Wing Commander

aka: Squadron, WC1, Wing Commander: Der 3D-Raumkampf-Simulator, Wing Commander: The 3-D Space Combat Simulator, Wingleader
Moby ID: 3
DOS Specs
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Description official descriptions

The Confederation have been at war with the Kilrathi for the past 20 years, and you're just now joining the Vega campaign. You're a 2nd Lieutenant just out of the Academy, with some good work under your belt. You're posted to Tiger's Claw, the flagship of the Confederation Fleet. Will you help the Confederation to victory, or go down in infamy?

Wing Commander is a space combat simulator interspersed with shipboard dialogs. Onboard the ship, you can save/load game, visit the bar to get the latest gossip, or go on to the next mission briefing, and the 3D space combat part.

The 3D space combat has you sitting in the cockpit, where you control the craft like roll, turn, up/down, afterburner, as well as fire guns and launch missiles. There are four different crafts on the Confed side, each with different flight characteristics and armament. You will have a wingman on each mission, and you should keep the wingman alive as the wingman will help you if you issue the right orders. You can also taunt the enemy. You'll be fighting several different types of enemy fighters and capital ships, and even combat a few Kilrathi aces.

When the mission is complete, land back onboard the ship and get ready for the next one. The campaign tree has both winning and losing paths.

Spellings

  • ウイングコマンダー - Japanese spelling
  • 银河飞将 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (DOS version)

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Reviews

Critics

Average score: 82% (based on 36 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 199 ratings with 17 reviews)

The best space combat sim of it's time, and my favourite still.

The Good
The first thing that grabbed my eye when I spied it on the shelf were the graphics. Simply ubelievable for the time. As I drove home with it I found myself guessing that the graphics on the box must all be from cut sequences and was AMAZED to find out they were the graphics from the simulation itself.

The character interactions were wonderful. I really had a sense of getting closer to the other pilots.

The combat was just difficult enough to make it challenging. I'm one of those freaks who, if he dies, starts the game over from scratch and replays. I finally did beat this series front to back without losing a single man and felt an overwhelming sense of accomplishment.

One aspect that hasn't been mentioned in other reviews - the branching storyline. This, to my mind is a MUST in games of this nature, but is so seldom implemented. I HATE games that, if you fail in a mission force you to replay it. There's no sense of cohesive story there. This game actually altered the storyline based on your success or failures, but NEVER made you replay a failed mission. Absolutely brilliant.

The Bad
My main gripe with this game is that it doesn't run on my 400 mhz machine. I'd play it before I'd play it's more modern aspects like WC IV.

There is a small flaw in the game logic - as long as you survive the final mission, you win. Therefore (although I didn't win this way my first time through) if you really want to beat the game, just eject as soon as you leave the Tiger's Claw on the final mission. You survive and somehow remain responsible for destroying the Kilrathi base.

The Bottom Line
An amazing feat of technology for its time, a whole lot of fun, and my favourite simulator in any genre ever.

DOS · by Jeff Sinasac (391) · 2000

Not only an action game: A breakthrough in interactive fiction.

The Good
I'll start with the technical aspects. First of all, the game was perfectly playable on a 286, albeit you had to get rid of some details. The music was also really good; sound cards were being used since a maximum of two years in 1990 and this game really set a standard in terms of music quality.

Along from the very beginning at the credits, you were immersed in what looked more like a movie rather than a game. Nice cut scenes, briefings, funerals and chit chat in the mess hall gave a never-before-seen dimension to this game. All of this on three 5 1/4 HD disks!

Some might disagree with me on this as I don't have a huge gaming portfolio, but this was the first game that I've played that featured interactive fiction which you really felt that you were part of. You could talk to other characters and get to know them; rather than seeing an idle image or a text description of the characters, you saw them interact with you. This really contributed to give a more realistic image of the game.

WC was the first game in which I've somewhat got involved personally. I was so inside the game itself that I remember feeling really bad when one my colleagues was KIA. I've never felt anything like that again in a game afterwards.

I must have got used to it.

The Bad
On a system with low memory (1 Mb), some options were disabled, such as seeing the face of people who talked to you on your radio.

The game was difficult, and I eventually got discouraged. That's too bad, as I didn't have the opportunity to see the ending.

The Bottom Line
In perspective, a trend-setter. Most games now feature lots of cut scenes and cinematographic elements, but I still believe Wing Commander was the first to do it so sharply.

DOS · by Olivier Masse (443) · 1999

A game that won't appear ever again!

The Good
Back in the glorious year 1991 I saw an impressive review in a games magazine presenting the game... impressed because it gave out a glimpse of this game's richness, plus many impressive screenshots... but only recently, over 10 years later, I managed to get halfway through the game and experience what that magazine was trying to tell me...

The reason: I started playing simulators since Inca and then Xwing, which in fact, are Wing Commander clones! Then I tried to play some WC games but never managed to get a grip of its gameplay and controls, but my last attempt brought success!!

