Amiga Article Takes Us Back Nearly 25 Years (May 15, 2016)

[ChrisReid]

Janne Rautiainen tipped us off about a really cool July 1992 article on the development of Wing Commander for the Amiga platform. The piece was originally published in Britain's The One magazine and is saved at archive.org. What's really interesting is the challenge that the lead programmer, Nick Pelling, faced in porting the technically demanding game to the relatively underpowered 7.16 MHz Amiga computers. In contrast, a 386 PC running at 16 MHz was recommended. In the end, the color palette had to be scaled down, but the result was very impressive. Interestingly, they note that the dynamic music would remain intact, although rather than license Team Fat's tracks, all new music was put together by Mark Knight. They even toyed with the idea of including speech, but ultimately that only appeared in the Mega/Sega CD port. It's just amazing what they were able to do with the hardware of the day, and it's crazy to think how far we've come since then!

Wing Commander: The Game

To call Wing Commander a 3D space war game is a bit like describing a Rembrandt masterpiece as a good painting. After Wing Commander, spaceflight simulations are never going to be the same again. Gone are the bland polygon constructions typical of the genre. In their place are realistic ray-traced models, their surfaces festooned with authentic-looking markings and details.

Between missions, new plot developments are presented using beautifully-animated graphics. The player can do things aboard his mothership such as visit the pilots' bar and catch up on gossip or hone his dogfighting skills with the bar's video game. Animated briefings from the squad's leader explain the next mission's objectives in full, followed by a question and answers sessions from the player and his computer-controlled buddies. Effectively, the player is the star in his own movie!

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Original update published on May 15, 2016

 

[-danr-]

My very first taste of Wing Commander was on the Amiga. Even with the reduced colours and lack of in-cockpit explosions or hand movements, the game was mind blowingly good for the time.

Edit: Interesting that they chose a Drakhri for the magazine's cover graphic.

Ahh how I miss those mags with playable demo disks attached to the front page. Looks like I would have enjoyed that particular edition, Monkey Island and Wing Commander took up big parts of my childhood...and beyond...

 

[panther]

My first experience with Wing Commander was on the Amiga too. Long time ago now but it got me hooked.
(I got a PC just in time for three, but went back and got a double pack of WC1 & 2 on CD, along with Armada).

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Note that many of the screenshots from the CES demo include the Sivar, despite the fact that The Secret Missions was ultimately not ported to the Amiga!

If you'd like the Amiga music and other changes but with the PC version's 256-color graphics, check out the enhanced port done for the Amiga CD32 (a CD-based console intended to compete with the PSX and 3DO)!

 

[-danr-]

Note that many of the screenshots from the CES demo include the Sivar, despite the fact that The Secret Missions was ultimately not ported to the Amiga!

If you'd like the Amiga music and other changes but with the PC version's 256-color graphics, check out the enhanced port done for the Amiga CD32 (a CD-based console intended to compete with the PSX and 3DO)!

Yes, the CD32 was something I very much coveted many moons ago. They're occasionally knocking about on eBay, I think your description in another thread described it nicely; it was truly 'between the wars' in terms of styling and indeed performance. Aesthetically aimed squarely at the Megadrive generation, but only half the processing power of the PS1. I never knew anybody who owned a CD32, but here at least, the only thing less popular was the Sega Saturn.

It's mind boggling, really, that the PS1 ran only at 33mhz (comparable to a high end 386) but had a very playable version of Wing Commander III. In some senses it's a shame Commodore folded before the FMV and 3D generation games really got going.