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Original Wing Commander Games IBM PC MS-DOS Origin Systems


Original Wing Commander Games



Origin Systems released the original Wing Commander games for IBM PC MS-DOS between 1990 and 1994. The Wing Commander games are some of the most overrated games in the history of computer games.

First of all, the Wing Commander games are heavily cinematized. Secondly, the first four Wing Commander games employed 2D sprite-scaling at 320x200 even though flight sims of 1987 and 1988 were displaying fully-3D 608x345 and 633x345 render-fields. Thirdly, the Wing Commander games do not employ Newtonian flight physics.

Note that the original Wing Commander was marketed as featuring "cutting-edge 3D tech", but its objects and actors are not 3D like the ones in flight sims dating back to 1984. Also, I don't see any "state-of-the-art computer graphics" for 1990, 2D-bitmap or 3D-polygonal.

To be sure, what I see are well-drawn 2D bitmap-graphics and pre-rendered 2D sprites, but that's it. Was that cutting-edge and state-of-the-art in 1990?

Wing Commander's graphics were rendered on workstations, but the game engine itself is just scaling, rotating and shifting around low-res sprites based on cut-down ray-traced workstation output. Other games were doing that in and before 1990.

That is not to say that Wing Commander games are no good; they are. But they are not as good as computer-game journalism and the reddit mainstream make them out to be.

As they parrot praise and throw their superlatives about like confetti, computer-game journalism is very careful never to mention Frontier: Elite 2 when treating Wing Commander Privateer, both of which came out in 1993.

Because what chance does a sprite-scaler with no physics have against a fully-3D game with physics?

If Frontier scrawled in a story and added characters and cinematics (which have nothing to do with gameplay) the mainstream would suddenly acknowledge its existence.

But oh dear, flight physics employment. My ship doesn't stop on a dime!

Filtered.

Wing Commander IBM PC 1990



Origin Systems released the original Wing Commander for IBM PC MS-DOS in September of 1990. The original Wing Commander was created and designed by Chris Roberts and programmed by no fewer than six coders, including Chris Roberts.

Wing Commander displays in 16-color EGA 320x200, 16-color Tandy 320x200 or 256-color VGA or MCGA 320x200.

Wing Commander was distributed on 3x 3.5" 1.44MB HD diskettes, 6x 3.5" 720kB DD diskettes or 11x 5.25" 360kB floppy disks. Wing Commander extracts, converts and installs to hard disk drive via the Wing Commander Installation Menu.

Wing Commander requires an i80286-12 MHz CPU, 560,000 bytes of free conventional RAM (580,000 for music) and 5.2 megs of hard disk drive space for a decompressed installation, but a 386 clocked and 16 MHz and 2 megs of EMS RAM is recommended. Wing Commander supports memory managers such as QEMM.SYS and EMM386.SYS.

Wing Commander audio supports AdLib Music Synthesizer Card, Creative Labs Sound Blaster or Roland MT-32 or LAPC-1.

Wing Commander can hardly be considered a space combat flight simulator. It is basically a dogfighter shooter with cinematic cutscenes and story-pathways. Also, its graphics are not 3D and there is no Newtonian flight physics. Instead, Wing Commander employs unrealistic controls and chunky pre-rendered sprites that unrealistically scale, rotate and shift about in the viewport.

That said, Wing Commander is a good shoot 'em up. But space combat flight simulator?

Give me a break.

  • Wing Commander Manual aka Claw Marks: Onboard Magazine for TCS Tiger's Claw: 48 pages
  • Wing Commander Blueprint: Hornet, Rapier, Raptor, Scimitar
  • Wing Commander Secret Missions: 6 pages
  • Wing Commander Secret Missions 2: Crusade: 6 pages

Wing Commander 2 IBM PC 1991



Origin Systems released Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi in September of 1991 for IBM PC MS-DOS 3.3-5.0. Wing Commander II requires an i80286-12 MHz CPU, 583K of free conventional RAM and 14.2 megs of hard disk drive space for a decompressed installation, but a 386 or 486 clocked at 16 MHz is recommended, along with 2 megs of EMS RAM. WC2 displays in 16-color EGA or 256-color VGA or MCGA 320x200.

Wing Commander 2 was distributed on 8x 5.25" 1.2 MB DS HD floppy disks, 7x 3.5" 1.44MB HD diskettes or 14x 3.5" 720kB DD diskettes. Wing Commander 2 extracts, converts and installs to hard disk drive via the Wing Commander 2 Installation Menu.

Wing Commander 2 audio supports AdLib Music Synthesizer Card, Creative Labs Sound Blaster or Roland MT-32 or LAPC-1. WC2 employs digitized speech.

The Wing Commander 2 Speech Accessory Pack was released in 1991. It was distributed on 3x 3.5" 1.44MB HD diskettes or 3x 5.25" 1.2 MB DS HD floppy disks and requires 64K of EMS RAM, +4K of free conventional RAM and +5 megs of hard disk drive space.

  • Wing Commander 2 Manual: 31 pages
  • Wing Commander 2: Joan's Fighting Spacecraft: 8 pages

Wing Commander: Academy IBM PC 1993



A great spin-off of Wing Commander 2, Wing Commander: Academy was released by Origin Systems in August of 1993 for IBM PC MS-DOS 5.0. Programmed by Jeff Everett and Brent Thale, Wing Commander: Academy is notable for its random missions and allowing players to customize their own missions.

Wing Commander: Academy is the best Wing Commander game because it cuts out the cinematization and focuses on gameplay.

