I just had a "wing commander extravaganza!" I have the Kilrathi saga, which includes wc 1, 2 and 3 and I downloaded and burnt to a cd the secret missions 1+2 and special operations 1+2. I played these also! Then, I played WC4 as well as just finishing WC prophecy and secret ops for prophecy 1+2, because I have prophecy gold. I also have privateer gold as well as privateer 2, but I don't know if I will drag those out and play them. I just cannot believe that the Kilrathi Saga has become so wanted! I looked on ebay and was SHOCKED to find people paying over $100.00 for a game I bought NEW for $50.00 years ago! I am glad I hung on to mine! By the way, they are NOT for sale, so please do not ask! I had forgotten how great these games actually were! It is wierd to hear of Origin going out of business, but I guess that's life! I just hope SOME company will take up where Origin left off with the wing commander series! I never COULD understand why they went with that stupid ultima game instead of wing commander! It made me so mad when they stopped making them I quit buying their other game titles, I really can't say that I think they made a good decision to cut the wing commander series in favor of the ultima games, but I do wonder how they may have fared if they would have kept both. I just know they alienated a lot of people when they chose ultima over wing commander and ticked off a HUGE fanbase.....I guess they are paying for it now.....I just hope somebody takes up where they left off....at least with windg commander....I could care less about ultima!
Man! I forgot how great wing commander was!
- Thread starter webe123
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They never really chose Ultima over Wing Commander. Ultima had been on the market years before Wing Commander (nearly a decade). They were developed together. At one stage Wing Commander was doing so well, the Ultima games were copping less attention and soon we found games like Ultima 8. Wing Commander should have gone forward more than it did (such as cartoon series continuation, or perhaps a retro game back to the Kilrathi war). It was not Origin's choice however to leave both Ultima (dead with IX) and Wing Commander (finished off with V) in exchange for Ultima Online.
The problem is Electronic Arts. They only see money. Where they don't see money, they don't see worth (no pun).
Hopefully one day we'll see a new game or perhaps another season to the cartoon series or something. For now if you want to continue enjoying Wing Commander, you have a very nice series of novels, a fantastic cartoon series and most importantly, some absolutely awesome mods coming out. They are looking so fine! 8)
The problem is Electronic Arts. They only see money. Where they don't see money, they don't see worth (no pun).
Hopefully one day we'll see a new game or perhaps another season to the cartoon series or something. For now if you want to continue enjoying Wing Commander, you have a very nice series of novels, a fantastic cartoon series and most importantly, some absolutely awesome mods coming out. They are looking so fine! 8)
Yeah, I remember the decision being EA's, but I am sure you are right about the money thing! Sad that they had such a great game and abandoned it! The cartoon series, novels, mods, etc. are OK, but I want a full version up to date wing commander game! I mean with all of the graphics that they have on the best graphic games out there! Imagine if they made a game with a great WC plot such as a look back at the kilrathi war, AND had everything up to date, such as sound and graphics! Imagine what you could see on a Radeon 9800xt with a soundblaster audigy 2 soundcard! All in a wing commander game that had a plot woth playing........Now THAT would ROCK!
It is baffling...
I wonder why EA thought there wasn't much of a market for games such as Wing Commander anymore. I know people who getting all hopeful about the interactive movie business, and then that fell through. But why not just make more Wing Commander games that weren't the interactice movie kind. Who knows. I'm very cynical about a lot of games that come out these days. Style has definately replaced substance, so I agree with you about a good graphich game hardly having a good story. But I am so nostalgic about those older graphics that I ran on my 386. Along with Wing Commander and Privateer, I was also very fond of Lands of Lore, Microcosm, Kyrandia, and Myst. Oh, you know what was a very good game that came out when WC3 did? It was called Under a Killing Moon, another interactive movie on 4 discs. Then when WC4 came out, the sequel to UAKM came out called The Pandora Directive which was also on 6 discs. These games I've had trouble getting to work on my new machine but I've been looking into that also. I suppose if I can think of any exceptional games that are new, I definately like a lot of Blizzard games. Morrowind was my favorite game for a good while there. But yeah, no game will ever be as special to me as Wing Commander. I like them all equally the same I think. Had slightly mixed feelings about Privateer 2 though. It was such a strange game! Still it was fun though.
