Is WC Kilrathi Saga still desirable?

boatgeek

Rear Admiral
With the advent of GOG is an original of the kilrathi saga still desirable to collectors? I paid over £100 10 years ago for mine. Thinking of parting with mine :
 
We don't see Kilrathi Saga go for /insane/ amounts anymore, but I think that may have to do with the fact that just about everyone who wants one eventually ended up with a copy. I'd say $70 is an average price for a Kilrathi Saga at auction today.

It is still desirable to collectors and people who want every possible port of the game (the Windows 9x versions do have different music and some other alterations, after all) but I think the general 'I remember Wing Commander from when I was a kid!' audience has moved on (and well they should... Kilrathi Saga has been harder to get running than the DOS versions for a decade now...)
 
I myself prefer having boxed copies of console games and digital copies of PC games. I dunno why that is. I guess it makes more sense to me taking a console game off the shelf to instantly boot it up rather than having a retail pc game that you install once and never need to take it off your shelf again (Unless it has an annoying CD check).

I still wanna get all the GOG versions of WC 1-4
 
It's also handy for the expansion packs. I managed to get Righteous Fire from my Privateer CD running on the GOG version but I don't even know where my non-KS copies of WC1 & 2 expansion packs are.
 
It's also handy for the expansion packs. I managed to get Righteous Fire from my Privateer CD running on the GOG version but I don't even know where my non-KS copies of WC1 & 2 expansion packs are.

The funny thing is that according to what I've been told, GoG has every right to release the expansion packs for WC1 and WC2 along with the main games. (In fact, they already have in a sense - their copy of WC2 is from the Deluxe CD version and has all the SO1 and SO2 files on it. Its just missing the executable for both games, and we happen to have a copy of them in the patches section.) For some strange reason that I think no one has figured out yet, GoG is still under the impression that they do not have permission to release the expansions, even though numerous people (including people from EA) have told them its okay.
 
It is still desirable to collectors and people who want every possible port of the game (the Windows 9x versions do have different music and some other alterations, after all) but I think the general 'I remember Wing Commander from when I was a kid!' audience has moved on (and well they should... Kilrathi Saga has been harder to get running than the DOS versions for a decade now...)
Really? I've never had problems with getting it running (then again, I'm still using XP). Unless you mean not just getting it running, but also general perfomance - which was disappointing even back in 1997.
 
That's a good question. I still have my copy, but I can't think of a reason where I would ever isntall it again, not after DOSBox. Wing Commander 1 has a strange soundtrack bug where, if the last Kilrathi you kill on a navpoint is fleeing, the soundbit will go on loop in a quite annoying way. But I also can't think of a reason on why I would part ways with it, too.
 
The funny thing is that according to what I've been told, GoG has every right to release the expansion packs for WC1 and WC2 along with the main games. (In fact, they already have in a sense - their copy of WC2 is from the Deluxe CD version and has all the SO1 and SO2 files on it. Its just missing the executable for both games, and we happen to have a copy of them in the patches section.) For some strange reason that I think no one has figured out yet, GoG is still under the impression that they do not have permission to release the expansions, even though numerous people (including people from EA) have told them its okay.

We only have so1.exe in the patches section. As of yet, the only way to legitimately obtain so2.exe is by copying it off physical media.

We do carry SO1 and SO2 for the Kilrathi Saga version of Wing2, but this doesn't work in the DOS version, which is what GoG's version uses.
 
The funny thing is that according to what I've been told, GoG has every right to release the expansion packs for WC1 and WC2 along with the main games. (In fact, they already have in a sense - their copy of WC2 is from the Deluxe CD version and has all the SO1 and SO2 files on it. Its just missing the executable for both games, and we happen to have a copy of them in the patches section.) For some strange reason that I think no one has figured out yet, GoG is still under the impression that they do not have permission to release the expansions, even though numerous people (including people from EA) have told them its okay.
The funny thing is that according to what I've been told, GoG has every right to release the expansion packs for WC1 and WC2 along with the main games. (In fact, they already have in a sense - their copy of WC2 is from the Deluxe CD version and has all the SO1 and SO2 files on it. Its just missing the executable for both games, and we happen to have a copy of them in the patches section.) For some strange reason that I think no one has figured out yet, GoG is still under the impression that they do not have permission to release the expansions, even though numerous people (including people from EA) have told them its okay.

