Wing Commander
Wing Commander - The 3-D Combat Simulator, original PC game developed by ORIGIN Systems 1990. Amiga conversion by Nick Pelling and published by Mindscape International in 1992.
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Player's Review
"Wingleader One! Wingleader One! Bogies all around! Can't shake 'em!" "Hold on, Hunter, I'm on my way!..."
You're a starfighter pilot, the best of the best, but nothing in your training prepared you for action this hot. Deepspace dogfights against Kilrathi aces are deadly, and the future of humanity is on the line each time you fly! Wing Commander puts you in the middle of the most intense starship action you've ever experienced outside of a movie theatre. But in Wing Commander, you're the star!
- Experience ORIGIN's amazing new state-of-the-art computer graphics and sound system.
- Marvel at the detailed, ray-traced, bit-mapped images in ORIGIN's cutting-edge 3-D technology.
- Thrill to the dynamic soundtrack that senses the action on-screen and alters the pacing, tempo and mood of the music to match!
- Advance in rank while piloting one of four unique Terran spacefighters against a deadly array of enemy ships.
- See the action from all angles using Wing Commander's player-controlled camera.
- Count on your wingman, a skilled pilot, thanks to the advanced Wing Commander artificial intelligence system, but don't get cocky: The enemy flies intelligently, too!
This is a standout game for me around 1994 and one of the best games I ever played on the platform and one of the best boxed games I still hold on to. Playing this at the time it was like no other. I enjoyed flight sims and other space adventures like starglider, elite, frontier but this was on another level. Even though it played quite badly on my A600, I enjoyed it for what it is and could enjoy more so later on a faster Amiga and elsewhere. From the opening cinematic and the orchestral soundtrack it had presentation like no other. Then in game, the orchestral music played dynamically to what was going on, the enemy fighters would come at you with there own dynamic behaviour as well as your own wingman that can help or hinder you or just fly off if things got tough for them. And there is the flight joystick Then there is the briefing, debrief and launch screens which maintain the immersion that you are the space pilot and to top it off, the mission tree adapts to how well you are doing so the objective can be different from one play to the next. After completing I wanted more but sadly we never got the extra missions or wing commander ii on Amiga. These would have been must owns for me.
During flight you have some things to think about. Choices of missiles from dumb forward firing, to friend or foe or heat seeking. Gun selection for short or long range or even both together. Weapon fire requires energy and the more you fire, the longer it takes to replenish. Shields also require energy and if they are recharging it can take a while before you can fire again. Not what you want in a tight dogfight with three other enemies. You do get some armour but once its gone, its gone. You can stay and fight but there is no shame in going home to fight another day. The mission tree may change though. If you get shot up real bad you have the chance to eject and hopefully be rescued. If you are killed though its game over. Hopefully you are making use of the save game feature in the barracks. To help in a dogfight you can tell your wingman to either stay with you and help out or go out and rumble with other enemies. You can also ask them to concentrate on a specific target whilst you deal with something else. The wingman can die be killed though which means you may not get help in the following mission.
The game was developed to play on an A500 and similar machines and took some advantage of faster machines. The game runs quite slow though on an A500 so am playing on an A1200 config. It's still no where near as fast as the actual AGA release of the game though. The game has ship damage but it can be hard to show as in a lot of cases if you take damage, you are dead so wasn't really able to capture much of it till near the end of the game when the ship can take some punishment. The most difficult parts of the game are usually the asteroid or mine fields. It's not so bad if you take your time getting though but if you attempt to turbo through it, you may be greeted with a lightspeed rock coming at you, insta death!
After completing the game, I show some footage running at native A500 speed as a comparison with some sequences I couldn't fit in the normal playthrough. Overall, as stressed at the start this is a great game on any platform and whilst I think there is scope for improvement on the A500 version (like, why is text dithered and not a solid colour, any colour!) and even though its slow its still a great game and left a huge impression on me and I have completed it even at stock A500 speed. The video ended up so much longer than I expected, likely due to many reasons including slow gameplay, disk loading and not skipping any anim sequences and letting messages play out at normal speed.
00:00:00 Intro
00:07:32 FlightSim (Cut for time)
00:10:50 Enyo 1
00:23:44 Enyo 2
00:40:07 McAuliffe 1
00:54:18 McAuliffe 2
01:12:04 McAuliffe 3
01:30:34 Gimle 1
01:45:15 Gimle 2
01:59:55 Gimle 3
02:18:42 Dakota 1
02:37:34 Dakota 2
03:02:42 Dakota 3
03:24:50 Kurasawa 1
03:45:22 Kurasawa 2
04:01:50 Kurasawa 3
04:19:25 Venice 1
04:45:45 Venice 2
05:07:45 Venice 3
05:27:50 Venice 4
----- Bonus -----
05:56:35 Wing Commander Played at A500 Speed
06:23:05 Eject Sequence
06:29:46 B00M! Game Over
You're a starfighter pilot, the best of the best, but nothing in your training prepared you for action this hot. Deepspace dogfights against Kilrathi aces are deadly, and the future of humanity is on the line each time you fly! Wing Commander puts you in the middle of the most intense starship action you've ever experienced outside of a movie theatre. But in Wing Commander, you're the star!
