Wing Commander

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Wing Commander
"Break and Attack!"
Protagonist: Christopher Blair (main series; can be renamed) Burrows (Privateer) Michael Casey (Prophecy) Genre(s): Space flight simulation Platform(s): MS-DOS Amiga Amiga CD32 Sega CD Super Nintendo Entertainment System 3DO Interactive Multiplayer PlayStation PlayStation Portable FM Towns Macintosh PC-9800 Mac OS Microsoft Windows Mac OS X Game Boy Advance Creator(s): Chris Roberts Developer(s): Origin Systems Publisher(s): Origin Systems Made in: United States First game: Wing Commander First release: September 26, 1990 Latest game: Wing Commander Prophecy Latest release: December 11, 1997

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."

— Admiral Tolwyn, Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom

"...And if you look at Wing Commander III, that game is full of video, and it's almost like DVD quality, it looks good!"

— The Angry Video Game Nerd, in his Plumbers Don't Wear Ties video.

Wing Commander is a series of space combat flight simulation games developed and published by Origin Systems. The series consists of eleven games, including spin-offs and remakes. The series was originally supposed to be a single game and was going to be a turn-based strategy game rather than an arcade-like flight simulator but changed direction during the game's design phase. The creation of the games was inspired by Chris Roberts' love of science-fiction films and television series.

The first game, simply known as Wing Commander (Also known as Wing Commander: The 3-D Space Combat Simulator) released on September 26, 1990, and two expansions called The Secret Missions released later. A remake called Super Wing Commander released on Macintosh and the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer on March 23, 1994. The second game, called Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi released on September 1991 and was also followed by two expansions called Special Operations. This game in the series was meant to expand upon Chris Roberts' attempt to make players feel like they were playing a movie.

Three spin-offs called Wing Commander Academy, Wing Commander Privateer, and Wing Commander Armada released on August and September 1993 and September 1994 respectively before the release of Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger, which came out in December 1994. An enhanced re-release of Wing Commander I, II, and III called The Kilrathi Saga also released on October 15, 1996, and included faster gameplay and additional features do not present in the original.

On February 12, 1996, Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom was released. The last two games in the series that released by Origin, Privateer 2: The Darkening and Wing Commander Prophecy released on an unknown date in 1996 and December 11, 1997, respectively. Prophecy would later get an expansion called Wing Commander Secret Ops before Origin Systems was shut down by its parent company Electronic Arts. The last game to be released was Wing Commander Arena for the Xbox 360 on July 25, 2007 and was the only game not to be overseen or developed by Origin Systems.

All of the PC releases were eventually re-released on GOG.com, as well as EA's Origin client.

This article will focus on the Origin Systems era, the games that released before the company was shut down and EA's management of the series.

Synopsis

In the 27th century, mankind is in a desperate and brutal war against the Kilrathi Empire, a race of an honor worshiping, tiger-like alien menace. The war has been going on for many decades, and only the brave and talented fighter and bombers pilots of the Terran Confederation Space Navy stand as a threat to the Kilrathi menace. In the later entries of the series, humanity may have won against the Kilrathi, but other threats such as the Black Lance and the Nephilim remain threats to humanity's well-being and survival.

List of video games

• Wing Commander (1990)
• Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi (1991)
• Wing Commander Academy (1993)
• Wing Commander: Privateer (1993)
• Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger (1994)
• Wing Commander: Armada (1994)
• Super Wing Commander (1994)
• Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom (1996)
• Privateer 2: The Darkening (1996)
• Wing Commander: Prophecy (1997)

