1990 CGW Review of Wing Commander

Falcon988

Commodore
This is probably already familiar to some of you but I just learned of it and thought I'd share.

A lot of the archive of Computer Gaming World is online, so naturally the first game I wanted to look up was Wing Commander. Original review can be found here http://cgw.vintagegaming.org/galleries/index.php?year=1990&pub=2&id=77

I was 4 years old when this was written so this is my first time ever seeing this. Ahhh the world has changed so much... but man, seeing this old CGW issue is really a treasure for me.
 
Wow this game sounds really innovative and exciting. Even having played the game, this review gets my blood up.

Oh great now I want play WC 1, and so much work left to do before the semester is out.
 
This is probably already familiar to some of you but I just learned of it and thought I'd share.

A lot of the archive of Computer Gaming World is online, so naturally the first game I wanted to look up was Wing Commander. Original review can be found here http://cgw.vintagegaming.org/galleries/index.php?year=1990&pub=2&id=77

I was 4 years old when this was written so this is my first time ever seeing this. Ahhh the world has changed so much... but man, seeing this old CGW issue is really a treasure for me.

What's surprising is just how professional it's written. No cheap snark or attempts at pretentiousness. Shame that doesn't exist now in game journalism.
 
21 MB - My 4 GB flash is maxed out and still has that much space available. Amazing the difference in sizes.
 
One just needs to consider that hard disk sizes at that time were of the order of dozens of megabytes. In all likelihood, people in 20 years time will think of a few gigabytes as being impossibly tiny as well.
 
One just needs to consider that hard disk sizes at that time were of the order of dozens of megabytes. In all likelihood, people in 20 years time will think of a few gigabytes as being impossibly tiny as well.

Ahhhh....I remember upgrading my 286 12Mhz comp. $100 for 1 meg of RAM (4 juicy 256k sticks) just so I could finally play Police Quest 3. All on that massive 20 MB hard drive.

Read the DEC 1994 issue, there's a big old 3 pager on Wing Commander 3. Even in print John-Rhys Davies steals the show!

You have to play 30 missions just to kiss her!
 
I just read the WC2 article. I like how at least some of the reviewer's suggestions for WC3 happened to be included, whether or not Origin actually paid attention to this particular article.

The reviews for certain RPGs in the December 1990 magazine was also a pleasant look back in time.
 
I just read the WC2 article. I like how at least some of the reviewer's suggestions for WC3 happened to be included, whether or not Origin actually paid attention to this particular article.

Oh, they would have--any review would have been part of the post-mortem, and Computer Gaming World was very close to Origin at the time. (As you can see from these old scans, Origin had one heck of an advertising contract with them at the time. They practically owned the expensive back cover page.)
 
That CGW cover blows my mind: Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe (which our family lovingly referred to as SWotL and pronounced 'swatle') is a classic and definitely one of the flight sims that I put the most time into playing. Seeing the other games they mention in the magazine itself is a real blast from the past too.
 
Also worth noting is WC1's Game of the Year write-up (Nov. 1991, pg. 58):

CGWs Game of the Year
Now, however, is the time for the confetti to fly, the noise makers to blow, the applause to reverberate from every wall and the champagne corks to pop like artillery at Waterloo. The winner of 1991's Overall Game of the Year is:
Wing Commander from Origin (Chris Roberts, designer). CGWs readers have kept Wing Commander in the top spot since its inception. It is the number one game mentioned as a point of comparison when one travels about the entertainment software industry (whether among publish- ers, retailers or designers). It is the cornerstone of a new and successful line of products. It has singlehandedly encouraged more readers to upgrade their current com- puter systems than any other product we can remember. So Wing Commander receives this approbation in recognition of its place as the game in 1991's software year which has most impacted the hobby. If only there were a "tension-meter" with a wide enough bandwidth to measure the at- tendant applause around the world which has been garnered by this milestone product! Applause! Applause!

WC1 stayed at the top of CGW's reader poll for an entire year, too, topped only by WC2! I'm tempted to think WC1 would've eventually reclaimed the top spot, but they inducted it into the Hall of Fame shortly after.
 
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