- Experience ORIGIN's amazing new state-of-the-art computer graphics and sound system.
- Marvel at the detailed, ray-traced, bit-mapped images in ORIGIN's cutting-edge 3-D technology.
- Thrill to the dynamic soundtrack that senses the action on-screen and alters the pacing, tempo and mood of the music to match!
- Advance in rank while piloting one of four unique Terran spacefighters against a deadly array of enemy ships.
- See the action from all angles using Wing Commander's player-controlled camera.
- Count on your wingman, a skilled pilot, thanks to the advanced Wing Commander artificial intelligence system, but don't get cocky: The enemy flies intelligently, too!
This is a standout game for me around 1994 and one of the best games I ever played on the platform and one of the best boxed games I still hold on to. Playing this at the time it was like no other. I enjoyed flight sims and other space adventures like starglider, elite, frontier but this was on another level. Even though it played quite badly on my A600, I enjoyed it for what it is and could enjoy more so later on a faster Amiga and elsewhere. From the opening cinematic and the orchestral soundtrack it had presentation like no other. Then in game, the orchestral music played dynamically to what was going on, the enemy fighters would come at you with there own dynamic behaviour as well as your own wingman that can help or hinder you or just fly off if things got tough for them. And there is the flight joystick Then there is the briefing, debrief and launch screens which maintain the immersion that you are the space pilot and to top it off, the mission tree adapts to how well you are doing so the objective can be different from one play to the next. After completing I wanted more but sadly we never got the extra missions or wing commander ii on Amiga. These would have been must owns for me.
During flight you have some things to think about. Choices of missiles from dumb forward firing, to friend or foe or heat seeking. Gun selection for short or long range or even both together. Weapon fire requires energy and the more you fire, the longer it takes to replenish. Shields also require energy and if they are recharging it can take a while before you can fire again. Not what you want in a tight dogfight with three other enemies. You do get some armour but once its gone, its gone. You can stay and fight but there is no shame in going home to fight another day. The mission tree may change though. If you get shot up real bad you have the chance to eject and hopefully be rescued. If you are killed though its game over. Hopefully you are making use of the save game feature in the barracks. To help in a dogfight you can tell your wingman to either stay with you and help out or go out and rumble with other enemies. You can also ask them to concentrate on a specific target whilst you deal with something else. The wingman can die be killed though which means you may not get help in the following mission.
The game was developed to play on an A500 and similar machines and took some advantage of faster machines. The game runs quite slow though on an A500 so am playing on an A1200 config. It's still no where near as fast as the actual AGA release of the game though. The game has ship damage but it can be hard to show as in a lot of cases if you take damage, you are dead so wasn't really able to capture much of it till near the end of the game when the ship can take some punishment. The most difficult parts of the game are usually the asteroid or mine fields. It's not so bad if you take your time getting though but if you attempt to turbo through it, you may be greeted with a lightspeed rock coming at you, insta death!
After completing the game, I show some footage running at native A500 speed as a comparison with some sequences I couldn't fit in the normal playthrough. Overall, as stressed at the start this is a great game on any platform and whilst I think there is scope for improvement on the A500 version (like, why is text dithered and not a solid colour, any colour!) and even though its slow its still a great game and left a huge impression on me and I have completed it even at stock A500 speed. The video ended up so much longer than I expected, likely due to many reasons including slow gameplay, disk loading and not skipping any anim sequences and letting messages play out at normal speed.
00:00:00 Intro
00:07:32 FlightSim (Cut for time)
00:10:50 Enyo 1
00:23:44 Enyo 2
00:40:07 McAuliffe 1
00:54:18 McAuliffe 2
01:12:04 McAuliffe 3
01:30:34 Gimle 1
01:45:15 Gimle 2
01:59:55 Gimle 3
02:18:42 Dakota 1
02:37:34 Dakota 2
03:02:42 Dakota 3
03:24:50 Kurasawa 1
03:45:22 Kurasawa 2
04:01:50 Kurasawa 3
04:19:25 Venice 1
04:45:45 Venice 2
05:07:45 Venice 3
05:27:50 Venice 4
----- Bonus -----
05:56:35 Wing Commander Played at A500 Speed
06:23:05 Eject Sequence
06:29:46 B00M! Game Over
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