🐳 New! Moby v2023.06.02 update

Wing Commander: Privateer

aka: Trade Commander

Description official descriptions

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 - but also a lot of pirates, Retros (religious fanatics who want to destroy technology), military, militia, merchants, mercenaries, and privateers. In the darkness, a battle between ships has woken up something ancient, powerful, and deadly.

Wing Commander: Privateer is a space trading and combat simulation. The player assumes the role of 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 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 the account. Missions can vary from search and destroy to Fedex (i.e. delivery) to bounty hunting, and more.

The game is set in the Wing Commander universe, but is more of a free-form game similar to Elite. While there is a central plot, the player can deviate from it somewhat and can continue playing the game after completing the main story missions.

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Videos

See any errors or missing info for this game?

You can submit a correction, contribute trivia, add to a game group, add a related site or alternate title.

Credits (DOS version)

58 People (44 developers, 14 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Discussion

Subject User Date
disk 5 John Sheehy 2007-12-17 14:28:47

Trivia

Ending

When you finish the game, your character was having a conversation with the admiral... Then all of a sudden they started talking back and forth about the game and its creators!

Hidden game

There is a hidden text adventure. Information on how to access it can be found in the hint section.

Manual

Although Privateer's player's guide was quite run-of-the-mill compared to other Origin game manuals it did come with a short story. The Frontiersman: Interview With A Privateer was the account of an interview conducted to our very own Brownhair (with all names changed to protect the innocent, of course) and which told us his story to the point were he sets sail to the Gemini sector. The story also explains his relationship with the Retros and adds a more somber tone to the game, particularly to it's add-on, Righteous Fire.

Player character

According to an early Origin press release the player character (brownhair)'s name is Grayson Burrows.

System requirements

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.

Awards

  • GameStar (Germany)
    • Issue 12/1999 - #59 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking

Information also contributed by Benjamin Dunham, Kasey Chang, xcorn1602 and Zovni

Related Games

Wing Commander: Privateer - CD-ROM Edition
Released 1994 on DOS, 2011 on Windows, 2012 on Macintosh
Wing Commander
Released 1990 on DOS, 1992 on SNES, Amiga...
Wing Commander: Privateer - Gemini Gold
Released 2005 on Linux, Windows, Macintosh
Wing Commander 1+2
Released 2011 on Windows, 2012 on Macintosh
Wing Commander Academy
Released 1993 on DOS, 2013 on Windows
Wing Commander: Prophecy
Released 1997 on Windows, 2003 on Game Boy Advance

Related Sites +

  • Privateer entry on Old Skool PC - Classics Reunited
    Nifty site with lots of info on Wing Commander: Privateer. Game details, overview of all the ships in the game, stats on everything from weapons to commodities, the NavMap, list of planets and bases, mission walkthrough, desktop themes... even some soundtrack files. Also has some links to patches and editors.

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 611

Contribute

Know about this game? Add your expertise to help preserve this entry in video game history!

Contributors to this Entry

Game added by IJan.

Additional contributors: Terok Nor, test test, Zeikman, Patrick Bregger.

Game added February 19th, 2020. Last modified April 5th, 2023.