meet the poster

Jdawg

Jdawg

Rear Admiral
for anyone that is interested in participating, tell us about yourself, how you first came across this forum and your earliest memory or fondest memory of wing commander.

I am Josh, and I am about to be 31. I first came across wing commander early 93 or late 92. My best friend had a computer; I did not, all I had was a Nintendo. We played wing commander 2 almost every day, along with monkey island 1 and quest for glory 1. From that pt on I was obsessed with adventure games and they still are my favorite genre of game. My friend moved away in 94 and my next experience with wing commander was with wing commander 3 on the ps1. I fell in love all over again even though the controls were mapped horribly and of course no precision aiming. My two favorite games overall for ps1 were wc4 and metal gear solid 1. I have lurked around this site for awhile but got really interested again when gog added all four wing commander games; so I signed up and begin posting. this page helped me with all the canon and the two novels I have read so far were both excellent with false colors being my favorite novel so far. So what about yall, why do you love wing commander

here is a picture of my wife and I

josh_and_jeanette.jpg
[/url] forum image hosting[/IMG]
josh_and_jeanette.jpg
 
I'll play. I hope more people do too as it's nice to put faces to names and learn backstory :)

As my username suggests, I'm Dan. I'm from the very far south-western tip of England. I'll also be 31 in a few months. my trade is genetics. I'm into retro gaming, sketching, hiking in the woods and anything related to science, and aviation; I started my flyers' license some years ago, and intend to complete it one day when I can afford the hours.

I got into Wing Commander circa 1993, my brother had the original on his Commodore Amiga. Later we had Privateer on the PC, and some of my fondest early memories are playing Priv side by side, one of us would pretend to be the co-pilot aboard our Tarsus and run around the room extinguishing pretend fires during combat whilst the other flew.

Really, my obsession began in 1995 when my parents bought me an IBM 386-SX, along with original Wing Commander. Playing the game with its full colour pallet and proper special effects (some of which were missing from Nick Pelling's excellent Amiga port) literally took up hours, days, months of my life. For the first few months, I didn't realise you could 'win' the campaign in Vega, I used to suck so bad that I'd always end up in Hell's Kitchen. Then, one day a breakthrough came, I was promoted to Black Lion Squadron and had found the holy grail of a happy ending and kicking the Cats out of the sector.

I yearned for more.

One of the best trades of my life was when, aged 12, I exchanged two bags of Doritos and £2.50 lunch money for Wing Commander II with a guy I went to school with. The rest is history, I tirelessly sought out the rest of the series, I'd played all of the main series by the time I was 15, but only got hold of Armada and WC1's secret missions in 2002. It was pure joy playing original Wing Commander again, but with new dialogue, new faces and missions - and finally understanding how Bluehair knew Jazz and Doomsday. By this time of course, I'd already wiped out the Kilrathi in WC3; the game remains my favourite in the series. As we discussed recently, the acting is first class, the music emotive, and the ending spectacular - if tragic. Wing Commander 4, for all of its brilliance of script writing and story, still didn't compare with the feeling I got when Kilrah went up. Prophecy and Secret Ops were not a disappointment either, and although there was promise in this new lease of life to the Wing Commander story, I still struggle to enjoy them as much as I do the Chris Roberts era titles.

I only started posting here in 2009, I lurked on and off at the CIC but I was a member of the Wing Commander Aces club a good 17 years ago in the days of dial-up.

Wing Commander certainly played a part in my upbringing, my attitudes towards war, self defense, leadership and hope. I intend to get my kids into it, I only have one child (as yet) an 8 year old girl, I can't really see it being her thing.

I hope, nay, I believe the series is not dead. Time will tell. I'm still praying for EA to take stock of what's going down with Star Citizen. I hope and think, the past is prologue.
 
Last edited:
-danr- said:
I'll play. I hope more people do too as it's nice to put faces to names and learn backstory :)

As my username suggests, I'm Dan. I'm from the very far south-western tip of England. I'll also be 31 in a few months. my trade is genetics. I'm into retro gaming, sketching, hiking in the woods and anything related to science, and aviation; I started my flyers' license some years ago, and intend to complete it one day when I can afford the hours.

I got into Wing Commander circa 1993, my brother had the original on his Commodore Amiga. Later we had Privateer on the PC, and some of my fondest early memories are playing Priv side by side, one of us would pretend to be the co-pilot aboard our Tarsus and run around the room extinguishing pretend fires during combat whilst the other flew.

Really, my obsession began in 1995 when my parents bought me an IBM 386-SX, along with original Wing Commander. Playing the game with its full colour pallet and proper special effects (some of which were missing from Nick Pelling's excellent Amiga port) literally took up hours, days, months of my life. For the first few months, I didn't realise you could 'win' the campaign in Vega, I used to suck so bad that I'd always end up in Hell's Kitchen. Then, one day a breakthrough came, I was promoted to Black Lion Squadron and had found the holy grail of a happy ending and kicking the Cats out of the sector.

