DOS

Strike Commander

Trivia

Included inside the "Sudden Death" manual is a 2-page article from Chris Roberts describing how difficult it was to create the game and likening his experiences to the film Heart of Darkness, a documentary on the creation of the film, Apocalypse Now

Origin had released posters touting the original release date of Strike Commander. Such posters are real collector's item now, as the game was two years late and still runs like a dog on most systems then.

Strike Commander was another example of how dedicated Origin was to providing extensive background for its games. A mock magazine named "Sudden Death" (meant for Mercs working out of Turkey) was contained in each copy of Strike Commander (it was released in Acrobat PDF format in the subsequent CD versions) that detailed the economic, historical, and political background behind the game's "post-depression" setting. Within it were several articles portraying some of the many characters in the game, as well as a collection of humorous advertisements.

This magazine was extremely well-written, and provided its readers with just as much entertainment as the game itself. One article that is especially good is the interview with a retired "enforcer" (a mercenary specializing in punishing those who renege blood contracts from "fixers" and wealthy contractors) whose trademark slogan is "Gule, gule" (Go cheerfully). The meaning of this trademark becomes apparent as well as his other slogan, "The gun for the brave, the knife for the coward."

If you've played this game, but haven't read the magazine, try to get your hands on it.

One of the most resource-hogging games at the time of its release. The 1994 equivalent of Ultima: Ascension.



Editor's Note: He's right -- Strike Commander was so ambitious that it began development in 1992 with features that then-current 386 processors couldn't handle adequately, (such as real-time true 3D texture mapping with Gouraud shading, fractal terrain, and atmospheric hazing of distant objects). Numerous optimizations were made in an attempt to get the game running smoothly, but Strike Commander was one of the first games to attempt such a complex engine, and optimized 3D texturing techniques weren't prevelant in the industry. By the time the average gaming machine was a 486/33, the game shipped, nearly 2 years later.

The game's notoriety for being unplayably slow on average gaming machine's reached far and wide, even into PC Magazine cartoons (one particular joke was about how trying to run Strike Commander on OS/2 with a defrag running at the same time used up so much power that lights dimmed throughout the house). By the time a greatly-optimized version (almost 3 times as fast) version was released, it was too little too late.