $12M which made headlines beyond the gaming magazines and actually into the newspapers.
Both good games incidentally and well worth a play.
As far as video game movies go it was rather good. I enjoyed it, even having played most of the Wing Commander games that came before it.
I think that movie would be better received if it was released today instead of 19 years ago. We’ve had close to 20 years of comic book movies that are mostly divorced from their source to make such a source-material-disjointed movie more palatable.
Ahh, memories of playing this after work on our owner’s 386 because it ran so much more buttery smooth than on my 286 EGA computer. Calling the ATI BBS in Canada to download updated drivers after hours so the call was cheaper and hopefully Wing Commander ran or ran better.
I played wc, wc2 and all the special missions until my fingers bled without cheating and without fearing the 486-dx2-66. i played that game and i never cheated and I made medal of honor on all possible missions. it was the best game ever!!!! :)
[+] [-] ggambetta|8 years ago|reply
Then X-Wing vs Tie Fighter came out, it was the first to use a 3D accelerator so the graphics were better, but it wasn't that good compared with the previous one. The series kind of recovered a bit with X-Wing Alliance (back to a mission- and story-driven campaign, and with much better art). And then it stopped.
TLDR: I miss X-Wing and Tie Fighter and wish there were new games like that with 2018 technology :(
[+] [-] pilom|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smacktoward|8 years ago|reply
(None of which is to say that the X-Wing games weren't innovative and great, of course. Just that Origin gave them spirited and worthy competition.)
Both series were consistent, huge sellers for their respective publishers, so it's not like one drove the other into the ground. If anything, they both fell at the same hurdle, never really making the jump into the 3D-game marketplace that the newly emerging GPUs of the late '90s made possible.
[+] [-] aidenn0|8 years ago|reply
One thing that did bug me about WCII was the lack of feelies; I still have the ship identification posters from WC I, and making the manual in the format of an on-ship magazine worked great.
I got the WC II special edition, which had roughly 15 3.5" floppies in it, and until I opened the box, I assumed much of the weight was from feelies, but instead it was a single cardboard keyboard reference card / install instructions.
[+] [-] Zardoz84|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ahartmetz|8 years ago|reply
Shooting at enemies was more fun in X-Wing and TIE Fighter because everything seemed to move faster (except the laser bolts, see next point) and you had to aim with much greater lead, one of the most important skill elements. The production values of X-Wing and TIE Fighter were incredible, whereas the style of Wing Commander felt generic (I and II) or like Starship Troopers (III).
[+] [-] pvg|8 years ago|reply
I think they mostly flew by each other and then went into separate directions and ended up not competing all that directly. X-Wing came out between the releases of WC2 and WC3. X-Wing continued down the 'space combat simulator in the Star Wars universe' path, Wing Commander became 'movie/adventure game with some space flying stuff'. WC3 had two hours of video, Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell and only got crazier from there.
[+] [-] twelvechairs|8 years ago|reply
X wing vs tie fighter was much later (1997 to tie fighters 94). It was both inferior gameplay IMO and a bit graphically behind, being not really much better than tie fighter while other things had gotten much better (descent and quake and mechwarrior 2 all better imo while half life and unreal werent released much after XWvTF)
[+] [-] astrodust|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drited|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sbarre|8 years ago|reply
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/impellerstudios/starfig...
[+] [-] arielweisberg|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhacker|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dwringer|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jat850|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aidenn0|8 years ago|reply
But McDowell played it well as written and if you put John Rhys Davies in something, I will like it.
[+] [-] abritinthebay|8 years ago|reply
It was still good though but, combined with some clunky characterization issues (continuity of that is hard moving to real actors), just turned me off the game.
For me the peak was WC2, and Privateer, but WC3 signaled where it lost... something important about the series.
[+] [-] ScoJoh|8 years ago|reply
I then played through the game with such "anal" tenacity. I had to have EVERY kill for the killboard that was possible. If my wing man ever got any.... I'd dump out and try again!
Then WC2 came out... holy moley! Yes I had to have it all, and as the article pointed out... I also promptly saved my pennies until I could afford my first sound blaster card and picked up the Voice pack too!
