Chris Roberts saw the game Battlehawks 1942, that used sprite-based WWII aircraft and thought, "Lets do that in space!" I was there. And he did. We knew we had something special when playtesters were literally falling out of their chairs dodging enemy fighters. I'd be working on the art and hear a thump from the playtesting room. It was wild. I think the game was designed on 16 megahertz machines, so that was the intended sweet-spot in frame rate. The wing fragment that emerges from explosions was animated from a model I built from card-stock and plastic swizzle sticks, and hung from a string. The scramble animation was rotoscoped from a guy on a treadmill! I designed and fought for the radar screen they used. That was my one significant contribution besides the art. The art was done with DeluxePaint II, with Autodesk Animator assisting with palette construction. (You can thank the DPII gradient tool for the atmospheric look of the hanger scenes.) The amazing Glen Johnson did the faces and characters. I did the cockpits, cutscenes, and space debris and backgrounds. Also fonts and box cover. Some of the best work I did at Origin!
Lol I was born in ‘77. I was the 3rd kid on my block with a x486/25sux and the game ran WAY faster than on a 386dx16, so I didn’t care that I had a cheap version of the 486. Wing Commander 2 ran perfect on it, too. This game completely changed everything. The best thing we had were Sierra games up to that point. I will admit that once Xwing came out I almost forgot about this game since X-wing was absolutely superior. Once I played Xwing it was easy to see that Wing Commander wasn’t 3D at all.
It would be rather entitled of me to expect to hear more about this behind-the-scenes stuff, but the interviewer in me wants to ask more questions the more I get answers :) Like those before me have said, thanks for sharing this. I agree that this was great work in the graphics department and must commend your contribution; Wing Commander was a visual watershed moment for the PC and the look of the game stays with me decades later.
@@quarkbent9165 No problem, those were definitely the highlights of WC development for me. 🙂 In some of the later games they tried for 3D rendered cockpits and backgrounds, but they just didn't have the color palettes for that, and it ended up really ugly. I had great fun doing the midgame cutscenes for the special missions, it allowed me to fake a lot of multiplane camera effects. 😉
I haven't played this game in over 30 years and when the second enemy ship came on screen I thought to myself "Hey that's a Salthi". Made me laugh thinking about how embedded this game is in my memories. Great nostalgic video, I'm really hoping you keep this channel going.
I was in Customer Service & QA at Origin starting in 91. One of the most common customer questions about the start of Wing Commander was how to not die in the arcade sim just after starting. I always explained to them it was expected and it was just there to capture your callsign.
I completed WC4 by myself in 1997 on Normal, I was 7 and wrote to you guys. Ya'll sent me a few patches and a t-shirt and a letter from CR, don't know/doubt if the letter was authentic, but it made a lifelong fan.
The Strategy Guide for Wing Commander 2 actually broke down how the AI worked in both games and it's kind of neat. There's an environmental checklist of conditions, and each condition has a percentage chance of provoking a reaction. Which defines a lot of enemy AI, except this went deeper than "Where is the player, where am I, what can I shoot with?" For example it'd check to see how damaged you were then compare it to it's relative damage to determine how aggressive it gets, and if it thinks it has the upper hand, there would be a chance of firing guns until dry or a smaller chance of firing a missile, etc. It was very simple in a way, but most AI designers to this day don't have their AI checking so many relative conditions.
The capital ship battles in Wing Commander 2 were far superior. They were a welcoming and challenging change. Capital ships in the second game had something called phase shielding (I think). And you couldn't destroy them with guns at all. You either had to fly and escort bombers or fly a bomber yourself to take them out. The bombers were slow clunky ships with tons of armor and shields. But the big advantage they had was they carried torpedoes. These things would do significant damage to cap ships, but some took several. The very challenging aspect was that the torpedoes needed something called "phase lock" (at least that's how I remember it). You basically had to sight a cap ship for several seconds, maybe even 10, for the torpedoes to figure out the shielding phase and be able to penetrate them. So the challenge of having to be a sitting duck while fighters and flak hammer on you, or break the lock and give your shields time to recharge and try the lock again. Some missions there is a time limit to take out the cap ship, so you don't always have the luxury of taking out the fighter cover before making a torpedo run. Also the bombers were horrible at dogfighting. I found this change added some decent mission variety and varied the challenge and strategy. Look forward to see you review that game.
I loved Wing Commander back in the day. It was way more accessible than any of the other flight sims I tried, almost like an arcade game. I still really like the character animations and the pixel art. That stuff is timeless to me. The Super Wing Commander remake looks horrific.
Agreed, although while Super Wing Commander is definitely a downgrade, I think I'd be willing to at least give it a chance if I could get it working properly.
@@spacecadetrewind If you're emulating you probably need the 3DO BIOS to run it. I've never tried emulating the 3DO so I don't know how much of a headache it is.
Fun fact - the allied fighter plane from Ww1 called the Sopwith Camel could famously out turn anything to the right. It was a side effect of having an extremely powerful engine with high torque. The weakness was turning left, where it was slow and tended to climb instead.
Camel's engine was a rotary one. This means whole engine was rotating, not only propeler. That's what effected tuning (engine made a lot of Camel's mass).
Great video, man! Can't wait for the WC2 one. Wing Commander was absolutely incredible back then. It might be hard for some to put yourself into that time, but when WC came out it really was like watching a movie. Also, those moments between the missions, where you basically could just "roam" the Ship (bunks, bar, training simulation, etc.) and talk to people was really unique. Made it all feel more cinematic and / or adventurous. At least to me.
