Games of Yore: Wing Commander
Sometimes I indulge in a few reminiscences of the games we old geezers played way back in the last millennium. This time it is: Wing Commander!
A name that weights heavy on the minds of older players.
Wing Commander single-handily created the genre of space fighting on the PC. The franchise was also very loved by the hardware makers because it stressed PCs to their borders and beyond. That seems to be the trademark of creator Chris Roberts, as can still be seen at his current game-in-making Star Citizen, which is the spiritual child of Wing Commander.
The first Wing Commander was released in 1990 and featured extraordinary graphics for its time.
I personally had the problem that the game was in english and my vocabulary at the time I played was very small. I still figured out what to do (coms) to land on the carrier – except one thing. That you had to fly A) close and B) to the front of the carrier to actually land.
As a result I played the first mission maybe 30 times before I more or less accidentally got the answer to the riddle. Boy was I happy!!
Story and Missions
The missions didn’t differ much from each other. It was mostly fly from one waypoint to the other, kill all Kilrathi enemies and come back. But the mix of encounters was interesting and of course it was the fight against overwhelming numbers that was the fun.
Wing Commander had a non-linear story, meaning you could get other missions if you were not successful (e.g. ejected) once or twice. If you ejected in one of the earlier missions you got to fight an immensely powerful top fighter, that was normally not appearing for a long time, while sitting in the second worst one yourself. I loved that mission! And died the first 5 times.
Later games also had mission trees, albeit not that much. But the most famous change to the game was the transformation to an “interactive movie” from WC 3 on. Combining games and movies was THE rage at that time and if Chris Roberts does something, he does it BIG.
Wing Commander 3 and 4 were both the most expensive games at their time because of the inclusion of real film scenes.
While WC 1 to 3 were about the fight of humanity against the “human cats” Kilrathi, lovingly called furballs, Wing Commander 4 depicted a civil war.
The game’s name “The price of Freedom” comes from a quote by Thomas Jefferson, in full “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”
This quote is often misunderstood as that “security” is the key to freedom, but it was meant by Jefferson (and later users) quite contrary. As in the game, the strife for ever increasing “security” leads to a world with less freedom.
Made five years before nine-eleven, I wonder what the game makers would have done with the changes that the security theater after that attack brought to the US and the world.
Wing Commander 5 was made without Chris Roberts and showed a fight against a new Alien threat. Intended to be a Trilogy like the original Wing Commander, WC 5 was the last game of the franchise, several later games were stopped early in their development.
There were also other games but with the exception of Privateer they were not that good, mainly because they didn’t have any story.
About the movie: just forget it.
Blair
The hero of the games 1-3 is Christopher „Maverick“ Blair. It is not hard to see where the first name comes from, if you remember that “Chris” Roberts was born as Christopher…
And Blair is a typical programmer’s way of choosing a name. They had none, but already a file with a character picture. For obvious reasons it was named “blue hair”. Which became Blair.
Current State
Wing Commander V was the last game in the series. There is no sign of it reviving anytime soon, partly because the time of space shooters is gone. sniff If Star Citizen will ever be a real child of WC is still to be seen with its Squadron 42 part.
There is a fan-made Wing Commander Saga that can be downloaded from here http://www.wcsaga.com/index.php Technically it is based on the Freespace 2 engine.
Addition: Normally I hate “challenges” that “force” you to do something every single day. It feels like Big Brother is watching me ;)
But this time I decided to join the 30 day challenge and guess what? In my first post for it I forgot to include it. Of course…
If you don’t know what I am talking about, here is the introduction to it:
I remember these series of games was popular around the same time as the X-Wing series. I never played these but I loved the X-Wing games.
You can actually get the X-Wing and the Tie fighter games on steam for small money. Still the old graphic of course ;)
Right in the childhood..!
Man this brings back memories. Thank you
Follow me for more Games of Yore articles! Next will be Privateer from the WC universe.
Followed. Hell yeah man!