The game is impressive, unique, brilliant, even nowadays, and I am telling you, after having playing other, more recent simulators! It makes me wonder how much impressive that would have been back in those years...

It is maybe one of the first games that makes use of hand drawn comic-like 256 coloured graphics... the game menu appears in the form of your mothership's (Tiger's Claw) interior you explore... you can visit the Bar to collect gossips of the Kilrathi war (helps building a realistic sensation of the background while you play) and hints from other pilots, the barracks to save your game (each game appears as a sleeping pilot on the bed), and your locker to see your score and performance..

The astonishing fact, which is absent even from later WC's clones, is that the pilots you meet, interact wit in the bar, which later become your wingmen, are characters on their own and have separate personalities and behaviour in combat!! When they die while being your wingmen, you will see a sequence with their funeral and never appear again..

The game is non-linear... when you fail some missions, you won't replay them, but will maybe 'punishing' you by opening plot forks and have additional missions before returning to the original story... I imagine addicted WC fans experimenting by losing missions and try to live ALL the forks and missions availiable.

I loved the way the cutscenes are presented... combined with the appearance of the pilots you can interact, it creates a realistic 'being there' sensation.. the briefings for example, don't show only the officer saying 'your mission is blah blah', but the briefing of each mission is different: the pilots ask questions and the officer makes his comments... it will make you feel like watching a movie, although years before the Interactive Movie games!

Cutscenes also appear when you are transferred, in funerals or in promotions... some cutscenes also show 'meanwhiles' advancing the storyline background.

The manual is also exceptional, published in the manner of a magazine that supposedly circulates in the Tiger's Claw (the mothership) for the pilots... it gives you in a realistic fashion the background of the story, presentation of the pilots you are gonna meet in the game (in the manner of interviews!), ships presentations, the officer ranks and hints (in the manner of magazine articles!)

It's a game that introduces a whole new space saga from nowhere: i'ts not taking place in a Star Wars/Trek universe, nor is it based on them... it's totally a unique new mae universe with its own fictional timeline and philosophy and waits for you to explore.

The Bad
What I didn't like was the difficulty of some missions, and the cockpit design, which hides from you some part of the action... thus you are forced to maneuver all the time to bring the enemy on your visual field...

I didn't like the fact that you are always a wingleader, and all the pilots are always wingmen... I didn't find this realistic since this makes you commander even of pilots that are superior in rank... the good stuff would be if you started the story as a wingman, and then advance, but anyway...

The Bottom Line
Too bad that all those revolutionary elements haven't been copied by the various WC clones!

DOS · by Boston Low (85) · 2004

[ View all 17 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Save the destroyer. Victor Vance (18070) Jul 30, 2014
Amazing non-linear story from a space simulator? Indra was here (20760) Nov 11, 2008
Need help landing. Indra was here (20760) Nov 8, 2008
How Many Floppy Diskettes? mobiusclimber (235) May 21, 2008

Trivia

Amiga version

The standard Amiga version of Wing Commander has only 16 colors, as it was released just before the Amiga 1200 which added the 256-color AGA version. Some early demos were made in 32 colors, but the number of colors had to be reduced as the game was too slow on not accelerated Amigas. The only 256-color version is the one bundled with the CD32 system, which also runs on A1200s with CD drives.

Auto pilot

Due to the way the game has you auto-piloting to different nav points where the action takes place, most gamers would think that the engine simply has a generic "endless" space and it simply spawns the required objects when you use the autopilot feature. In reality the game actually generates the entire area you see on your nav computer with all its objects. This can be seen when actually flying to each of the nav points manually.

Campaign

Wing Commander features a full "winning" and "losing" branches of a campaign tree, with some "neither" branches where you can turn yourself around. Unfortunately, most players simply replay each mission until they win (or else they eject and reload the old savegame), thus NEVER experiencing the "losing" side of the campaign, thus wasting all the effort put in by Origin. Origin simplified the campaign flowchart in all later games (and the mission packs) so that they no longer need completely separate campaign paths for the "losing" branch, to save on development costs.

Copy protection

The original package came with blueprints for the 4 Confed fighters in the game: Hornet, Scimitar, Raptor, and Rapier. The copy protection ask you questions from those blueprints.

Cutscenes

Most of the major cutscenes are random in themselves (e.g. every time the briefing starts people sit down and stand up in different order).

Development

This game was almost canceled the quarter before it shipped. The sales & marketing director Marten Davies at Origin did not believe it would sell. In an interview with the German magazine GameStar (issue 05/2016), Roberts refutes this claim and replaces it with a different anecdote: Roberts believed the game would sell 100.000 units, Davies calculated with at least 200.000 units. So Roberts did bet his car (Porsche 944 Turbo) on it - and lost because the game sold 250.000 units in a short time frame. However, with the royalties he could easily afford a new car of the same model...