@@spacecadetrewind If you've not played 2 yet, I can't wait. I made a post earlier up but basically about 80% of your gameplay complaints about Wing Commander 1 are actually completely resolved in Wing Commander 2 to a shocking degree. I kind of hope you do Privateer after that before going onto 3 though. That might be the most fanatically loved game in the entire franchise.
@@spacecadetrewind Thanks for this video! A future video about Wing Commander II would be appreciated also. I remember the excitement of getting Wing Commander II with the extra voice disks and playing it on my family's 486DX-33 way back in the day, and I remember really enjoying the Special Operations expansions as well.
25:00 Homeworld proved that space CAN have topography, but you have to think outside the box to do it. And once you open up that possibility you get all kinds of new gameplay styles and that can also directly affect the types of stories you tell in a game. Its a nice feature, but it would be many years before developers figured it out.
The fundamental problem is that you have to have the right people, who are also motivated at tackling this problem, to realize this. Most game designers seem to be big picture dreamers and try to make these big grandiose designs and overshoot in scope, rather than solve the more relatively mundane task of trying to use a small number of elements to solve a problem like giving space topography or coming up with truly interesting mission objectives other than "escort" or "destroy." For the topography bit, one of the things no one seems to ever want to do is include super structures or moons, and only half the time do they realize that from a fighter's standpoint can capital ships themselves be used to create topography, I've noticed. At best you're usually getting an asteroid field, or maybe a nebula, but you could easily start considering LaGrange point installations or smaller moons into space battle scenarios, as well as use asteroid belts in far more interesting ways by having much larger variations in size of the asteroids themselves. Not to mention that there's a general logical problem of space combat in that, it would never actually happen in "open" space anyway because of the vastness of distances. The only logical places combat in space would ever occur in would be locations that have some kind of obvious significance where people have a reason to gather, and almost all of those are going to be nearby resources and/or structures, and thus, nearby something large of note to give space a sense of orientation.
7:15 I have to tell you, that feeling I get from the alert sequence? Gives me shivers every time. I wish it would be properly remade or homaged by someone. Between it and the wonderful simplicity of "Pacific Theater WWII in Space" vibe, WC1 will always be my favorite. Am I the only one who feels this way?
Well, that's what Star Citizen is supposed to be. Chris Roberts raised a large pile of money that he weedled into an enormous pile of money to make a modern Wing Commander. Except on the way to doing that, he got sidetracked building a $tudio and hiring expen$ive AAA actors for voice work that he could pretend were friends of his. And he paid them to perform the mocap as well, rather than a cheaper team of normies. AFAIAC, Star Citizen is just a newer version of Elite: Dangerous that was designed to have space legs from the beginning, with ridiculously detailed models and netcode that somehow performs worse than E:D. The missions are just as sterile and joyless after a short period of time with lousy rewards. My characterization of the gameplay is a few months out of date. Maybe they magically fixed all the flaws and it's the holy grail of space sims now. ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯
I played “hells kitchen” back in the day, so I guess I was on the bad pilot path. So many neat tricks that were explained, like the ejection trick and the lone remaining fighter trick. It’s everything I wanted to know about WC in 1990. Thank you for this incredible video retrospective. The obvious follow up suggestion: wing commander 2!
I remember that each of your wingmen also had a "pain tolerance" where they would allow only x number of friendly fire incidents, and finally treat you like enemy #1. Maniac was the worst.
@@ovalteen4404 nope. You can kill all of your wingmen if you want, with no consequences and they'll never fire back. Used to do it all the time on the last mission of a system
@@michaelgillman2505You're lucky then. Maniac would often annoy me by getting in the way and then getting mad when he got shot. Of course if you're targeting them directly, you can probably take them out before they decide to retaliate.
@@RenlangRen I have a take that Star Citizen _is_ released... what we see now _is the game_, and it's not going to be more than what it is now.. new things will be implemented but it'll always be incomplete, bugs, and fundraising until eventually there's not enough new sales ("donations") to sustain development and it'll be cancelled. I think Chris Roberts is aware of this.. that's why they don't talk about release dates anymore..
As someone who was around at the time and really in to games like this (I was 14 in 1990), what I find most fascinating about these kinds of videos is the perspective of people who came later and are trying to understand how this thing fits into the history of gaming in general. I think you did a great job there. It really was revolutionary at the time. There are games that came earlier, but they’re mostly different takes on the Star Raiders formula. Wing Commander added so many new features and gameplay items that it felt very futuristic in 1990. The sequel did even more to further that sense of development. It was a great time to be a gamer and into “space sims.” It was sad watching the genre strangle itself, but it took a while and we got a lot of great games out of the genre before that happened. I thought this was a wonderful retrospective. Excellent work all around.
Well after 6 days it's 5.5 times subscribers. Well deserved. For my taste, it's to long though... one probably could finish the game in this videos runtime ;)
I love how in the 2nd game, they took the Hornet and Schimitar and mashed them into the same ship, the Ferret. Which is, unironically, an awesomely fun fighter to fly in WC.
StarLancer is actually pretty good at the whole "taking on Capital Ships" aspect of it tbh, usually they'll have you take out smaller components and then have either an allied capital ship or allied torpedo bombers deal the finishing blow. Other times the Ship to Ship combat will be happening as a backdrop (right in the middle) of you taking out their fighters, it's pretty cool tbh
They tried to make the capital ships more dangerous in the later games. Wing Commander 2 introduced Phase Shields that required you to use torpedoes in order to damage them at all. Wing Commander 3 and 4 just made them huge in comparison to fighter craft. In Prophecy you couldn't even destroy a capital ship. You had to target the Bridge and Engine subsystems and destroy them to render the capital ship helpless.
