It's Official: Wing Commander is Amazing (March 7, 2014)

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"Officially amazing" is the catchphrase of Guinness World Records. For a number of years now they have been publishing a version of their popular record book geared towards video games. Unsurprisingly, Wing Commander makes the grade in several categories. Of course, we don't need Guinness to tell us how amazing Wing Commander is. Regardless, the recognition is appreciated.

The book covers all consoles and gaming levels, as well as a special section on ... Space Games (Star Trek, Wing Commander, Star Wars).

Among the entries, Wing Commander 3 is recognized as the
"First use of an animatronic character in a video game."

In 1994, Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger became the first video game to use animatronic characters in its FMV footage. These mechanized characters were used to depict the Kilrathi aliens and cost $200,000 (£100,000).

Other entries for WC titles include
first speech pack, First multiplayer space combat game, and First Hollywood star to top both film and video game charts. Some of the recipients, including Mark Hamill, were apparently even presented with framed version of their records.

Then there was Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill -- the First Hollywood star to top both film and video game charts thanks to his role of Colonel Christopher Blair in the No.1-selling Wing Commander PC games.

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Original update published on March 7, 2014

 

[Dondragmer]

Other entries for WC titles include
first speech pack, First multiplayer space combat game, and First Hollywood star to top both film and video game charts.

The title of the second record seems absurd - why do we need specific records for games set in space?

Anyway, if we must have a record for "First multiplayer space combat game", it should be Spacewar! for the PDP-1 (1962). The people who wrote the complete record description did add "3D", so they make Armada the "first 3D space combat video game to feature multiplayer options". However, even that doesn't hold up. The otherwise unremarkable LineWars 1 technically satisfied all those requirements in 1989. I'd also be surprised if even that was the first. It was certainly technically feasible, even on the Commodore 64 - early terrestrial multiplayer flight simulators include ACE 2 (1987), Twin Tornado (1987) and Skychase (1988).

I'd also question a couple of other details. For First Speech Pack, they state:

This enabled owners of SoundBlaster sound cards to hear the characters (voiced by professional actors) rather than having to read subtitles.

From Wing Commander I & II: The Ultimate Strategy Guide, page 271:

For the speech in the game, almost everyone in the company was used to do the voices. All of the speech was recorded at the company's studio. "Eventually we'll be using the voices of professional actors," he said, "because there's a limit at which our own abilities stop."

So no, the voices in WC2, while competent, are not "professional actors".

Meanwhile, First Film Based on a PC game says:

... sadly the film-makers didn’t seem to be as inspired as the creators of the original game ...

Chris Roberts isn't as inspired as Chris Roberts? How does that work?

 

[Dyret]

Chris Roberts isn't as inspired as Chris Roberts? How does that work?

Heh, bad day?

 

[Mace]

The title of the second record seems absurd - why do we need specific records for games set in space?
Anyway, if we must have a record for "First multiplayer space combat game", it should be Spacewar! for the PDP-1 (1962). The people who wrote the complete record description did add "3D", so they make Armada the "first 3D space combat video game to feature multiplayer options". However, even that doesn't hold up. The otherwise unremarkable LineWars 1 technically satisfied all those requirements in 1989. I'd also be surprised if even that was the first. It was certainly technically feasible, even on the Commodore 64 - early terrestrial multiplayer flight simulators include ACE 2 (1987), Twin Tornado (1987) and Skychase (1988).

You forgot this gem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetWars

 

[Dondragmer]

You forgot this gem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetWars

I didn't "forget" so much as "was completely ignorant of its existence", so thank you for letting me know about it. It looks like a neat part of IPX networking history. And, it certainly has every feature that Guinness defined for "first 3D space combat video game to feature multiplayer options", in 1993.

That's a really neat trick where they turn the background starfield into lines for rudimentary motion blur.

The same effect looks even neater today, in Howard Day's report on starfield blurring for Wings of Saint Nazaire.

 

[Quarto]

Yeah, Netwars was absolutely fantastic - and it took about 40KB! I was fortunate enough to have a Novell network at school, and we spent countless lunch breaks playing Netwars. The great thing about it was that because it had powerups (health, speed, firepower, and... cloak), a skilled player could go on for ages and ages without dying. Brilliant game.

 

[Mace]

Well, Quarto, do you remember "Sopwith"? Another rare gem, and it's multiplayer functionalities were a problem to get running though.

And Netwars had only one issue, you could not go "gung-ho" and the game was so limited you could not come up with a strategy by yourself to "win".