Why It's a Wing Commander

Overall

1. The games revolutionized the combat flight simulation genre and its success influenced the release of future titles such as Star Wars: X-Wing and FreeSpace, which would later lead to the higher popularity of the genre.
2. The main gameplay, flying a fighter craft and travelling between NAV Points to accomplish the mission objective, is very solid and very addictive to play. Players have freedom in which order they can explore and complete objectives at each NAV Point and don't necessarily have to go in the specified order to finish them up. Fighting and flying around feels great to control, especially on a desktop mouse or joystick, and going in whatever direction feels very fluid and has a little realism to it. In addition, players can do a few complicated maneuvers to make combat more fluid and exciting, such as the famous afterburner slide, where the player fires burners and turns at the right time to slide around to one side, useful to take down enemies from the side. All in all, the flight and objective aspects allow the player quite a bit of freedom in playing.
3. The A.I. in the games are great, with each ship having their own set of patterns, such as Salthi always turning left to face the player. The ace pilots also help shake things up a bit with their own unique takes on flying their ships, such as Baruk Starkiller from the first game using his skills to try to lure you away from what you're defending or Fireclaw from the third cowardly running away after taking minor damage.
   • In addition, each ship and ace pilot has different behavior depending on these specific criteria: Enemy Near (When you or a friendly are close to the ship), Enemy Slow (When you or a friendly are heading at a slow speed), Enemy Far (When you or a friendly are far away from the enemy), Enemy Tailing (When you or a friendly ship is on the craft's tail), Head-to-head (When you or a friendly are facing the enemy head on), On Enemy Tail (When the enemy is on you or a friendly's tail), Missile Coming (When the enemy is getting tracked by a missile), Laser Hit (When the enemy is hit), and Enemy Destroyed (When you or team member is killed). Each of these have a specific behavior depending on whether the enemy craft is not damaged, has damage, or is almost destroyed. For example, if you are near the enemy craft and they are damaged, they will do a strafe attack most of the time or do a strafe and roll rarely. This behavior allows players to study enemy tactic from all ships and ace pilots to get a better handle on how they fight.
4. The commanding system, arguably the most catch-all aspect of the series, is a really deep mechanic and leads to a lot of variety in combat, and it gives these games a lot more of a strategic edge than other combat flight simulators, especially when these games first released.
   • The main reason the system is sued is to command you wingman to do different actions to aid you in battle. These commands are:
     • Break and Attack: This command is used to break your wingman out of formation and into battle to attack enemies. This action is used often at the beginning of a fight to get some damage early.
     • Keep Formation: If a wingman tells you they want to go out and fight when they are in formation, this denies that request.
     • Form on My wing: This cancels out the previous command and returns your wingman to your side, useful if you want to finish the fight yourself or want to form up to flee a fight.
     • Attack My Target: This sends your wingman out to attack the enemy you have targeted. If you change targets, they will go after your new one. This is especially useful during head on attacks against a full enemy wing, as you can lock on a new target for your wingman, and deal shots to another one ahead.
     • Help Me Out Here: This command sends your wingman out back to protect your ship, useful if you are being attacked by a tough enemy or are being ganged up on by two or more ships.
     • Return to Base: This sends your wingman back home, which is useful to keep them alive for the next mission if they have taken to much damage, or if you feel that you can handle the rest of the mission yourself.
     • Keep Radio Silence: This is used to prevent your wingman from talking in battle, which is helpful if you don't want to deny break formation requests often or just don't want to hear any radio chatter.
     • Broadcast Freely: Cancels out the previous command.
     • Never Mind: Closes out of your command window, just in case you accidentally opened it or don't really have anything to request at the moment.
   • Outside of commands to your wingman, you can send commands to other ships such as enemies and escorts.
     • Taunt (Or specific quips in the earlier games): These are incredibly useful, as when used they provoke an enemy to attack you, which is very helpful to prevent an escort from being destroyed.
     • Request Status (Friendly craft only): This request is used to have your wingman or escort inform you of their status, as in teling you how damaged their ship is, which is useful to send your wingman home if they need it or re-plan your flight strategy if an escort is in serious trouble.
     • Request Clearance (Base only): Requests landing on your carrier or base, ending the mission.
   • Along with having a simple but deep wingman system, each wingman has their own flying style that makes them unique and different, such as Maniac never following orders and always going straight into battle or Spirit always doing what you ask, even if it is suicide, and this makes the system deeper in some other ways.
     • In the earlier games this made the encounters themselves more unique from one another, as some wingmen were better at defending the objective, others were better at racking up kills to thin out enemy numbers, while others were somewhat useful but had a large risk of dying an required constant attention, to name a few examples.