Honestly thoroughly enjoyed my time watching this. Learning about older games is always fun, especially a cult classic like wing commander. This sort of long-form review/retrospective that lets you vicariously experience an otherwise potentially frustrating game through the lens of someone good at it is great particularly for these older games. Of course these sort of videos take a huge amount of effort (to the point that even people who do content like thi full times are barely able to release maybe 2-3 videos a year) so for now i hope you don't lose motivation from low viewer numbers and look forward to more content in the far future. What I'm curious about is what sort of games you plan to cover for future reviews. Will you stick with retro games? Do you plan to make videos on all the Wing Commander games (it sounded like you were maybe already working on WC2)?
Thanks! As you mentioned, these videos can be a terrifying time suck, so it would be almost irresponsible to continue if there isn't an audience for it. And yet I can't seem to resist, because here I am back on my bullsh*t, recording footage from an X-Wing playthrough. I'll use that as a test to see if I can take advantage of what I've learned to make a video on a less outrageously long timeline, and if a massive, still-relevant IP like Star Wars can draw a few more eyeballs. The plan was to follow the genre as it evolved, jumping from series to series, rarely or never covering two games from the same series or lineage in a row. So if this X-Wing video works out (no guarantees), I would probably follow it up with Wing Commander 2, then either Tie Fighter or Frontier: Elite 2, and so on.
This is great stuff, man. I grew up playing (and loving) the Wing Commander series, so this was a nice walk down memory lane. Can't wait for you to get to the Mark Hamill era!
I came here expecting a rant, and i found a documentary. Great job. History of space sims are in short supply. The greatest games I have ever played are just underdogs in gaming history. Most of "gaming history" videos are about Mario and FPS. This video is refreshing.
19:18 or you just switch direktions very fast (up and down for example) and just afterburn through. 1:39:43 They also couldnt fit the jalthi in it so they used a reskinned salthi (green instead of brown) as a replacement sprite.
A fantastic vide about one of my favourite games of all time and one that defined my early childhood. I love the WC series and it even defined my family's PC purchases! Needed to upgrade the damn machine to even play the next games in the franchise 🤣 I wish you had millions of views and subs. I really hope you would do these kinds of videos on WC2, WC3, WC4 and WC5.
I loved playing this game when it came out. It was mindblowingly ahead of what came before it. Great to see younger generations find value in these old classics.
Really cool. I played Wing Commander 1 on SNES. Two years or so later my buddy showed me Wing Commander 3 and it was shocking lol Like watching Matrix or Avatar for the first time. The quality was mindblowing if you only knew snes to this point.
Great video. This entire series has a special place in my heart as my father and I played the ever living hell out of the original WC. Also, the original Privateer is still on my top 5 all time favorite games. While I don't agree with some takes you have on the game, I still thoroughly enjoyed this video. As a person who played this when it came out, I can tell you first hand, it blew my effing mind. 25:24 - Escort missions... Funny thing about these, in most games they are pure cancer, however in this game they are often very memorable. There are two missions that are literally burnt into my memory when I think of WC -- any WC game. First being, the escort the Drayman carrying the Watson's Disease vaccine that you need to protect it from a wing of Jalthi. The second being, bring the Ralari-Class destroyer home, and fend off a wing of Gothra. These two mission were the some of the most difficult missions in WC + SM1&2 (And yes, I killed the entire Kilrathi Fleet you're not supposed to engage while in the Hornet in SM2). While there are a few other missions that stick out, nothing compared to how god damn hard these two were, nor compared to the exhilaration I got when I finally beat them both for the first time. Also, you can 100% complete the Ralari mission and bring it home. The #1 tip for this mission is to not engage autopilot before the nav point with the Ralari, this will allow you to get a jump on the wing of Gothra. So all that said, I think they nailed it with the escort missions in WC1. 47:52 - Any ace you didn't kill in the campaign will return in either final mission in Venice or Hell's Kitchen, they appear with the appropriate wing of fighters in these missions, e.g. Khajja will spawn with the Krant wing. So you could essentially have a "boss-rush" if you really wanted to. A side note, by clearing all five waves of fighters in the Starbase mission is how you get the Pewter Planet medal. It just doesn't carry over to SM1 since you can't actually save after the final mission... If you made it to the end of this post, congratulations. Again, great video! I would love to see more deep dives on other entries in this series.
Thanks! The aces returning for the final mission is an extremely cool detail that I completely missed because the Kilrathi names don't stick in my mind and I assumed the one guy I ran into was new. Guess I'm going to need a corrections segment in my next video.
@@spacecadetrewind Gotta agree with Tirpitz that the escort missions were hard, but doable. Man, did I struggle to get those Drayman across. But the trick I used for the Ralari was not the autopilot one - was spamming insults like an angry sailor to get tevery furball on my tail. It works. (also, I hope you realize that talking about "how good (you are) at Wing Commander" while making a point of how you were not able to complete Secret Missions 2 is bound to get at least a chuckle from those of us who racked 100% kills in the game back in the 90s. ;-) Fortunately, we played in a time before toxic players would spam "git gud", so _that_ won't happen here) @Tirpiz believe it or not, I didn't knew the aces returned. DIsadvantage of not letting any of them alive. I deliberately failed missions in playthroughs to get to play all series, but never thought of letting aces live. Unexpected (and hilarious) that I get to learn news hings now about the game that I played the most in the 90s. Thank you for that info, mate. Time to fish my old 386 (still with the original game) back from storage...
