Wing Commander turns 20

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Originally Posted by Nash

I don't have any experience with Wing Commander outside of the 3DO game, but isn't that the third game in the series? Or is the third game a remake of the first game? Or are there other Wing Commander games on the 3DO that I'm unaware of?

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Yeah, I was talking about Super Wing Commander, which was a remake of WC1+Expansions+Some extra, using Privateer-quality 2D graphics. It also came out later on Mac, but never on PC for some reason.

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Originally Posted by GohanX

You guys are going to make me buy a 3DO, aren't you? Fuckers.

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You can get one for like $30 now and they play burnt games. You'll deal.

FreeDO is has gotten a lot better with the last revision or two, but it still has a long way to go, and I don't think it plays Super Wing Commander. Totally viable way to play about half the 3DO games out though.

Point me towards these $30 3DO you speak of. On the rare occasions that they come in, I get $60 or more out of them.

I got one with a bunch of games for like $50 a few years ago at a classic game convention. But whatever, even at $60 it's not a luxury item especially since you can pirate the games.

TNL is cheap yo.

I just realized my review for Wing Commander Prophecy was one of the only contributions I ever made to the TNL main site when I was "staff." It's not there anymore, I'm sure the review was terrible, and I gave the game a 12 out of 10 or something. God damn was that game great.

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Originally Posted by Frogacuda

These days when I want to play the first game, I usually go for the 3DO remake. The art style is a little different, but it's quality all around.

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Why do you prefer the remake? I didn't like it one bit. In my opinion the 3D rendered graphics didn't look nearly as good as the hand drawn art of the original, the character voices were just terrible, and the graphics engine really wasn't all that improved (it still used sprites for ships). Did I miss something, or can we just chalk this up to different tastes?

Great thread. Wing Commander (1) blew my mind - I remember bringing it home from Software Etc and firing up the 386sx16 Gateway 2000 PC we had. Definitely the best/most impressive game I'd played at that point (granted I was like 9 years old). In fact, I still have the game/box etc sitting on my bookshelf. For some reason I never really played Wing Commander 2 but I did play through 3 and loved it. WC3 was another hugely impressive technical achievement for the time - maybe it was the "big" budget FMV.
Edit: I actually just played through WC3 again a few months ago and found it held up quite well.

I'd love for WC1 through 4 to be available from GOG.com.

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Originally Posted by bVork

Why do you prefer the remake? I didn't like it one bit. In my opinion the 3D rendered graphics didn't look nearly as good as the hand drawn art of the original, the character voices were just terrible, and the graphics engine really wasn't all that improved (it still used sprites for ships). Did I miss something, or can we just chalk this up to different tastes?

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Yeah, just different tastes. I liked the remade graphics, but they're definitely different in style so I get the preference. I thought the new style did a great job of setting a TV space drama kind of tone. The characters were still all hand-drawn, and I thought the rendered stuff worked well for the 3D objects. The cockpit view felt a bit less cluttered/claustrophobic, too.

Like I said Super Wing Commander is Wing Commander in Privateer 1 digs. If that sounds good to you, you'll like it. If you don't like how Privateer looked, then fuck it.