5. There is a lot of mission variety between the levels of the game series. Some of the missions are simple, such as doing a three point patrol around the map and going from one place to destroy a target and that's it, but there are also some complicated missions that appear later on in the games that combine the multiple mission types, such as escorting a transport and then being sent out to defend a space station, and finally scouting for an enemy ship. The mission types are as followed:
   • Patrol: The most basic and common types of missions in the game, these missions require the player to reach every NAV Point on the mission map, while taking out any enemy ship you find along the way. As explained earlier, the player can explore the NAV Points in any order they wish, and can do so in a way to go around the obstacles such as asteroids on the map, or if the player doesn't want to fight, even avoid the enemies on the map if they know where they are.
   • Escort: Somewhat self-explanatory, these missions require the player to take a larger and less maneuverable ship to a specific NAV Point on the mission map, while protecting the ship from enemy craft that are trying to destroy it. These missions can usually only be done by going through the preset numbered NAV Points rather than going through a quicker order, since some maps have some obstacles such as the asteroids that will make escorting the ships much harder, making these missions more challenging than the other ones, but are still well designed and actually somewhat better than other escort missions in other games.
   • Strike: In these missions, the player is sent out to go after an enemy capital ship to take out or travelling between a set of NAV Points to search out a capital ship or travel between multiple to take out many capital ships. However, despite the later being stated in the previous sentence, these missions usually have only one or two kinds of NAV Points to travel between, but are also some of the most challenging in the game, due to having a large enemy presence on the map to protect the enemy capital ship.
   • Defense: Not to be confused with escort missions, these ones, used more often in the later games, require the player to protect their carrier or go between NAV Points to protect different capital ships or fighter squadrons on the map from enemy strike teams.
6. Many different ship types in all the games, each with their own gameplay style. For example, the Hornet fighter in the original is built around maneuverability, while the Thunderbolt in the third game is a ship of raw power. The ships are classified in their own types.
   • Light Fighters (Hornets, Ferrets, Arrows) are built around speed and maneuverability, but often lack the power and armor of other ships. They often used for patrol missions and are mostly found in the beginning of a game.
   • Medium Fighters (Scimitars, Wraiths, Hellcats) are the most well rounded of the fighter craft and are equal in all facets. They can be useful for almost any mission, but are best for escort missions, as they have the right amount of speed and power to take out enemies quickly, and for longer patrols such as five NAV point missions.
   • Heavy Fighters (Raptors, Sabres, Thunderbolts) are very powerful ships that can deal lots of damage and are tough to kill, but are mostly slow and lack the maneuverability of lighter ships. They usually carry two or three gun types and often carry mines or torpedoes. They are often used in light strike missions, such as attacking one capital ship, or heavy patrols.
   • Bombers (Broadswords, Longbows, Avengers) are the most powerful ships, with heavy armor, lots of missiles, and even have four or more turrets attached to them. Unfortunately, they are the slowest ships and because of this, they should only be used in strike missions (Missions against a large group of capital ships).
7. In addition to the variety of fighter types, there is also an interesting amount of missiles for the player to use on their ships, with later games allowing you to chose what you wanted on your craft.
   • Darts (Dumbfires) are powerful and fire fast, but they can't lock on to targets are require excellent aim to hit a target.
   • Pillum FFs (Friend-or-Foe) don't require a target to lock onto and dish out hard hits, but will lock on to whatever is closest to your ship, including friendly vessels. Make sure to check where your enemy and wingmen are before firing.
   • Javelin HS (Heat Seeker) requires you to lock onto the end of your target to fire and it will stay on a target's tail for a while if it doesn't hit immediately.
   • Spiculum IR (Image Recognition) will lock onto a target no matter where its facing.
   • Porcupine (Mine) is a mine weapon where you drop it and will detonate when a ship gets near it. Useful when a target is tailing your ship.
   • Torpedoes (introduced in Wing Commander II) are used for attacking very large vessels like capital ships. They require a 20 second lock to fire, but will usually annihilate smaller capital ships and heavily damage larger ones.
   • Leech Missiles (introduced in Wing Commander IV) are used to slow down targets when hit. If enough hit the target, then they will be disabled, and won't move or fire.
   • Dragonfly (introduced in Wing Commander Prophecy) missiles are essentially mini Dart missiles. They can be fired rapidly, have short lifespans, and are very fast.
   • Swarmer Pods (introduced in Wing Commander Prophecy) will lock onto a target and break into four separate missiles that will hit the target in quick succession. For all missiles to hit, the player must stay on the tail of the target.
   • Tracker MIRV (introduced in Wing Commander Prophecy) missiles are fired unguided and after a while, will separate into four FF missiles.
   • Mosquitoes (introduced in Wing Commander Prophecy) are similar to Dragonflies, but also have an FF head and will lock onto a target, but won't again if it misses its first pass.