This was my absolute favorite game on the SNES. It starts out pretty easy but by mid-campaign the tone of the game really starts putting the screws to you if your missions aren't going well, and the music and atmosphere, especially when fighting enemy aces, makes your hair stand up.
@@Tony_Cardoza It is, IIRC. Everything is basically the same. For me though, the issue in the SNES version is that the Scimitar is just too slow, and trying to fly it with a gamepad is incredibly difficult, so those missions become disproportionately difficult compared to on PC.
Space Rogue had some great physics for the time. Being able to slingshot gravity wells and flip your ship around without losing momentum in the direction you last thrusted? Magnificent
Thanks a lot for that! I really enjoyed this timetravel 😊 Good memories. I also played this one, including Secret Missions 1+2, years after being thrilled by WC3. But even that is 20 years ago. What is your motivation for devoting so much time for such an old game?
Thanks! Going back to old games that I missed the first time around is something I do for fun from time to time. I often get just as much enjoyment out of learning about the games and thinking about how they work as I do from playing them, especially when it's a long-running series so I can see how they evolved over time. A PC game from 1990 is a bit much even for me, but as I said in the video, it's surprisingly friendly given its age. As for why I made the video, I had some thoughts about the game after playing it and went to see if anyone had made any longform analysis videos about it, or even games like it, and didn't find any. I figured there might be a niche to fill.
I own every WC game they put out. 1, 2 with speech pack (the secret missions/spec ops for both, of course!), Academy, Armada (loved this one!), 3, 4, Prophecy, Privateer (with Righteous Fire and speech), Privateer 2 (loved this one too - learned that Clive Owen was a thing from Priv 2...) Point being, WC is why I am a computer nerd today. My first big boy PC was simply so I could play WC. I somehow coaxed my folks into buying a 486 DX 50 (not DX2) with a huge 8 MB of ram, spent my own money for a second hard drive JUST FOR MY WC games, and played the hell out of them.
I played this a lot when I was a kid. I figured out that you could do the nav points in any order you wanted to so I would avoid the asteroid and mine fields that way.
I thoroughly enjoyed watching this video and think your analysis is spot on. I can’t believe I played this game 33 years ago and remember the strife I gave my dad trying to get the extended memory to work so that I could see all the extras such as your hand moving the controls! The escort missions were the worst! I have just finished playing WC2 again and in my opinion WC1 is much better due to: the less scripted nature; having wingmen who could die which meant the war felt more realistic and the opportunity to earn medals and promotions for your efforts. I come back to these games every few years and thoroughly enjoyed your video. The music is so nostalgic!
Thanks! I prefer WC2 mostly because of what felt like much better difficulty balance to me, but I can see the appeal of having some agency over how the war goes.
I also prefer WC1 to WC2! I didn't like the Confed ships as much in 2 (both fighters and the carriers) and hated the pointless renames of the Kilrathi ones. Thankfully, the good old Dralthi was back for WC3!
Usually when a ship is closer it will appear larger in your radar. SNES version has draw distance issues and an asteroid field can easily murder you if you don't get used to it. Best version of Wing 1 is on the 3do. Sega cd version is ok. When wingmen die it'a very impactful and when they run off on their own you need to watch out for them. Some wingmen are better than others.
You had me double checking the footage there, but for WC1 at least this isn't the case. It's possible that later games in the series try to communicate distance with the radar, but in WC1 all ships are exactly 1 pixel in size.
As a fan of the old X-Wing games who's never played any Wing Commander, this was a really interesting look at the game that really got the space dogfight ball rolling. I may have to try to get wcdx up and running one of these days. Even if I will miss my power management controls.
I'd like you to continue with the WC games as well as X-wing series. Possibly, my favorite WC game was Privateer, which was fairly wide open story wise for the time it was made.
The issue with capital ships is rectified in Wing Commander 2. There it's noted that capital ships now have "phase shields" and your normal guns and missiles are useless against that sort of protection. The only thing that can properly damage the enemy are torpedoes, which require time to lock on and fire. Plus, the only ships that have torps are bombers or fighter/bombers (some of which you can fly in the second, third, fourth, and fifth games).
The whole thing about Capital Ships reminds me of how Battlefleet Gothic points out that you really need to wager out even the different types of capital ships and not attempt to destroy a cruiser with a destroyer or a battleship with even the heaviest cruiser at least one-on-one. Fighters are more like buzzing bees or attacking by swarm rather than a single one making much difference. One of the closest examples to doing fighter participation on capital ship possibly right (and already likely mentioned more than once) is with the Sathanas from Freespace 2 where you just take out its turrets and mainguns while the equivalent sized Colossus is dueling against it.
@@spacecadetrewind I think it was a good decision in WC2 that you need dedicated torpedoes - and a bomber able to carry them - to breach a cap ship's shields. Unless you have a cap ship of your own on your side, which coincidentally makes for a fun mission variant, too. It's the evolution of an escort mission where the escortee can take care of themselves and reward you with a satisfying fireworks display.
I still prefer being able to be like a painfully stinging bee from Star Wars: TIE Fighter, what with turret interception and occasionally overpowered ion cannons. Goodbye, perceived annoyances called Nebulon-B Frigates!