Wing Commander: Academy requires an i80386SX-33 MHz CPU, 586K of free conventional RAM, 2 megs of EMS RAM and 5 megs of hard disk drive space, but a 486 25 MHz CPU and 4 megs of RAM is recommended. Academy displays in 256-color VGA 320x200. Academy supports MS-DOS 6.0 DoubleSpace.

Wing Commander: Academy was distributed on 3x 3.5" 1.44MB HD diskettes and extracts, converts and installs to hard disk drive via the Wing Commander: Academy Installation Menu.

Wing Commander: Academy audio supports AdLib Music Synthesizer Card, Creative Labs Sound Blaster or Roland MT-32 or LAPC-1 sound. Wing Commander: Academy employs digitized speech.

  • Wing Commander Academy Manual aka TSCN Academy Simulator Handbook: 42 pages

Wing Commander Privateer IBM PC 1993



Origin Systems released Wing Commander: Privateer in September of 1993 for IBM PC MS-DOS 5.0. Wing Commander: Privateer is a space-trading and space-combat flight "simulator" that plays similarly to but is nowhere near as advanced as Frontier: Elite 2.

Wing Commander: Privateer requires an i80386DX-33 MHz CPU, 4 megs RAM (XMS/EMS) and 20 megs of hard disk drive space, but a 486 25 MHz CPU and 1 meg of vRAM is recommended. Wing Commander: Privateer displays in 256-color VGA 320x200 and supports MS-DOS 6.0 DoubleSpace.

Wing Commander: Privateer was distributed on 6x 3.5" 1.44MB HD diskettes and extracts, converts and installs to hard disk drive via the Wing Commander: Privateer Installation Menu (PKUNZIP Extraction Utility v.2.04g by PKWARE).

Wing Commander: Privateer audio supports AdLib Music Synthesizer Card, Creative Labs Sound Blaster or Roland MT-32 or LAPC-1 sound. Wing Commander: Privateer employs digitized speech.

  • Wing Commander: Privateer Manual aka Player's Guide: 63 pages
  • Wing Commander: Privateer Playtesters' Guide: 96 pages
  • Wing Commander: Privateer References Guide: 8 pages

The Wing Commander: Privateer Speech Accessory Pack was released in 1993. It was distributed on 3x 3.5" 1.44MB HD diskettes and requires +7 megs of hard disk drive space.

Wing Commander: Privateer: Righteous Fire is an expansion for Privateer released in 1994. Distributed on 2x 3.5" 1.44 MB HD diskettes, Righteous Fire requires an additional 4 megs of hard disk drive space. Righteous Fire increases shield and generator upgrades and adds Fusion Cannon, Isometal Armor, Gun Cooler, Shield Generator, Thrust Enhancer, Speed Enhancer and Advanced Repair Droid upgrades.

Wing Commander 3 IBM PC 1994



Origin Systems released Wing Commander 3: Heart of the Tiger for IBM PC MS-DOS 5.0 in December of 1994.

Distributed on 4x CD-ROM Wing Commander 3 requires an i80486DX2-50 MHz CPU, 360K of free conventional RAM, 7 megs of XMS RAM, 20 megs of hard disk drive space and 2x-4x speed CD-ROM drive, but a 486DX2-66 MHz, 500K of free conventional RAM and 15 megs of XMS RAM is recommended.

Wing Commander 3 was the first fully-3D Wing Commander game.

In addition, Wing Commander 3 was one of the earliest IBM PC games to display in 256-color square-pixel VESA SVGA 640x480. Thus, Wing Commander 3 is technically impressive and historically significant.

Naturally, one requires an ISA, VLB or PCI video card with 512K-1 meg of vRAM. Wing Commander 3 was benchmarked with at least 36 different sound cards and 40 different video cards; such was the franchise's popularity by 1994.

"Don't watch the game, play the movie!" means WC3 is a heavily-cinematized CD-ROM game: three hours of live-action FMV to put you to sleep; 1.5 gigs of FMVs in 1994.

Yeah, I'm not impressed. And nor was I impressed in 1994 when I was forced to Esc-key through that ridiculous nonsense, trying to get back to what is otherwise a rather good game.

Wing Commander 3 digital sound effects support Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster 16, Sound Blaster Pro, Sound Blaster AWE, Pro Audio Spectrum, Roland RAP-10, Ensoniq Soundscape and Gravis Ultrasound/Max. 

Wing Commander 3 music supports Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster 16, Sound Blaster Pro, Sound Blaster AWE, Pro Audio Spectrum, Wave Blaster/Roland SCB-7, Roland RAP-10/SCC-1, Roland MT-32/LAPC-1, MPU-401 General MIDI, Ensoniq Soundscape and Gravis Ultrasound/Max. 

Frontier: Elite 2 versus Wing Commander


  • Fully 3D-polygonal geometry (patrician) versus 2D sprite-scaler (peasant)
  • 100% gameplay (patrician) versus heavily-cinematized (peasant)
  • Newtonian flight physics (patrician) versus go-kart controls (peasant)
  • Hierarchical design (patrician) versus hotch-potch design (peasant)
  • Procedural generation (patrician) versus pre-set static (peasant)
  • Filling up the distribution media with assembly code (patrician) versus filling it up with art and audio (peasant)
  • Open-ended exploration (patrician) versus on-rails narrative with a few branches (peasant)
  • Player crafts their own story via potentialities presented (patrician) versus story-driven (peasant)
  • No furries (normal) versus feline furries (silly)

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