Someone posted on gog forum that its the lawers holding things up. No idea if true or not, only the lawers know :p
 
The funny thing is that according to what I've been told, GoG has every right to release the expansion packs for WC1 and WC2 along with the main games. (In fact, they already have in a sense - their copy of WC2 is from the Deluxe CD version and has all the SO1 and SO2 files on it. Its just missing the executable for both games, and we happen to have a copy of them in the patches section.) For some strange reason that I think no one has figured out yet, GoG is still under the impression that they do not have permission to release the expansions, even though numerous people (including people from EA) have told them its okay.

I suppose it depends on who's told them, there's probably all sorts of crazy complicated rights related to those packs and I don't want to see GOG getting in trouble because they forgot to cross a T somewhere.
 
We do carry SO1 and SO2 for the Kilrathi Saga version of Wing2, but this doesn't work in the DOS version, which is what GoG's version uses.
Well, you know... actually...

Back in the days when I first encountered Wing Commander (pretty late - it was 1997), I was living in Papua New Guinea - a big tropical island nation with no notion of copyrights (seriously: it's not that there was rampant piracy, but rather that there was no such thing as piracy, because copyright laws were officially not enforced). So, all I had was pirated copies of WC1, 2, and Armada. Each of those was pirated from an original copy that one of my friends brought into the country, which was basically the only way you could get games (because there wasn't even a pirate games trade! You couldn't even *pay* someone for pirated games!).

Then, along comes the internet. Stuttering at a blistering pace of about 5kb/s, that's true - but it works! First thing I search for is Wing Commander, and it seems that KSaga had just been released, and offers free downloadable add-ons. At the time, I was starting to mess around with HCl's ship & mission editors, so I figured they're worth the download - maybe I'll be able to somehow add new add-on ships to WC1/2?

To cut a long story short: you can get the KSaga add-on data files to work with the original WC1/2 executables, to a limited extent. The one that works most perfectly is SO1 - there's no problems with it at all. SO2 is just fine right (except for the Morningstar's nuke, which you need to edit into another weapon) until the very last mission - sadly, the Morningstar jump is a new feature in the executable, so you can't jump. I got over that as well, I simply replaced the Morningstar with a Broadsword, and edited the Broadsword to have more or less the same specs as the Morningstar :).

IIRC, with WC1 it was a bit worse, because all the ship data was in the executables, so none of the new ships worked off-the-bat. I do not remember to what extent I was able to get the WC1 add-ons to work - there must have been some limited success, but very limited.

All in all, I was pretty glad when, at the end of that year, we went back on a holiday to Poland, and, passing through Singapore, I was able to buy KSaga, WC4 and WCP all in one trip. It was nice to get WC4 and WCP, but above all, finally being able to play the WC1/2 add-ons properly, that was awesome. Boy, was I disappointed when I realised what a lame product KSaga was. Also, it messed up my father's computer, because KSaga's DX2 insisted on installing itself right on top of DX5.

Good times.
 
Someone posted on gog forum that its the lawers holding things up. No idea if true or not, only the lawers know :p

From my understanding, it's GOG holding GOG up. It's been posted before but, the original contract seems to cover the addons. GOG was nervous about releasing them for their own odd legal reasons. EA wasn't up in arms about it. GOG could have released them a while ago. They are just being weird about it.
 
So If I bought WC1 and 2 on GOG now, and down the road they released the expansions with them, would I have to REBUY the games to get the expansions?
 
So If I bought WC1 and 2 on GOG now, and down the road they released the expansions with them, would I have to REBUY the games to get the expansions?
No, they'd probably give them out as a free download if you've already bought the game, like the manuals and so on they have for different games
 
No, GOG is actually really good about expansions and getting them to people. There will be no need to rebuy.
 
Good to know. Gonna buy them one of these days with no regrets. I just hope they put Privateer 2 up at some point!
 
No, GOG is actually really good about expansions and getting them to people. There will be no need to rebuy.
I would not be upset if I had to buy the expansions as separate items, but I would be upset if I had to buy another copy of the original game in order to get the expansions with it.
 
I believe they have talked about doing the expansions two ways: if EA provides them for free (... which they have...) then they'll be a normal title update. If there's a cost associated with it for GOG then they may be sold as a separate bundle containing the four addons together.
 
I just got one of these on ebay - should be delivered today. I payed $60 for it. The box is in OK shape, but nothing spectacular. It is complete.
 
Back
Top