Wing Commander 1 had an amazing story and characters for its genre for 1990. All flight sims and space sims up to that point just had mission after mission. Assuming you had wingmen (a lot of flight sims didn't give you any), you never got to know them or even their names. There was absolutely no story connecting events because there were NO events or story at all. Like I said, flight sims and space sims were simply missions and nothing else. Wing Commander changed that and yes, looking at in 2023 it seems lacking, but when it came out in 1990, this change felt amazing. You actually had characters to interact with, you got to know people by name, and they even had "personalities" and could die... and it would matter! That is why fans say Wing Commander was for the story because we're remembering back to when games in this genre had no story whatsoever and Wing Commander 1 changed all of that. That said... Wing Commander 2 has a much better story, as do Wing Commander 3 and 4. Wing Commander Prophecy (aka Wing Commander 5) is so-so but part of that is because the story was supposed to continue after that but the Wing Commander series was cancelled and shut down. Chris Roberts had left Origin Systems and EA (who owned Origin Systems) decided to pull the plug on all of Origin's intellectual property except Ultima Online.
I would not have guessed this was your first video. The production value, information, and entertainment were all top notch. I hope it didn't suck your life force out to make.
Great retrospective, I played the crap out of the SNES version as a kid and still am nostalgic for it. Honestly never played the 'real' version. Was a lot of fun to hear someone talk about one of my favorite games ever in such detail.
My nostalgia. Replayed it three times. On occasionally, trying to land on TigerClaw, aiming at its nose, TigerClaw swat me like a fly, exploding, funeral, and mission red. 😅 One time, my comm system was damaged. Had to wait for auto repair. Before getting TigerClaw's permission to land. Another fond memory is improving odd by aggressively afterburner to nearest enemy, and launching dumb missile.
One strategy for damaged comms that I figured out was to mash the button. If you just keep trying eventually it'll work, even if the system isn't fully repaired.
I really enjoyed this, having played the SNES version as a kid and later WC3 on PC. I also bought WC2 for PC but couldn't get it to run playably. I looked in the video section but I see this is the first and so far only video on your channel. Fwiw i subbed and hope to see more! Thanks for the effort it took to make this comprehensive and entertaining video.
Star Raiders on the old Atari is my first Star-Sim, but I still have such fond memories of Wing Commander. I really hope my children, or maybe grandchildren will be able to fly the freelancer I purchased a decade ago. The dream of Star Citizen is real.
Thanks for all the effort you put into this. I grew up playing Wing Commander III, and man that story really gripped me. It's interesting to see where it came from. The more I learn about games of the late 80s/early 90s (that i didn't learn experientially) the more I am impressed with the cleverness and depth put into so many of them.
When I was a kid I spent countless hours playing Wing Commander games on my SNES and since then all I’ve really wanted were more Wing Commander games. Freelancer actually managed to scratch that itch even though it felt unfinished with the last part if the game feeling tacked on just to push it out the door. Had Roberts just dialed back the ambition a bit Freelancer could have been incredible. I felt a glimmer of hope when Roberts declared that he was going to make a new “Wing Commander” game, but we all see how that’s panned out. At this point I’m convinced that it’s never going to happen and I should just feel fortunate that we at least have Everspace.
Love the games as a kid. Have them all still and the books. Haven't played since about 2015 when I played them all through again. Wing Commander and the expansions can be hard. Once you're in the zone though and after you get their rhythm. By then you should win every mission by third try. Asteroids... All of the games had their annoying quirks. How frustrating was it to play under Dos! I loved Privateer but that game was a pain to get to run at times. Never got the boot disc to work. I was 12 and built a computer to play the game. Other than Warcraft, I don't think I played another game as much. Yeah Mario...
What I thought immediately as well when he mentioned capital ships. Good luck taking out anything larger than a frigate by yourself in a fighter, but I think the capital ships was a selling point of freespace originally, perhaps as an answer to wing commander.
The FreeSpace duology is a gem, but man, am I in the minority where I actually prefer the idea of starfighters (particularly the superfighter kind, like Star Wars: TIE Fighter's TIE Defender and the -King Hell God Starfighter of Death- Missile Boat) having the capability to curbstomp capital ships (like the otherwise indefatigable Imperial Star Destroyer) if flown by true blue aces?
I bought the original WC in a physical box in 1990. It came on 5 3.5" HD floppy disks. The blueprints you showed for the ships came in poster-sized format, and 13 y/o me put them up on my wall. I tried to play it as soon as I got home, however, this game required something called expanded memory, which required a 386 processor. So, the next week, I dragged my mom to a computer show and built a 386 SX-20 system. When we got home, I installed it right away. I was amazed by the graphics, the music, the missions. Thank you for bringing back some of those memories. Please accept my subscription, and job well done, sir. I was wondering if you had looked at Lightspeed by Microprose. I have only found one version which still works on modern systems, and it is played via a browser. Even the version on GoG doesn't work well. Sorry to ramble, and thanks again for an awesome video!
For anyone who loves the original Wing Commander and has never done it, look up the full audio recordings made from an authentic MPU-401 MIDI system. The depth of sound they crammed into the final version of the game was incredible for the time, and sounds great even now. Roberts was ahead of everyone else in the tech field for games, and it's a shame that Star Citizen has dragged on forever. Too big to fail at this point, I guess.