Played and loved and enjoyed EVERY WC game in the series. The sense of wonder that I got... I wonder if kids have anything even close to those experiences today.
[+] [-] larrik|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vlucas|8 years ago|reply
I have 3 kids, and I can honestly say yes, they do. Minecraft. It has simple mechanics, but can be pretty deep too if you want it to be. You can also build anything your mind can imagine. Add on all the fan created stuff, mods, etc. and it definitely provides the same stuff for the new generation.
[+] [-] fhood|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] epaga|8 years ago|reply
I did the same thing! Would sometimes play the losing-then-winning route, that was my favorite.
The article surprised me by saying the branching wasn’t popular. I LOVED that about WC1 and was disappointed it wasn’t like that in 2.
[+] [-] GordonS|8 years ago|reply
I need to see if it's on an abandonware site somewhere!
[+] [-] indescions_2018|8 years ago|reply
In 1990, Richard Garriott's company Origin, released a space-themed combat flight simulator called Wing Commander, which became a favorite around the id lake house. Carmack figured he could do better. Flight sims, he thought, were painfully slow, bogged down by their heavy graphics and leaving the player to snail through the game play. What he and others preferred was the fast action of arcade games such as Defender, Asteroids and Gauntlet. Carmack tried to see how he might do something that hadn't been done before: create a fast-action game in 3D
[+] [-] gavanwoolery|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SliderUp|8 years ago|reply
I loved WC 1-4 (hated Prophecy), but Privateer was the best.
I will not speak of Privateer 2.
[+] [-] acemarke|8 years ago|reply
I also remember being deeply moved by the story of Spirit and her captured husband, and her suicide run on the Kilrathi starbase at the end of WCII.
The article has some valid critiques of the merits of the story and the gameplay, but I've always had extremely fond memories of the game.
[+] [-] m_mueller|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] platz|8 years ago|reply
I think they got the graphics just right in that game (lol, "Gouraud shading"!).
It was minimal yet expressive, and felt immersive & real.
* note - I wish development had been completed on 0x10c - I think that would've been a good spiritual successor to TIE Fighter, aesthetic-wise
[+] [-] edgesrazor|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brandonmenc|8 years ago|reply
A fascinating snapshot!
[0] http://www.amazon.com/Wing-Commander-II-Ultimate-Paperback/d...
[+] [-] stephenhuey|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulryanrogers|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cydonian_monk|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lerno|8 years ago|reply
If you know your classic Elite, it’s basically roll and up/down. WC had (as basic controls) left/right up/down. Easier to control but felt very artificial. X-wing was the best of the three, where we had up/down and then left-roll-move and right-roll-move. Not only did it look much like in the movies, it was also excellent for actually dodging people on your tail.
[+] [-] jonplackett|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GordonS|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] csmark|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] s-macke|8 years ago|reply
https://classicreload.com/wing-commander-ii-vengeance-of-the...
[+] [-] outworlder|8 years ago|reply
" Like so much else about Wing Commander II, the speech, voiced by members of the development team, is terminally cheesy today, but in its day the Speech Pack drove the purchase of the latest Sound Blaster cards, which were adept at handling such samples, just as the core game drove the purchase of the hottest new 80386-based computers."
I am pretty sure they got some deals for that too. I got Wing Commander as part of a "Multimedia Kit" from Creative (CD Drive, Sound Blaster 16, Speakers), which bundled Wing Commander, Strike Commander, Syndicate Plus and Ultima VIII. All excellent games.
[+] [-] leonroy|8 years ago|reply
Its sequel upped the ante even further with a budget of $12M which made headlines beyond the gaming magazines and actually into the newspapers.
Both good games incidentally and well worth a play.
[+] [-] cheschire|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cydonian_monk|8 years ago|reply
I think that movie would be better received if it was released today instead of 19 years ago. We’ve had close to 20 years of comic book movies that are mostly divorced from their source to make such a source-material-disjointed movie more palatable.
[+] [-] ScoJoh|8 years ago|reply
Even the whole "broadside" missile launch like old war ships with cannons.
Despite the departures from the game information, I didn't hate it like so many others did.
[+] [-] taeric|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mutagen|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mickrussom|8 years ago|reply