   • Light Torpedoes (introduced in Wing Commander Prophecy) are similar to the standard torpedo, but are weaker and take only 10 seconds to lock onto a target.
8. The radar system is well designed. The radar is separated into three circles, one at the border, one in the center, and one in-between the center and border. The center shows enemies that are in front of your ship, the border shows enemies that are behind you, and the circle in-between is separated into four sections to show enemies above, below, left, and right of your ship. In addition, all of the enemies shown on the radar are color-coded to tell which are which, such as blue representing friendly craft and red being enemies. Other colors are also used for non-ships such as using yellow for missiles.
   • One other game in the series, Privateer 2: The Darkening, has it's own take on the radar system to appeal to another variety of users that works similar to the radar system in Elite. Rather than using simple dots on the radar, the display also shows how above or below the other ships in the area are to yours.
9. Based on whether you complete or fail a mission series, the type of missions you will encounter next will vary. If you constantly win battles, you will be given harder missions but will be on the path that will give you the best ending. If you fail, you will be taken to the losing path, but will easier but more unique missions.
   • Other games such as Wing Commander IV and Prophecy have a different take on winning and losing paths. Rather than just having failing a single mission sending you on the losing path in some cases, other missions have two or three different ways of playing out based on one mission's performance. For example, if you exposed yourself accidentally while following pirates back to their base in one of Wing Commander IV's earlier missions, you now have to go to the more difficult mission of searching for the pirate base at three different NAV points rather than going to one if you found the base successfully.
10. Presentation wise, all of the games are really cinematic, with each cutscene feeling like something out of a movie. This is further helped by strong voice acting from the main cast, well written scripts, and constant changing of camera angles. This was even in the earlier games and that is quite impressive considering the technical limitations of the time. The later games would even use FMV cutscenes to make you feel like you where playing a movie.
11. The soundtrack of all the games sounds amazing, even the console ports of the original games sounds good in their own unique way. The music also changes based on what is happening in the mission, which also helps add to the cinematic tone of the series. The cutscenes also determined what would play, with funerals for yourself or another pilot having a very somber tone, while areas such as the bar have a lighter sound to them, and music in mission briefings was serious and moody. Music of future games also had a more orchestral tone to them to add the feeling that you are playing a movie.
12. The characters in the games have very distinct personalities and are pretty memorable. One good example is Maniac, who is full of himself and considers himself to be a better pilot than the main character. Another example is Hobbes, who is originally shown to be a Kilrathi traitor working for the Confederation, but eventually becomes rogue and goes back to the Kilrathi. The personalities of the characters are so memorable that if you lose one in battle, you genuinely care and feel the absence of them.
    • The human cast is also very racially diverse; there are characters that are of Mexican, Japanese, Chinese, and Australian origin, which was something that wasn't really seen before in video games at the time of the original release.
13. When talking to other pilots in the game, they give you information on the game world, helping you feel more immersed in the world. They also sometimes tell you tips on how to fight the enemies in the game and how to fly your ship, which is really helpful and goes well along side the studying of enemy A.I.
14. All of the games have a lot of replay value that will keep players coming back for more. With the many different missions from all of the branching paths, there are tons of different missions to experience. In fact, some of the more unique missions can only be found in the losing mission paths, such as one mission in the original Wing Commander where you have to escort a destroyer through an asteroid field. All of these different levels can actually give players an excuse to lose missions on purpose so they can play all of the mission series'. Plus, the many different paths also lead to different ending. For example, Wing Commander IV and Wing Commander Prophecy have many different losing paths that lead to a lot different failing endings, such as Blair getting drummed out of service or arrested in the forth game. All in all, it is actually quite worth it to intentionally lose missions so you can get a more unique experience.
15. Each of the mainline games improves on each other differently.
    • Wing Commander put out the basic groundwork for how each future game would be played.
    • Wing Commander II made the game fell more cinematic than the original did and added more cutscenes, as well as new gameplay features such as flying bombers and adding torpedoes.
    • Wing Commander III incorporated live-action FMV sequences using Hollywood actors and a movie like budget to improve the cinematic feel of the games, as well as including 3D graphics, detailed ship designs, and more gameplay features such as a cloaking device to hide from enemies. It also introduced being able to customize your ship's weaponry and allowed you to chose what ship you wanted to use for the mission.
    • While Wing Commander IV didn't add much to the basic gameplay, it had a bigger budget than the third game and because of this, the FMVs and the in-game graphics looked incredible and still hold up today.