This is still pretty much my favorite PC game and was the first game my Amiga buddies saw on my high end 286 that made them finally think that the PC had caught up to the rest and we know what happened from there. WC 1 was one of the first games that made people want to upgrade or buy a computer to experience the game. I know a lot of my friends back then finally got PCs of their own after having played WC1 on my setup back then. Great memories and I still fire this game up through DOSBox with an actual MT-32 connected up to experience it as close as it was meant when it first got released. Another interesting fact that I don't believe they ever removed in any of the PC releases of the first game. While it is safest to fly at 250kps or less through asteroid and mine fields, it was also possible to just afterburner through them and about 90% of the time, the asteroid and mine hits wouldn't even register. Not sure if it was some bug of the game not being able to keep up with so many of those objects on the screen to account for in the collision, but it made those sections way easier for me to play. Another handy trick that allowed me to complete some of the really tough missions, was to turn tail and head back to the 'Claw' and afterburner straight there, but instead of using the forward view, you would use the rear view where you could see the enemy getting smaller and smaller. Again, the game couldn't handle or allow enemy ships and the claw in the same space in the same time unless the mission specifically coded for this. So what would happen was the enemy ships and carriers, would just up and explode on their own! And while you didn't get the direct credit for the kills, it would register as a successful objective mission. I do think this was patched out in the Kilrathi Saga through and is only present in the earlier PC version of the game and Secret Mission add-ons. I also believe it didn't exist in WC2 although I believe the trick with Asteroids and Mines did still work on the initial PC release of that game.
I’d say it’s more of a life style and possible a religion. Even with its own extremist zealots which I imagine are the people still pouring money into Star Citizen.
Thanks for this! I got into the wing commander games in the wrong order. WC3 was a big big deal at launch, and I remember there was a playstation version that was playable at my local babbage's. I probably stood there playing it for a solid hour in the mall. I then went backwards through Privateer, Wing 2/Expansions, Armada, Academy, and finally Wing 1. Naturally it was underwhelming at that point having seen it's evolution, but the theme song was epic... so, it had that goin for it. :) Looking forward to seeing what ya do next!
Thanks for the video, and for highlighting a classic. One quick note. Wing Commander 2 leans into what worked, while giving the pilots more involvement in the story, and requiring bomber-like heavy fighters armed with torpedoes to take out capital ships, after a long lock-on sequence that's ostensibly to decode the enemy shield patterns and program these very finite stand-off weapons to slip past them. For the days of Adlib and Soundblaster, it also had some great music. Unfortunately, Wing Commander 3 & 4 were products of the early 3D era, and as such, their graphics haven't aged gracefully. Which proved too distracting for me to revisit them, even as a fan of the series. Then Academy was a stand-alone mission builder, Armada was a bunch of easy 1v1 fights with a dirt-simple strategy game overlay, and the beloved Privateer is painfully short on enemy fighter types. While Privateer 2 is weird, and may as well not be a Wing Commander game, but it works. And we don't talk about Prophecy or that Xbox Live Arcade game or that movie.
i had this game when i was like 11 or 12, but i could NOT make myself get serious about it until a few years ago. i now play select missions and that little arcade game RELIGIOUSLY. i wish more games out there made it feel like this game does. some accidental chemistry amid all that compromise. even wc2 as a sprite flyer doesn't have it, and the full 3d sequels are wholly different. they all functioned better and infinitely more smoothly. but ...wc1, ya know? GREAT deep dive!
after 2 years in Early Access, Everspace 2 is finally out and released... and its a lot of fun. it's a little bit like Freelancer if you remember that little gem so I definitely recommend it.
I tried the first game a while back and didn't like it much, but I've heard a lot of buzz about the sequel so it's definitely on my list of things to check out.
@@BCWasbrough i mean, there's fewer systems to explore but at least they are much larger so there's more to see, the ability to not just buy new ships but customize them with parts you found is really nice, there's more diversity in random missions and combat is a lot better because having different weapons to switch back and forth actually has a point and missiles are actually effective weapons while in Freelancer they were pointless.
@@Timberwolftrass I played Freelancer for years. Everspace 2 just felt empty to me. I never got the feeling from ES2 that the world was populated with NPCs going about their lives like I did in FL. Freelancer felt like it had whole systems of commerce and activity going on that had nothing to do with the main story. If other ships show up in ES2, most of the time they are just there to provide loot and exp for the player. Plus, the gameplay in ES2 was MUCH more puzzle based than I expected. I spent as much time hunting for puzzle pieces to unlock "fast" travel as I did in dogfights. They are part of the same genre, but VERY different games.
I played the ever loving snot out of the Wing Commander games back then. Privateer was probably my favourite. Though I did enjoy the Mark Hamill FMV entries as well. They were just delightful.
I played the Wing Commander games when I was a kid but I don't remember there being any frame rate issues with the first one. My dad was an engineer and knew how to put together a PC so maybe ours was top of the line? No idea. But for the record, in any real life air force that knows what it's doing it's a wingman's job to stick on the lead's tail and not engage everything in sight. Lead does the killing, wingman watches his back. That's why the wingmen in Wing Commander don't run off on their own.
Having been an aircraft nut my entire life, I can see a lot of similarities to air combat pre-WC. I'm sure they also got inspiration for the wingman AI from there.