I wonder why EA thought there wasn't much of a market for games such as Wing Commander anymore. I know people who getting all hopeful about the interactive movie business, and then that fell through. But why not just make more Wing Commander games that weren't the interactice movie kind. Who knows. I'm very cynical about a lot of games that come out these days. Style has definately replaced substance, so I agree with you about a good graphich game hardly having a good story. But I am so nostalgic about those older graphics that I ran on my 386. Along with Wing Commander and Privateer, I was also very fond of Lands of Lore, Microcosm, Kyrandia, and Myst. Oh, you know what was a very good game that came out when WC3 did? It was called Under a Killing Moon, another interactive movie on 4 discs. Then when WC4 came out, the sequel to UAKM came out called The Pandora Directive which was also on 6 discs. These games I've had trouble getting to work on my new machine but I've been looking into that also. I suppose if I can think of any exceptional games that are new, I definately like a lot of Blizzard games. Morrowind was my favorite game for a good while there. But yeah, no game will ever be as special to me as Wing Commander. I like them all equally the same I think. Had slightly mixed feelings about Privateer 2 though. It was such a strange game! Still it was fun though.
One more thing too...
If they ever continued the Wing Commander series again, I think it'd be really cool to bring back Lt. Casey. I don't know how you guys felt about his character being the new focus, but I liked that guy in Prophecy and I thought it was cool they were kind of passing the torch from Blair to him. Then I sort of envisioned a few more games coming out where he is the main guy and Maestro is like Maniac. Not like those two really are anything alike. But it was interesting to me how this new enemy is discovered that they call the Nephilem. And I also thought about how interesting it would be to later feature the Kilrathi again as evolving into a more passive peace-seeking race under the visionary leadership of Melek. And a cool opening scene would show an old Melek thinking of the old days and how close his race came to extinction in the pursuit of victory of the Terrans. You know, there is just such a huge canvas to paint stories on in the Wing Commander universe that I simply cannot believe it will just die out. I suppose look at Star Wars. I'm not a big fan of Star Wars but did it not just kind of fade out for a long time then came back all big. Of course if Wing Commander came back like Star Wars did let's hope it's not as terrible. I'm also a huge Dune fan and I am seeing a rekindling of interest in that as well. So you never know with Wing Commander. It's fans are just to dedicated to it to simply ever let it go. And it's worth hanging on to I think.
If they ever continued the Wing Commander series again, I think it'd be really cool to bring back Lt. Casey. I don't know how you guys felt about his character being the new focus, but I liked that guy in Prophecy and I thought it was cool they were kind of passing the torch from Blair to him. Then I sort of envisioned a few more games coming out where he is the main guy and Maestro is like Maniac. Not like those two really are anything alike. But it was interesting to me how this new enemy is discovered that they call the Nephilem. And I also thought about how interesting it would be to later feature the Kilrathi again as evolving into a more passive peace-seeking race under the visionary leadership of Melek. And a cool opening scene would show an old Melek thinking of the old days and how close his race came to extinction in the pursuit of victory of the Terrans. You know, there is just such a huge canvas to paint stories on in the Wing Commander universe that I simply cannot believe it will just die out. I suppose look at Star Wars. I'm not a big fan of Star Wars but did it not just kind of fade out for a long time then came back all big. Of course if Wing Commander came back like Star Wars did let's hope it's not as terrible. I'm also a huge Dune fan and I am seeing a rekindling of interest in that as well. So you never know with Wing Commander. It's fans are just to dedicated to it to simply ever let it go. And it's worth hanging on to I think.
Personally I'd like to see a MMORPG(SIM?) of Wing Commander. Fight as a Terran or Kilrathi, or Border Worlder or perhaps even a Firekkan? Maybe you'd prefer to be a privateer than help the war effort.
A brilliant game franchise brought back with enough potential to live a long life like many multiplayer games.
A brilliant game franchise brought back with enough potential to live a long life like many multiplayer games.
Death
gh0d (Administrator)
Umm, could y'all consider using the [enter] key a little more frequently...?
(The first person who thinks they're witty and takes it to the other extreme, making posts with only a few words a line or something equally assinine, gets a week's vacation from the board.)
As for EA,
(The first person who thinks they're witty and takes it to the other extreme, making posts with only a few words a line or something equally assinine, gets a week's vacation from the board.)
As for EA,
- it's their money, spent on FMV in WC3/4/Prophecy, that booted WC into the bigtime sales-wise, even when (as of around Prophecy) the whole space combat sim genre was in a serious slump, with most other space sim games being lucky if they broke 30,000 units sold, and
- of course they're going to be concerned about money. They're a company, not a charity. Making money is how they stay in business.
