On the fringe of Human space, near the Kilrathi border, the industrial machine is running full-tilt to feed the war effort, and there is a lot of shipping... and a lot of pirates... and Retros (fanatical religious nuts who wants to destroy technology), military, militia, merchants, mercenaries, and privateers. In the darkness, a battle between ships has woken up something ancient... Something powerful... Something... deadly.

You are a privateer. Start with the lowly scout, and upgrade to one of the three other superior ships: Galaxy (superior cargo space), Orion (superior protection), or Centurion (superior offense). Buy optional equipment such as armor, engines, shields, weapons, launchers for torpedoes/missiles, and MUCH MUCH more. Take on missions (multiple sources, from the cheapest mission computer, to fixers who has the toughest but most rewarding missions) and earn money for upgrades. Use spare cargo room to trade commodities to further add to your account. Missions can vary from search and destroy to Fedex (i.e. delivery) to bounty hunting, and more.

Privateer is set in the Wing Commander universe, but is more of a free-form game similar to Elite. While there is a central plot, you can deviate from it somewhat and you can continue playing after you finish the main plot. It also has the infamous talking heads dialog Origin pioneered in Wing Commander, this time with higher resolution and more natural look, and still has the lip-sync.

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Alternate Titles

"Trade Commander" -- working title

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Part of the Following Groups

Merchant	Title	Platform
	Wing Commander ~ Privateer [DOS 5.0 Version]	DOS
	Wing Commander: Privateer
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User Reviews

Despite some mild flaws, an absolutely superb game that everyone should try	dogwank (5)
Best game I've ever played, period.	Cyric (50)	unrated
The definitive space mercenary experience.... man, I LOVE this game!	Zovni (9138)
One wonders why Privateer 2 was a step backward from this classic.	Chockydonutman (5)
Total Freedom! Choose your career. Make your own destiny.	Jesse French (2)	unrated
Over all the game rocks	Lord Dragon (3)
General Review	Chad Henshaw (34)
A fine "Elite" derivative, with all the WC flavor intact	Kasey Chang (3695)	unrated
I'll slow roast your (g)uts!	Shiek of Geek (27)
A must-see game	Patrick McCarron (6)	unrated

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The Press Says

PC Player (Germany)	Apr, 1995	85 out of 100	85
Svenska Hemdatornytt	Nov, 1993		83
Top Secret	Feb, 1994	7 out of 10	70
High Score	1993	3 out of 5	60

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Forums

Topic	# Posts	Last Post
disk 5	1	John Sheehy Dec 17, 2007

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Trivia

On the box of the german disk version of privateer there was as hardware minimum requirements announced a 386 DX with 25 MHz. But on the first pages of the manual suddenly they wrote that the minimum is a 386 DX with 33 MHz. From nowadays viewpoint, when clock speed is counted at hundreds, nothing important, but in 1993 this was rather annoying when you just owned a 25 MHz machine.

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This entry to the MobyGames database was contributed by IJan (1980) on Dec 22, 1999.