Mainline

1. The original and Wing Commander III includes a training simulator that players can use to improve their skills against enemy fighters. In the beginning of the simulation, you would chose which enemy type you want to practice against, and must survive wave after wave of that enemy until you get a "Game Over".
2. Not only does how well you fly affect how the story changes, going beyond the objectives and getting high kill counts results in ranking up and medals, encouraging the player to try different things in the missions and a good incentive to get 100% completion rate. In addition, each medal can be earned multiple times and have different criteria for earning in each mission. The medals go as followed:
   • Golden Sun: Only gained once, this is earned after ejecting from your fighter and surviving. However, you will be scolded on subsequent times you eject for not being a better pilot.
   • Bronze, Silver, and Gold Stars: Each of these are gained for surviving a mission with a large enemy onslaught or completing a particularly difficult mission, and the bronze, silver, and gold ranks progressively represent the difficulty of the encounters.
   • Terran Medal of Valor: The hardest medal to achieve in the game, the Medal of Valor is gained on the last level of each of the campaigns in the original game, and is only gained by eliminating every enemy on the map and surviving without ejecting.
   • The players would also progressively gain different ribbons throughout their career based on the missions they flew and the number of kills acquired.
3. The Secret Missions expansions to the original adds a combined total of 32 extra missions to the game and are a lot more difficult than the standard campaign. The Secret Missions II: Crusade expansions also adds two new fighters, two new wingmen named Jazz and Doomsday to fly with, fan favorite character Ralgha nar "Hobbes" Hhallas, and even allowing the player to control a captured Kilrathi Dralthi medium fighter in certain missions, which was a cool way of having a glimpse into how the Kilrathi operate. This applies to the Special Operations expansions for Wing Commander II as well, adding more missions, characters, and ships to increase the replayability of the games.
4. Wing Commander II improves almost everything that the original had. There are technical advancements, such as better graphics and faster gameplay, but other changes also improve the tone of the game and would later be used for later games, such as including voice acting and putting a bigger emphasis on the story.
   • Rather than going to the Bar area to talk to pilots in this entry, there was an option to view the next part of the story, which would show a cutscene that would take you all around the ship and even have views of what the enemy is doing. However, if you didn't care about the story and were just playing for flying the missions, they could easily be skipped and didn't intrude on the experience for the most part.
   • This release would introduce a new class of ship that would be used for all future mainline titles: the bomber. This type of ship was less maneuverable than a fighter, but has lots of power and is used to destroy larger enemy vessels.
     • In addition to the bombers themselves, some of the heavy and bomber ships have turrets attached to the sides or back of the ships. When switching camera angles, you may be able to control one of the turrets to take out enemy fighters from behind, which is really useful. The turrets even have a tractor beam on them to pick up ejected pilots.
   • Bombing runs where also introduced, where the player has to lock onto an enemy capital ship for twenty seconds before they can fire their torpedo and must remain locked by taking out enemy opposition using there turrets on their bomber craft.
   • We now have voice-acting in this entry that is used in battles and in certain cutscenes, and while it is not the best, it really helps the experience feel more movie-like like it is supposed to.
5. The biggest draw to the third, forth, and fifth entries of the series is the inclusion of the highly professionally made FMV cutscenes. While most FMV games are famous for having cheap effects and poor acting, Wing Commander III was the one of the first of these games to have a professional budget. The game was actually filmed in Hollywood and used famous actors like Mark Hamill, Tom Wilson, and even Malcolm McDowell. This made the game feel more movie-like than the previous games in the series and would become the template for story telling in the next games in the series. The forth game took this even more seriously, with a budget of $12 million. In fact, there are so many cutscenes, the third game had four discs that where swapped out constantly to play the game. The forth game had almost double that amount, using seven disks.
   • The designs of the sets, costumes, and special effects in the FMV cutscenes are very high-quality and are almost something you would see on the set of an actual film, making the scenes feel more professional in design than other FMV games of the time. In the case of the special effects, they look very professional for the time, and the effects in the cutscenes are actually better than the effects in the film adaptation of the video game series.
   • As mentioned above, most FMV games have poor acting, but the actors in Wing Commander III, IV, and Prophecy put effort into their roles, making the characters have believable personalities and actually making it possible for players to care about the characters they are playing, mostly possible due to the casting of big name actors to play the roles of the characters.
6. The story of these games are the best of the series. Wing Commander III acts as the epic conclusion to the Kilrathi War, with a story filled with plot twists and new characters and development. Meanwhile, Wing Commander IV would continue on the game with a new enemy, betrayal, and even moving the Kilrathi, the main enemies of the series, to a minor role and not actually being the antagonists this time, but rather an aid to your success, which is a nice touch to show the war is truly over.
7. The training sim from the first game returns in III, although in a different way. Rather than just being an arcade-style distraction, you have a full set of training missions for almost every mission type, so you always have some way to improve your skills.
8. Wing Commander III introduces new mission types to the series, such as planetary strike missions, where you attack structures and fighters over land, making flying a little more difficult, and a few linked missions, meaning levels that take you from one mission immediately to the next.
9. Introduces a wealth of gameplay options available to the player, helping make the game more enjoyable and so that almost anyone can play. These changes include five different difficulty levels and being able to divert power between weapons, damage control, and engines. There are also option available for changing the aspect ratio of the cutscenes, adding subtitles, and even making them black & white to give them an old movie feel.
10. Some of the FMV cutscenes also have two different options that affect the outcome of the conversation, affects the morale of the pilots and ship and even choosing what mission you get in some cases. This is a cool feature that makes you actually feel like you are part of the story.
11. A mechanic taken from the Strike Commander spin-off, the last few mainline entries allow you can chose which pilot in the game you want to use for the mission you are going on next, rather than being given a pre-selected pilot for the entire mission series. This is here to select a pilot that will best suit your piloting skills and what may be needed for the mission, such as Cobra being a better choice for simple seek and destroy missions, while Maniac wouldn't be a good choice for an escort mission.
12. Wing Commander Prophecyintroduces many new changes in the world and gameplay. The original cast of Wing Commander III & IV now have been replaced with new characters (With the exceptions of Mark Hamill, Tom Wilson, and Ginger Lynn Allen), many new ships and world designs, such as the Wasp and Stiletto fighters, a new enemy, and even a new game engine. However, these changes don't mess with the quality of the game, as it's still as fun to play as the past entries.
13. Many new and returning ship and weapon types in Prophecy. New weapons include the Charging Mass, a gun that you hold down for more power, as well as many returning guns like the Stormfire cannon. In addition, no ships from previous games return, but you won't miss them, as the new fighters and bombers are unique in their own way, such as the Devastator heavy bomber, a slow but powerful craft with turrets all over the ship.
14. Wing Commander Prophecy also spawned a Game Boy Advance port, the first Nintendo port of a Wing Commander game since the Secret Missions expansion. What makes the port so surprising and notable is how on par it is with the PC version. The creators were able to compress the entire campaign in a small 32-megabit game cartridge for a handheld console, with all missions, ships, and plotline intact. The game even uses detailed 3D models. Some sacrifices were made, such as the removal of the FMV cutscenes, but the port is overall very impressive and faithful to the standard release and must be seen to be believed. The port even includes multiplayer by use of the link cable and limited use of digitized voices. The port even has a multiplayer option where players shot each other down to be the last one standing, which the original game didn't have, that is played using the Game Boy Link Cable.

Re-release

1. Rather than being a straight re-release, The Kilrathi Saga adds a lot of new additions to the first three mainline games that where not present in the original releases. For example, the audio in all games has been updated and sounds a lot better than the original games. The framerate is also a lot smoother and the gameplay is faster. Another is the inclusion of being able to turn off the cockpit in Wing Commander I and II and playing with a larger field of vision. Some of the changes were also made for increasing enjoyment of the game, such as a new CGI intro that plays when starting the game.
2. This game even included a patch for Wing Commander IV that allowed that game to have some improvements that are available in the ports of the first three mainline games, such as rudder support.