Very comprehensive and deep look at WC1, much appreciated! I remember most of the space sim games from playing them back in the day (Atari 8 Bit/ x386/x486 era). WC1 and 2 weren't my top favorites, but I love the graphical fidelity they put into the flavor stuff. The 2D sprite scaling thing always felt a bit limiting to me, resulting in a bit of a simplistic mission structures when it comes to spatial design. It quickly felt like a onion layer type of depth around the player position. I got really hooked on X-Wing / Tie Fighter at that time, which in comparison felt much more fleshed out in terms of conveying a sense of being in space. The polygonal nature allowed nuanced and granular gameplay, with ships ranging from tiny to capital, really having a massive impact on how missions could be designed around them. Credit where credit is due tho, always felt that Wing Commander Privateer (which cam out between WC 2 and 3 iirc), is the crown jewel of the 2D Sprite Space Sims. They cleverly worked around the limiting factors and doubled down on the stuff that worked well. The addition of the sandbox/ trading/ upgrading elements were the perfect fit to spice up the arcadey nav point style gameplay. So yeah, if I were to recommend a Wing Commander game, it would be Privateer. (which was lovingly reimagined in the Rebel Galaxy Outlaw game!). Great video. Loved the genre, which less saturated and underappreciated on the tube, than the omnipresent talk about how DOOM is the greatest game!
The early digs at Tie Fighter's controls and complexity make one part of me want to write a long defense of them, because those elements, that make it straddle the line between arcade and sim, are what make it the space sim I had by far the most fun with as a child, despite also playing Wing Commander 1. Although to be honest, while Tie Fighter always made total sense to me and I would complete the game, do all the secret objectives and get into the secret order and get to fly the Tie Advance earlier etc, playing Wing Commander was a more confusing experience, in terms of game and mission progression, even if the controls and sim elements are simpler. I was never able to finish it, or if I was, it was with a mediocre conclusion. But this video is such a nostalgia bomb... it's really fun just to see your experience with this game, and I'm probably going to learn a lot of details about how progression in it works that eluded me as a child. And maybe, if you do a video on TIE Fighter in time, you'll appreciate those elements of complexity when you get into the game more. I remember having to have the manual there all the time for the first missions, but once the whole energy management system gets into your head, it becomes second nature to be constantly shifting shields around to get more power for weapons, and vice-versa... it truly was not difficult to play with a cheap old simple joystick and remembering a few buttons on the keyboard, despite what modern first impressions might lead one to believe.
Watched it in one session. Please take this as encouragement for more content. But I know it’s hard. You need a lot of commitment. I follow other yt‘ers with hours-long content as well. Grimmeard, John Strife plays, Warlockcry come to mind. And god knows how long it takes for them to produce a new video. Keep on going!
64 MB on a video card? Surely you jest or mistyped. The AMD 40 MHz likely only have had enough dip/sim slots for at most 16 MB. That amount of memory in a PC did not become mainstream until at least the late 1990’s early 2000’s.
when i was a kid I played the snes version. Me and my brother actually found out that ejecting would push you to the next mission and we would always eject to certain fun missions. I enjoyed it on the snes alot. Also i can confirm that the entire game is in that version. minus the secret missions that came on a second game of course
Oh man... I sunk countless hours into this, the sequel, and the Secret Missions as a kid. My playtime was probably only eventually beaten out by Doom. Thanks for this video dude! Edit after watching more of the video: When you said "if you're extremely good at Wing Commander you just might pull it off!" and then play cutscenes I definitely saw when I was a little one. I played it *a lot.*
Thanks for the video! I played all of the Wing Commander games and they were my favorite until Privateer came out. You could definitely do videos on the other Wing Commander games and I know people would enjoy them. :) Again, thank you!!
Great Video! I'm impressed that this is your first video considering how thorough and high quality it was. I do think that you could talk faster, as I found setting the speed to 1.25 gave the video a better pace, but voicework is something that comes with experience. I am very curious to see what your next video will be about. As for first Wing Commander, it's a game that I still come back to every now and again. The simplicity of the controls and objectives make it very easy to jump back into when I'm in the mood for some space action but don't feel like remembering the control list of later flight sims. I never beat it due to the erratic difficulty, but there is still fun to be had here, and I actually think it's still a solid starting point for someone wanting to get into the genre.
Thanks! And yeah, "RU-vidr voice" is something that takes a bit of practice to develop, it turns out. I just started recording the narration for my video on X-Wing today, so if the significantly longer script ends up filling the same or less time than the original video, I'll know I did a good job. The delivery should hopefully be less monotone too. And yes, the thoughtful design that makes WC1&2 as accessible as they are is so, so important! My experience going into X-Wing has only reinforced this point a thousandfold.
I'm a huge fan of the Wing Commander and Privateer games. Wing Commander 1 was released while I was still in the Army, and I used to play it on my Tandy 386 PC in the barracks. I paid $200 to expand my RAM from 1MB to 2MB to run the game faster. You also needed to be clever how you load TSRs in your autoexec.bat, and config.sys in DOS to optimize memory usage. One thing I disagree with though is the take on Star Wars: X-Wing. The control scheme is complex to add to realism. When you're operating a jet fighter, you have a lot of manual controls to operate. Likewise, if you're operating a starfighter with shields, you're going to have manual operations to affect that system. Some people put a lot of effort (and money) into their space combat simulators by buying control panels, flight sticks, and foot pedals to replicate all of those controls. My brother and I actually turned it into a pilot and co-pilot situation. One of us would pilot the ship with the flight stick while the other used the keyboard to use all of the other systems like shields, weapons, and comms. It was a lot of fun to co-op that way. However, you can easily do both solo with one hand on the flight stick, and the other on the keyboard. Space combat sims aren't made as well as Wing Commander and X-Wing anymore. Give me one with today's graphics and sound with X-Wings game play, and I'd love that, but it doesn't exist.
