Historic Experiment Remembered with Secret Ops Anniversary (October 8, 2014)

ChrisReid

ChrisReid

Super Soaker Collector / Administrator
Today marks 16 years since the end of Wing Commander Secret Ops' episodic run. The game's first chapter was released on August 27, 1998, which kicked off an exciting seven-week adventure. New fiction was released on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays while pilots geared up for a mission pack each Thursday until October 8. There were 56 total missions that branched depending on success or failure, and each episode even generated a password that would change the tone of the web-based story to match. At 112 megabytes for the first week's starter pack, the initial chapter was an all-night download for the majority of players still on dial-up modems, which was a memorable spectacle in itself. The few broadband users out there got the game quick, but some of them actually got copies that were infected with the CIH virus!







Since its 10th anniversary, the CIC has been able to share the game files directly with fans prepared to battle the Nephilim. It's also available bundled with Prophecy over at GOG. The starter pack linked below also comes with an enhanced installer that fixes a number of incompatibilities with modern computers and includes OpenGL/high resolution graphical upgrades. Fans have also figured out how to get the game running on Mac OS X.


If you get stuck, check out Shades' Secret Ops Guide. When you're done replaying the game, be sure to check out some of the fantastic mods that fans have created. Standoff and Unknown Enemy set a high bar that all other mods have strived for. There's also a nifty ship viewer to analyze the game's space ships more closely. Good luck pushing back the alien menace!






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Original update published on October 8, 2014
 
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I really like SOPS. Even though it annoyed me that they made the Confed ships even stronger and the Nephilim ships even weaker than they already were in WCP, I think SOPS did a much better job at telling a compelling story and creating the atmosphere of a living universe.
 
Downloading that file on dialup - and this was before I found out about DL managers....

<shudder>

First night was aborted after a couple of hours...
Second night died somewhere in the last 20Mb or so in the wee hours of the morning...
The morning of the fourth day dawned, and lo! Life was grand!
The download over dialup had finally worked!

It was around that time I started lurking at the CIC - a computer magazine made mention of a website relating to WC that had hints, tips and tricks. WOW, a website on WC! I've been a junkie ever since. I've played other games over time, haunted other websites, but I keep checking the CIC updates.
 
Silverain said:
Downloading that file on dialup - and this was before I found out about DL managers....

<shudder>

First night was aborted after a couple of hours...
Second night died somewhere in the last 20Mb or so in the wee hours of the morning...
The morning of the fourth day dawned, and lo! Life was grand!
The download over dialup had finally worked!

It was around that time I started lurking at the CIC - a computer magazine made mention of a website relating to WC that had hints, tips and tricks. WOW, a website on WC! I've been a junkie ever since. I've played other games over time, haunted other websites, but I keep checking the CIC updates.
Click to expand...

...and now you can have it in less than a minute.

Incidentally, I got the CIH 'chernobyl' virus, well, my dad did but I'd been using his computer. Fortunately wasn't my fault this time - even though he thought it was at the time.
 
Didn't get the virus, but I was definitely one of the ones downloading all night long, but it was worth it. And the experience of waiting for a new episode each week, and all the fiction between is still a memory and experience I cherish, and have yet to see repeated with any other game.
 
Heck, I don't think it was just the all-night download, it was the disk management as well. 112MB was huge when your hard drive was only 10GB. Or smaller.
 
AD said:
Didn't get the virus, but I was definitely one of the ones downloading all night long, but it was worth it. And the experience of waiting for a new episode each week, and all the fiction between is still a memory and experience I cherish, and have yet to see repeated with any other game.
Click to expand...

I agree with this, there are many unique parts to Wing Commander that haven't been captured in any other games I've come across.

Just to clarify, my virus didn't come from Secret Ops - I forget where we picked it up but IIRC it required a new hard drive and BIOS to fix it! I actually didn't play Secret Ops until long after its release, didn't have the connection and/or parents permission for such a lengthy dial-up download.

@Worf - at the time Secret Ops came out, my hard drive was 780mb.
 
-danr- said:
@Worf - at the time Secret Ops came out, my hard drive was 780mb.
Click to expand...

Heh. I bought a computer in 1996 with a 2GB hard drive. I remember I upgraded it with a humongous 20GB one sometime in 1998 or so. And I had a laptop with a 6GB hard drive, purchased around 1998 as well.

I still think the harder part was managing the hard drive. At least I had a 56k modem so I could get that in maybe a couple of hours or so.

My hard drives are persistently full. But back then, well, installation may have only taken a few minutes, but there were the hours of agonizing over what needed uninstalling and what could be deleted...
 
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