Spin-offs

1. Rather than being a standard game or spin-off in the series, Wing Commander Academy acts as a level creator. You are able to create basic missions using the game's tools, such as creating patrols or strike missions, using the assets of Wing Commander 2. The game even adds two new ships created for the game to play around with. You can even share the missions you created with your friends and play ones they created.
2. Academy isn't just a level creator either. The game also includes a Gauntlet mode where you select your ship and wingman, and play through wave after wave of enemies to get the highest score.
3. The Privateer spin-offs are a fun deviation from the main series. Rather than giving the players a main set of missions to follow, the Privateer games give the players complete freedom in how they want to play. You may want to become a pirate and destroy all who come your way, a mercenary who will destroy specific foes for money, or a smuggler who sneaks illegal cargo for profit.
4. Privateer includes a game world that is completely different from previous games in the series. Rather than focusing the efforts of the Terran Confederation, these games focus on the more lawless part of the series world. The second Privateer game doesn't even have mention of the events of the mainline entries, focusing on its own universe.
5. Privatter 1 and 2 are very open ended and is more of a sandbox than other Wing Commander games. You can chose to follow the main story, play endlessly, or do whatever you like in the world.
6. The gameplay of Privateer is more similar to Elite or Freelancer. In this entry, the goal is to gain funds by doing tasks, such a delivering cargo or bounty hunting, to buy better equipment for you ships, and repeat. It's a repetitive, but addicting loop that makes these two games more infinitely replayable than other games in the series.
7. The Privateer games are highly customizable and you have mostly freedom when it comes to advancing and equipping your ship. You can chose what guns you want, as well as choosing from different missile weapons, shield and engine systems, and armor plating. You can even sell your ship and buy a new and better ship to customize.
8. Wing Commander Armada was the first game in the series to render the graphics as 3D polygons, which would be the future basis for the graphics in the later games.
   • The 3D models themselves in both Armada and Wing Commander III are also well detailed and fully textured, with many lines and colors to stand them out. They are even light-source shaded, which is pretty advanced for the time.
9. Armada once again takes advantage of being a spin-off tries something new with the series. Rather than being just a space combat simulation, it is also a turn-based strategy game. In it, players command a carrier as you make bases on planets to mine resources and create ships, fight enemy squadrons, and jump from system to system, with the goal of destroying the carrier of the enemy. It's not just strategy either, as some piloting skill is involved. When you encounter an enemy squadron on the map with your own fighters, you'll be able to directly control the battle as one of your allied forces, similar to X-COM Interceptor.
10. Armada is the first game in the series to include multiplayer, in the form of head to head combat against the other player, with players being able to fly any ship from the Confederation or Kilrathi arsenal.
11. Four different gameplay modes in Armada. You have a the Gauntlet mode returning from Wing Commander Academy, where you shoot down enemy ships for the highest score, the aforementioned multiplayer Battle mode for head-to-head combat, an Armada mode, which is the standard strategy game, and the Campaign, which is basically Armada, but with 10 different missions.
12. Another unique twist is that Armada actually allows you to play as both the Terran Confederation or the Kilrathi, with each side having different ships with their own weaknesses and strength.

Bad Qualities

Overall

1. While the branching mission paths is an excellently designed system, they have a major flaw: if you are sent to a failing mission path, do a mission incorrectly, or lose a wingman, you can just reload your game to before that happened and retry. This can make the loss of a wingman not feel the way it was meant to.
   • However, reloading does have a good quality: some mission paths can't send you back to the winning path, and reloading the game can lead to getting back on track.
2. The voice acting in the games before Wing Commander III isn't very good and sounds a little monotonous, and you can't tell if the voice actors are putting anything in their roles, though this was quite common with a lot of the games made by Origin Systems back then.
3. The design of the Kilrathi is very inconsistent throughout the series. In the first game, they appear to look like aggressive house cat-like humanoids. However, in the second game, they looked like bulky tiger-like humanoids. They keep this appearance until Wing Commander III, where they then still looked bulky, but had a combination of cat and alien-like features, which would remain their appearance until the non-canon film adaptation of the series was released, where they would look like slimy, fur-less big cats.