I recommend taking a look at the X-Wing Alliance Upgrade and the TIE Fighter Total Conversion. XWAU is an ongoing mod that has improved on almost every aspect of the game and continues to add new features and improvements. TFTC is an ambitious remake built upon the XWAU.
Fantastic Video Man! awesome retrospective for me, I played through the game on my first PC, an 386SX-20 back in 1990. I'll definitely download and fire up a mission or two from here. I even still have my original quickshot flight stick, now I just have to find my USB-D15/joystick adaptor.. :)
Reminds me a lot of the snes game 'Turn and Burn'. Which is basically this game, slightly pared down and based on modern (for the early '90's) fighter jets. It even has carrier and enemy base assaults. I remember that game fondly, so I bet I'd have liked this one too.
Entertaining AND enjoyable! Thank you for this! I couldn't wait to get my first 486 computer (it was a 486 DX2/66 from Zeos) so that I could play Wind Commander. I have all the games including Origin's own rip-off of its Wing Commander called Strike Commander! My original CD's won't run properly under Windows 11 so I'm running the DOSBOX/GOG versions. I have to re-memorize the key commands but that will come in time. How about covering the Wing Commander games please! Thanks again!
This really is an excellent insight into this game. It must have taken you absolutely ages to pull off! You've done a really good, thorough, entertaining and subtly very funny video here. I hope you keep making videos like this!
Free Space 2 had some satisfying capital fights where the fighters are expected to target specific parts/weapons of capital ships while the greater battle rages on. Sucks when you get in the wrong spot and you get vaporized by a "friendly" capital beam :( Wing Commander 2 changed the capital fights so that torpedoes are required (bombers etc). I think you'll find that one much more to your liking. Oh man this was my first big game obsession. It ran smooth 95% of the time my 386sx16 with 2mb ram and mono 8 bit sound blaster (VGA graphics woo). There were some fights where capital ships + many fighters + boom boom caused some frame loss but not on par with what I saw in your video. The game itself was revolutionary on so many fronts from audio to the dynamic systems involved and branching story line. The whole wing commander/privateer line plus starlance/freelancer is why I threw money at Chris when I found out he was coming back. I didn't through much though cause I'm cheap :P
I'm 53 played the entire series. Also don't forget "wing commander:privateer" 1994 which was part of the wing commander series. That game inspired a number of games. Elite preceded wing commander in 1984 & 87. There are also quite a few other space sim you don't have listed. Vega Strike, Empyrion, spacebourne 1 & 2, No Man's sky and entire x series of games besides 4 and a lot of others.
55 here. Don't forget Strike Commander. Also impressive for the time. As was Ultima 7. Still a great story. Pity E.A has just locked these games up and forgotten they even have them. The last Wing Commander game on the Xbox 360 was really pretty pathetic. And Elite was pretty cool for the time but I was more into Starflight and later Star Control 2.
Privateer sound blaster + sound canvas, best experience. But they trolled us with that "phonograph" song at the end... I agree that Elite deserves being considered the first one, Privateer was great, also liked "spiritual successors" like Freelancer and even some of the Xs. Darn Chris, how long is Star Citizen going to take?
Thanks for doing this. This is way longer than what I usually watch, but I made an exception this time. I was seriously addicted to Wing Commander back in college. I originally played it on a 386/DX, and then on some variations of a 486 (where it was much better). Yeah, hot stuff! The game was absolutely amazing back then. I would love a remake / true spiritual descendent with modern 3D graphics (in VR, even), which holds true to the flavor and style of the original game & WC2. There was Eterium, I suppose, but it's sadly no longer available.
Thanks for creating this excellent video; really well researched and produced. I was just a bit too young for Wing Commander 1, but I fondly remember playing through WC3 in the 5th or 6th grade in the mid-90s. Choose your own girlfriend! I can't wait until you get to Wing Commander: Privateer, which is like the marriage of the Elite and WC lineages... in fact you'll kind of need to cover Elite as context for Privateer :)
The amount of keys required to fly your ship in X-Wing and Tie Fighter was classic good. Makes you feel like a real pilot with complete control over your craft.
The funny thing is that the Kilrathi saga already had trouble working on Windows 98. I had that version because PCgamer Italy at a point came out with the complete version of several older games including the KS version of WC1 on a cover disk, but I was never able to play it properly until GOG put up the DOS version and its sequels (which I never touched before because I never even knew they existed until they went out of fashion). Only recently I played the KS version with WCDX because I wanted to record it. My impression having played both DOS and windows versions is that the DOS version is somewhat easier due to the slowdown, the expansions with a fixed frame rate kicked my ass much worse than the DOS version through DOSbox did. Personally I grew up mostly with X-wing, TIE Fighter and Freespace so I have *opinions* (TM) on how the Wing Commander series evolved and on Chris Roberts, but I enjoyed the original series, especially Wing Commander IV. The first two games and Privateer's art style though is great, and I liked that Rebel Galaxy Outlaw tried to make a 3D version of it even down to the blue-ish skybox.
I've been such a big fan of space sims, but never really knew much about their history or their origins. This video solved that and now has inspired me to try out the older space sims which I was previously averse to actually trying out. Thanks a lot for that!
Wing Commander II and IV feature Mark Hamill. Some space sims like Independence War Deluxe Edition have a steep learning curve. Great game if you do not mind those nearly impossible missions.
Freespace 1 and 2 are great, too. Privateer was *chef's kiss*. I think Privateer 2 got a lot of bad reviews, but I loved it, its aesthetic, and the fmv cutscenes! And Clive Owen and Christopher Walken, among others, were in it!