Welcome on the board, webe123. 
I fully agree to your statement and I´m also very sorry that big EA "killed" Origin in a special way...Thats nothing new, the Westwood Studios shares the same fate as Origin Systems.But maybe there will be an other Wing Commander in the future, I simply can´t believe that it´s really all over! EA has got the licence. We are destined to wait, I suppose.
Well, we can be lucky to have some fantastic fanmade mods and storys...and CIC as a homebase.
PS: Bahh, man, you got the Kilrathi Saga...! I envy you.
The Saga is so expensive at Ebay and so on.
I fully agree to your statement and I´m also very sorry that big EA "killed" Origin in a special way...Thats nothing new, the Westwood Studios shares the same fate as Origin Systems.But maybe there will be an other Wing Commander in the future, I simply can´t believe that it´s really all over! EA has got the licence. We are destined to wait, I suppose.
Well, we can be lucky to have some fantastic fanmade mods and storys...and CIC as a homebase.
PS: Bahh, man, you got the Kilrathi Saga...! I envy you.
The Saga is so expensive at Ebay and so on.
McGruff
Banned
webe123 said:
If they revisited the Kilrathi war, I would love to see an alternate history game from the viewpoint of a Kilrathi pilot. At some point during the game you would fly a mission in an Ekapshi with the goal of shooting down Blair's Excalibur over Kilrah. If successful, the winning path would culminate with the destruction of earth and the enslavement of mankind under the Imperial clan.
ChrisReid said:
Thanks! I have not played this in years! The games have been mostly in my closet! Would you believe I am playing them on my current system and everything ran smooth as silk? Here are the Specs to my computer:
ATX generic case with Power Tech 500 watt- switching power supply. ASUS A7N8X Deluxe Motherboard. Western Digital 7,200 RPM 40 gig IDE Hard Drive.(FAT 32- file system) AMD Athlon XP 2600 processor.(standard fan and heatsink-Thoroughbred Core-standard speed-NO OVERCLOCK) 1 gig of Samsung DDRAM(PC 2700- 333 mhz....2-512mb sticks running in dual channel mode).eVGA Ti 4200 video card (128 mb of memory-8x AGP) (8x is enabled on motherboard). Soundblaster Audigy 2 sound card. Motorola sb 5100 cable modem (Insight Communications-Cable Connection) Sony DRU 500 AX DVD- RECORDER.(records -R/-RW or +R/+RW and CD-R formats-4x-24x-4x) LG 52x32x52 CD Burner. Zip 100 internal drive and a 3.5 generic floppy drive. Windows XP Professional Operating System. I also have a bearpaw scanner, HP Deskjet 3520 inkjet printer and a KDS X Flat 17 inch CRT monitor.
I also used different Operating systems to run the different games. For Wing Commander: The Kilrathi Saga - along with the secret missions and special operations 1+2, I used Win 98SE. It worked GREAT in that, but then I had to switch to Win ME in Wing Commander 4 and Prophecy Gold with Secret Ops, because I kept getting DOS errors in WIN 98SE for those games. But when I did make a switch to Win ME for those games, everything ran fine! If I were to run the Original Privateer CD I have that is optomized for win 95, I would probably use win 98SE and then switch to Win Me for Privateer 2. As you can tell, I have a LOT of Operating systems! (HE! HE! HE! )
So far, I have collected, win 3.11 and DOS 6.22 on 3.5 disks, Win 95 (Full and upgrade), Win 98 (Full is Win 98SE and upgrade is Win 98), Win ME (Full and upgrade), Win XP (Full and Upgrade) and Win 2000! So Operating systems are NOT a problem! (HE! HE!)
Shipgate said:
The ONLY thing I worry about in a NEW wing commander game is that the "suits" will want to "dumb down" the game and try to put it on game consoles!! Back in WC 1 and 2, there WERE no such game consoles, but now, they are considered BIg Business! Thus, the delima.....Kind of like the new game that is comming out.....for the THIEF series! Now take that game for example....there was a masterpiece of a game! (I have the originals!) BUT....now I have read that the "suits" want to "dumb down" the game to make it appealing to customers with the XBOX game console( I absolutely HATE that they are making it for XBOX!).... and as a result, TWO very important aspects of the original series of the Thief games are being discarded so that the XBOX people can play it! 1. the game will NOT have any swimmable water missions, this is belived to be because the XBOX cannot handle the movements, so they did away with that! Then 2. No Rope arrows anymore! You get some kind of "climbing gloves" and go up walls like spiderman or something! (NOT very much in keeping with the storyline if you ask me) 3. also, the sword has been done away with and replaced by a dagger, so you can't fight a frontal assualt with one person anymore, you have to sneak up behind them from now on. All of these changes in the game to me make the game seem like it might suck, I will have to wait and see until it comes out, but if what they are saying is true, a LOT of people are turned off by these and other changes!