Mainline

1. You can lose your cannons in a fight if you get hit in the right place in the original, which can be frustrating, especially if you lose all of them and can't do anything. In addition to losing cannons, various systems can gt shot up that lead to different effects, with losing communications being particularly painful as it makes setting up a communication link between other pilots and any cap ships take much longer, and is especially agonizing when you have to land and can't set up a coms link.
2. The Secret Missions and Special Operations expansions don't have branching mission paths, unlike the base games. Instead, if you fail one mission in a series, you are automatically set in a losing path or lose the game outright, not giving the player much room for error.
3. There can be a little bit of slowdown in the first two entries, especially when there are a lot of lasers and enemies nearby, and this was never patched out in the GOG.com and Origin releases. Thankfully, this was fixed in the The Kilrathi Saga re-release.
4. The original versions don't have voice acting, which slightly dampened the cinematic feel. However, this was added into some of the ports of the first game and the "Speech Pack" accessory for the second.
5. The SNES ports of the original are the worst versions of the first game and the first expansion, with slower gameplay and some combat maneuvers being removed, as well as falling victim to Nintendo's censorship policies, such as removing Hunter's cigar and the minor swearing.
   • To best summarize the new gameplay, it is significantly slower, as due to the SNES's limitations, enemies come to you in a gauntlet rather than being right there at the beginning of the fight. Another problem is the control scheme, while thankfully able to do all the main actions from the PC version and the designers clearly tried their best, is a little complicated and unorthodox. For example, to eject, you have to hold Start, Select, L, and R at the same time to do so. There are so many complex combinations to do some actions, that you need to use a manual to learn them all.
   • There are also a lot of design choices that really do not make any sense. The standard laser gun, for example, fires blue energy blasts rather than red one, confusing it with the neutron blasts in the standard version, which should fire blue blasts but are now red. The missiles also look different, as they look more like Kilrathi mines than missiles.
     • It should be noted, however, that the SNES version of The Secret Missions has a special cutscene in the beginning of the game that isn't in the PC version. It also uses a few new tricks that help differentiate itself from the PC version, like now having a completely new launch sequence that takes advantage of Mode 7. It still isn't anywhere as good as the PC version, however.
6. The graphics of Wing Commander III are somewhat of a downgrade compared to Armada, as the ship models aren't as detailed and backgrounds aren't as prominent. However, this may be blamed on the large amount of FMV cutscenes that cut down on memory.
7. Starting with Wing Commander III, asteroids became a much smaller threat than they where in previous games, turning from plenty and fast moving, to large and very slow, and this sort of remove some of the flavor in the combat encounters.
8. The 3DO port of Wing Commander III had many differences from the PC and PlayStation versions that make it inferior to those versions. These include, but are not limited to:
   • The game only has one difficulty level instead of having five different ones. This difficulty is roughly the same as the "Veteran" level in the PC version.
   • The removal of missions that take place on planetary surfaces. They were instead replaced with FMV cutscenes. This also means only two the the three endings are accessible.
   • The ejection animation was cut out of the game. The option to replay a mission after ejecting is also cut out, just taking you to the next scene.
   • The player can only communicate with the ship they are targeting.
9. While being able to chose different dialogue choices to affect the game is a good mechanic, it is also very flawed, as the good choices always show up on the top of the screen and the bottom always show up on the bottom. Because of this, you could basically just click the top choice every time without any consequences and to click the bottom choice every time to make the game a lot harder. There are only a few times where the choices are not done in this way, such as choosing between Flint and Rachael in Wing Commander III, but even those don't save the mechanic from being boring at times.
10. You don't have to much room for error in Wing Commander IV, as most of the time, failing a mission will be an automatic game over. It doesn't help that the game is harder than others in the series, even on the lowest difficulty. Even if it does provide a challenge for veteran players, it will make newcomers turn off from it because of the difficulty.
11. While technically impressive, the Game Boy Advance port of Prophecy is also technically inferior to the PC version, such as having music that is less pleasant to listen to, not being able to communicate with pilots, and the game being harder to control. The missions where also really watered down, with no free level exploration. Your ship just goes from one area to the next automatically. There are also no asteroids to avoid in the levels.

Re-release

1. Despite being an excellent port of the original game, there are some flaws that are found. One notable example is that sometimes, the music of the original Wing Commander will bug out and repeat on the same song series and some of the backgrounds in space are missing. Another is the framerate of the cutscenes in Wing Commander II are a little uneven, with the animation being slow one minute and fast the next.

Spin-offs

1. Other than being a level creator, there isn't a lot of content in Wing Commander Academy besides the Gauntlet mode and sharing levels. The lack of a story mode also adds to the lack of replay value.
2. Barely any original assets in Academy. Almost all the assets of the game are taken from Wing Commander II, with barely any original ships and pilots other than the wingman 'Lightspeed' and the Wraith and Jrathek fighters.
3. Despite the gameplay hook being fun, the main gameplay of the Privateer games can get pretty repetitive, as all you do is buying and trading or completing tasks to get money to advance your ship and so on.
4. Unfortunately, despite the interesting take on the formula of the series, the strategy segments can be a little boring in Armada and it can take a while before you encounter Kilrathi ships. This is also not helped by the fact that there is barely anything going on graphically in these segments, with just a diagram to imply what is going on.
5. Armada's graphics are rather dull in color, with an abundance of gray and white colors. This applies to both the in-game borders in the menus and for the color of a lot of the ships themselves, and frankly makes them a bit hard to look at sometimes.
6. Unfortunately, Armada is one of the only two entries in the series that has multiplayer, with the second game being Wing Commander Arena, and that game wasn't that great.

Reception

Upon release, the original Wing Commander was a critical and commercial success. Dragon magazine gave the game 6 stars out of 5, while Computer Gaming World gave it 4 1/2 stars out of 5. The expansions were also well received, with Computer Gaming World calling the The Secret Missions "more of the same", but praised the second for improving the AI. By 1995, the original Wing Commander sold over 290,000 copies. In 2012, Time magazine put the game on their All-Time 100 Video Games list. The second game received similar acclaim, scoring a 5/5 from Dragon. The Wing Commander 1+2 re-release has a score of 4.7/5 on GOG.com.

As for the spin-off games, they to where well received, although they didn't get as much acclaim as the mainline entries and are more mixed. Computer Gaming World gave Wing Commander Academy 3 stars on a 5 star scale. The same magazine also gave Wing Commander Privateer 3 1/2 stars out of 5, praising its less-structured storyline. Privateer was that magazine's runner-up for their Game of the Year award, but lost to Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame. Next Generation magazine gave Wing Commander Armada three stars out of five. Privateer 2 was reviewed by Next Generation and was given four stars out of five. The games listed above have a user score of 3/5, 4.7/5, 3.7/5, and 4.7/5 on GOG.com respectively.

The last three mainline entries are the most well received of the original series. The third game in the series is often considered one of the best flight simulators ever made. Computer Gaming World and Next Generation both gave the third game 5 stars out of five. Critics praised the story as deep and intricate and the high quality of the FMV. In 2011, PC Gamer put the third game 72nd place on their 100 best PC games list. The forth game was also well received by critics and audiences, with them praising the high quality graphics and FMV sequences. However, the PlayStation version's reception was a lot more mixed, with the game having to be really changed to accommodate the hardware. Finally, Prophecy received positive reception from critics and players, once again praising the graphics as well as new twists on the formula. These games in the series have user scores of 4.8/5, 4.8/5 and 4.4/5 on GOG.com respectively. The GBA port of Wing Commander Prophecy has a score of 70/100 on Metacritic.