Maniac

When you fly a mission with "Maniac", there's the name "Joker" written on his helmet, however if you fly with the other pilots, the right name is on their helmets. Probably Origin changed this before the final release. At least this happens when you play the original Wing Commander Missions with the sm2.exe from Secret Missions 2: Crusade.

Manual

The game manual, like other Origin games, is written inside the universe and titled "Claw Marks: The Onboard Magazine of TCS Tiger's Claw". Inside is various stories and articles that might be interesting to an active pilot, including a set of ship's schematics under the heading "Joan's Spacecraft". This is a various obvious nod to the Jane's Information Group which for years published encyclopedic specifications of ships, aircraft, tanks and other machines of war. In the video game world, the Jane's branding has been attached to multiple products.

Novels

There have been eight novels written and published set in the Wing Commander universe; unusually, most of them have been at least partially written by the same author, and hence for game novel adaptations can be considered to contain extraordinary degrees of internal continuity:1. Freedom Flight (1992), by Ellen Guon and Mercedes Lackey; 2. End Run (1993), by William R Forstchen and Christopher Stasheff; 3. Fleet Action (1994), by William R Forstchen; 4. Heart of the Tiger (1995), by William R Forstchen and Andrew Keith; 5. The Price of Freedom (1996), by William R Forstchen and Ben Ohlander; 6. Action Stations (1997), by William R Forstchen; 7. False Colors (1998), by William R Forstchen and William H Keith; and 8. Pilgrim Stars (1999), by Peter Telep -- a novel specifically inspired by the WC movie.

Packaging

There's a large blurb on the back of the original box that says "Every screenshot taken from this game - What You See is What You Play!" However, that's incorrect. Most of the shots on the back were taken from a beta version of the game, featuring weapons, names, and graphics not seen in the final version. Isn't it ironic?

PC Gamer release

A complete version of Wing Commander is available on Classic Games Collection CD featured in the July 2000 issue of PC Gamer Magazine.

Player character

In Wing Commander, the player character has no name and when he was created, his black hair was "highlighted" with lots of streaks of blue (there was a limited color palette). Within Origin, he came to be referred to as "BlueHair" when discussing him. It is possible that this was the basis when he was named "Blair" in later installments of the series.

References

If you look at the "weapons ratings" you will notice that some are rated in "ESK's". This stands for "Earth Shattering Kabooms!", as per the Marvin the Martian cartoon.

SEGA CD version

The Sega CD version of Wing Commander features voice acting for all the dialogue in the game. There are not even any subtitles.

Soundtrack

In 2002 Team Fat announced the release of a completely redone Soundtrack-CD. The bonus track of this CD - a surf-version of the WC-Theme - can be found at http://www.gamasutra.com/galleries/audio/george_sanger/index.htm

Technology

Unique for its time, Wing Commander used a hybrid 3D system that took place in true 3D space, but used bitmaps drawn from different angles for sprites. The end result was a 3D system that was fast without the speed penalty of rendering polygons in realtime (bitmap scaling and rotation was employed instead). A similar method was used in Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, but not until several years later.

Title

The game was originally going to be called Wingleader and had that name until very shortly before it was shipped. It was changed at the last minute when it was discovered a board game had the same name and they didn't want to risk trademark infringement. Some beta-test pictures can still be found which contain that name.

Awards

  • ACE (Advanced Computer Entertainment)
    • March 1991 (issue #42) - Included in the list Greatest Games of all Time in category Simulations (editorial staff choice)
  • Amiga Joker
    • Issue 02/1994 – Best Simulation in 1993 (Readers' Vote)
  • Computer Gaming World
    • November 1991 (Issue #88) – Game of the Year
    • April 1992 (Issue #93) – Introduced into the Hall of Fame
    • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) - #7 in the “150 Best Games of All Time” list
    • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) – #10 Best Way To Die In Computer Gaming (receiving a funeral)
    • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) – #12 Most Rewarding Ending of All Time
    • 200th anniversary issue - #4 in the "Best Game of All Time" list (Readers' vote)
  • FLUX
    • Issue #4 - #20 in the "Top 100 Video Games of All-Time" list
  • GameSpy
    • 2001 – #34 Top Game of All Time
  • GameStar (Germany)
    • Issue 12/1999 - #4 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking
  • Power Play
    • Issue 01/1991 - Best Action Game in 1990 (DOS version)

Information also contributed by Adam Baratz, Big John WV, Felix Knoke, IJan, Kasey Chang, Martin Smith, PCGamer77, Pseudo_Intellectual, quizzles7, rstevenson, Steve Cantrell, Thomas Perl, weregamer, Windowskiller, WildKard, WizardX and Zovni

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Trixter.

Amiga added by Rebound Boy. SNES added by Satoshi Kunsai. FM Towns added by Terok Nor. SEGA CD added by quizzley7.

Additional contributors: Brian Hirt, Kasey Chang, monkeyislandgirl, formercontrib, Ricky Derocher, 梦迪 高, Patrick Bregger, Jo ST.

Game added March 1, 1999. Last modified February 20, 2024.