This is what I hope would NOT happen to a great game like Wing Commander! (Imagine if a lot of things in the new PC version got cut out, simply because they felt it wouldn't work on a GameCube, XBox or Playstation 2!) If these people that make games want to make one for consoles....fine....why not make one version for them and another TOTALLY seperate for the PC?? This way you don't have to worry about things being cut out of the game! This is the only thing I worry about when they talk of trying to make a game in todays world!
Hmm, I never played Thief
Though I did hear people talk about it a lot when it came out. Everyone told me what an amazing game it was. And I remember screenshots from Harvester in a PC magazine when that came out and I really wanted to play that too. Have you played any of the Lands of Lore? The Tex Murphy games were great. There is also a site dedicated to that game but has not been updated in quite awhile.
And who can forget Leisure Suit Larry. I don't care how low brow that game was. I thought it was fun and interesting and when I played it, I didn't even understand the context of it anyway.
I understand about PC games going to console that they can potentially be bad. I kind of raised my eyebrow when I heard a new Starcraft game would be on console. But I think they will do a fine job on it. Morrowind was originally on PC, but I actually like that better on the XBOX. I don't even own an XBOX or anything like that. My brother has one though. And I'm the computer guy. He sees me lately always checking the CIC forums and playing Privateer. Currently I'm trying to win the bid on the Kilrathi Saga. I'm not used to bidding on ebay so I don't have much of a strategy. But I think that Saga one is the only chance I have of playing the first three Wing Commander.
I've always wanted to make a mystery western style game with a sci-fi element to it. Like have you ever seen Clint Eastwood's Pale Rider? I love the mood in the movie and I wondered what I mood like that would feel in some engrossing plot that was all intricate like Morrowind or something. I don't know. Just shooting my mouth off now I guess.
Though I did hear people talk about it a lot when it came out. Everyone told me what an amazing game it was. And I remember screenshots from Harvester in a PC magazine when that came out and I really wanted to play that too. Have you played any of the Lands of Lore? The Tex Murphy games were great. There is also a site dedicated to that game but has not been updated in quite awhile.
And who can forget Leisure Suit Larry. I don't care how low brow that game was. I thought it was fun and interesting and when I played it, I didn't even understand the context of it anyway.
I understand about PC games going to console that they can potentially be bad. I kind of raised my eyebrow when I heard a new Starcraft game would be on console. But I think they will do a fine job on it. Morrowind was originally on PC, but I actually like that better on the XBOX. I don't even own an XBOX or anything like that. My brother has one though. And I'm the computer guy. He sees me lately always checking the CIC forums and playing Privateer. Currently I'm trying to win the bid on the Kilrathi Saga. I'm not used to bidding on ebay so I don't have much of a strategy. But I think that Saga one is the only chance I have of playing the first three Wing Commander.
I've always wanted to make a mystery western style game with a sci-fi element to it. Like have you ever seen Clint Eastwood's Pale Rider? I love the mood in the movie and I wondered what I mood like that would feel in some engrossing plot that was all intricate like Morrowind or something. I don't know. Just shooting my mouth off now I guess.
ChanceKell
Rear Admiral
webe123 said:
Actually, Wing Commander (and it's add-on campaigns) were ported very well to the Super Nintendo, and then there was the 3DO port with it's improved graphics and sound (Super WC, also for Apples). The PSX ports of WC 3 and 4 were decent, though they did cut out the land missions, but it did have some features the PC versions DIDN'T have.
Ironically, looking back on it, it seems that console ports were more accurately copied from their PC versions. Older DOS games with simple graphics were a lot easier to port over, compared to the modern 3D games. The "third-gen" consoles (PSX, N64, Saturn) were technologically backwards compared to the PCs that were coming out at the time. It wasn't until this generation of consoles that PC games could be ported without a huge loss of graphics or gameplay.
(P.S.: Webe, it's sort of thread courtesy to not quote someone else's entire post, especially if they're long.)
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