Legacy

The launch of the original Wing Commander and its massive success began a massive surge of combat flight simulators that would continue throughout out the 1990s. Some of these, like Star Wars: X-Wing and Descent: FreeSpace - The Great War would become franchises of their own and would propel the genre to new heights. Due to the massive success of the original Wing Commander, many sequels and spin-offs released. The high production budget of the original would also lead to many other studios matching the game's budget. The last Wing Commander game to be made by Origin was Wing Commander Prophecy, followed by Origin Systems being shut down by its parent company at the time, Electronic Arts.

Unfortunately, the series is now a shell of its former self, as the series has declined from being one of the most well-known games of the 90s to not being very well known today. This is partly due to EA's management of the series, giving it little attention and releasing a poorly made spin-off that killed off any chance of a new Wing Commander game. Luckily, the series has been kept alive with a small but devoted cult following.

Tips

1. While it is perfectly viable to play with the arrow keys or the mouse, using a joystick peripheral is recommended to make playing the game as enjoyable as possible, as it is more accurate for flying games like these.
2. Most importantly, your wingman will not attack unless you tell them to. They will just sit there and do nothing if you don't tell them to attack.
3. It is a good idea to keep the communication box open every once in a while in case you need to message something quickly.
4. You don't have to do the NAV Points in the order they are given to you. For example, if you feel confident in how you avoid mines or asteroids, you can save the asteroid or mine fields for the end and take the clear areas first.

Trivia

• Chris Roberts, the creator of Star Citizen, is the creator of the Wing Commander series. He also directed the game's film adaptation.
• The original working title for the game was Squadron, and later Wingleader.
• In the original game, there was a bug that would show an error message when exiting out of the game back to DOS. The development team could not find out what the bug was and fix the error because the game was close to release. One of the programmers, Ken Demarest, decided to change the message to instead read "Thank you for playing Wing Commander".
• The game was considered a major step forward for space dogfight games, featuring graphics, audio, and a story campaign that invited comparison to the Star Wars films.
• An enhanced remake, Super Wing Commander was made for the 3DO in 1994, and later ported to the Macintosh. re-released for the PC as Wing Commander I in 1994.
• The original game's production value was five times more than the amount of other games released and after its success, more companies began to match its production values.
• The games would go on to spawn its own animated series called Wing Commander Academy (not to be confused with the game Wing Commander Academy), which is loosely based on the events of the first game. Despite being pretty obscure, the whole series is available on the free Peacock streaming service. The series is likely non-canon, as there are some canonical errors in the show, including:
  • The protrusion in front of the Tiger's Claw is just that, rather than being a large launch and landing bay for fighter craft.
  • Some ships, such as the Hellcat V and the Grikath, appear in the series, even though they canonically shouldn't appear there, as the show takes place in 2655, where those ships shouldn't appear until ten years later.
  • Blair and Maniac in the series are cadets on the Tiger's Claw, even though they didn't arrive on the ship until they became Ensigns.
• A SNES port for Wing Commander II was actually made and even a few copies where created. There where even reviews for the game in magazines. However, production of the port stopped due to monetary issues. To this day, no copies of Wing Commander II on Super Nintendo have been found.
• Wing Commander IV had a budget of over $12 million, which was quite inheard of at the time of its original release.
• According to the "Wing Commander Bible", a Privateer TV series was planned for development. However, that show would never come to be.
• The code name given to the protagonist of the first two games was Bluehair, referencing the main characteristic of the character. While his name would later be canonically known as Christopher Blair in the later games, he also had the name of LaFong according to the Wing Commander 1 & 2 Strategy Guide. It is speculated by fans that the name Blair itself may be a contraction of Bluehair.
• The story of the Wing Commander series was inspired by the Man-Kzin Wars stories by author Larry Niven, and both are about a war between mankind and an alien race of giant bipedal felines in the distant future.
• In an interview found in the Wing Commander 1 & 2 Strategy Guide, Chris Robert said Wing Commander was originally concieved as a strategy game. He stated: "Originally, I was planning to do a space conquest game where you take over star systems, move battleships around, and invade planets. It was going to be more strategic than my earlier games. I started researching the project, buying all the board games and books, watching space movies and television shows. I even started working on some top-down graphics. During the research phase, I found that their really wasn't a lot of information about big-battleship combat. I ended up with a lot of books and other materials on space fighters. As I looked through it, I thought, Wow, this is really neat stuff. I started thinking I might want to do a starfighter type of game. After all, it would be a lot more fun flying around in a fighter than moving battleships around the screen."
• While not officially announcd by EA, Wing Commander was supposed to have a 15th anniversary compilation to be released alongside a Ultima 25th anniversary edition. However, the release was cancelled, but has been confirmed by an unprinted advertisement and writer and designer Stephen Edmond, who came up with the idea of the project.

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References

Wing Commander
Games: Wing Commander (franchise) - Wing Commander Arena Other media: Wing Commander Academy - Wing Commander (film) Related articles: Strike Commander

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