I yearned for more.

One of the best trades of my life was when, aged 12, I exchanged two bags of Doritos and £2.50 lunch money for Wing Commander II with a guy I went to school with. The rest is history, I tirelessly sought out the rest of the series, I'd played all of the main series by the time I was 15, but only got hold of Armada and WC1's secret missions in 2002. It was pure joy playing original Wing Commander again, but with new dialogue, new faces and missions - and finally understanding how Bluehair knew Jazz and Doomsday. By this time of course, I'd already wiped out the Kilrathi in WC3; the game remains my favourite in the series. As we discussed recently, the acting is first class, the music emotive, and the ending spectacular - if tragic. Wing Commander 4, for all of its brilliance of script writing and story, still didn't compare with the feeling I got when Kilrah went up. Prophecy and Secret Ops were not a disappointment either, and although there was promise in this new lease of life to the Wing Commander story, I still struggle to enjoy them as much as I do the Chris Roberts era titles.

I only started posting here in 2009, I lurked on and off at the CIC but I was a member of the Wing Commander Aces club a good 17 years ago in the days of dial-up.

Wing Commander certainly played a part in my upbringing, my attitudes towards war, self defense, leadership and hope. I intend to get my kids into it, I only have one child (as yet) an 8 year old girl, I can't really see it being her thing.

I hope, nay, I believe the series is not dead. Time will tell. I'm still praying for EA to take stock of what's going down with Star Citizen. I hope and think, the past is prologue.

3GMJqLX.jpg


tJL9WQZ.jpg
Click to expand...
Great backstory dan
 
Cool idea! It would be good to get to know everyone better.

I’m Ben, and I’m 34. I’m from Ashton, Maryland which is just outside Washington DC, although I’ve traveled far afield in recent years (currently living in sunny Santa Monica, California.) I work in community engagement and game design, although my background is all useless academics (degrees in English and History.) In my spare time, I’m… just your average geek. I’m your average Star Wars/Trek/etc. fan, and I spend time collecting and building retro computers and systems.

My dad first recommended Wing Commander to me shortly after it came out, having read about it in Jerry Pournelle’s “Tales from Chaos Manor” Byte column. I steadfastly refused to try it, as I was a very serious ten year old who considered anything but an accurate flight simulator below him. :) That next summer, my dad was transferred to IBM France in Marseilles, and we ended up relocating to Aix en Provence for about a year and a half. Suddenly any media in English was precious, and one of the fast friends I made had a pirated copy of Wing Commander I (don’t tell my boss.) I remember we spent all day guessing and guessing at the copy protection, until finally figuring out the easiest one (Maniac is 23, which you can figure logically in not-too-many guesses)… and once I saw the game, I was hooked! The game chugged along on our IBM PS/2, a 386/16 (one of the first available!) and as soon as I could I bought a real copy complete with Claw Marks which I loved until it was a tattered rag (memorizing it in the process.) I could probably go on for pages about the release of each and every game after that, but I don’t want to bore everyone! Suffice it to say, Wing Commander took over my life in the early 1990s. I was pretty insufferable, but then so are all teenagers. :)

I first got into Wing Commander ‘online’ in 1993, with my dad’s CompuServe account. I was a member of a Privateer pilot’s club group that put out these Word document newsletters and and collected everyone’s pilot profiles in a Windows notecard file. I would use the ten free hours of AOL time to grab everything I could from the Wing Commander communities there, though I never stuck around to be part of the WCPC/Aces clubs going on there (the CompuServe group was WAY more laid back, older players for the most part. Mark Minasi writes about it a bit in Secrets of the Wing Commander Universe.) Those were the days when dialing up and grabbing a ray-traced image of a Rapier was a day’s work and something to be obscenely proud of. Soon after that, my dad started teaching a course at Johns Hopkins and with that came raw access to the nascent World Wide Web. I started lurking at the primordial Wing Commander newsgroups (without posting access) alt.games.wc3 and later alt.games.wing-commander… and then, one day, Origin’s website launched what I consider to be the earliest forum of this forum: Origin’s Official Wing Commander Chat Zone. It’s hard to imagine compared to today, but back then you could post to a wwwboard without a login… everyone was just trusted to stay honest. Of course 18 months later that all came crashing down as the web went from the domain of high tech super nerds to being something everyone could access, but it was an amazing place that made a fourteen year old boy feel like a star in a great community.

I made friends through the Chat Zone, #Wing-Commander on the DALnet and alt.games.wing-commander with the people who run this site today: ace, Chris, Dundradal, Frosty, KrisV, Hades and the rest. We all helped run something called Introspection’s Wing Commander Home Sector, which was the ‘big’ fan site through Prophecy’s release in 1997. Then Neil Young (the famous one, not the singer) came to our IRC group and asked Chris Reid and I to run the ‘official’ fan site: they’d host us if we continued doing what we were doing through the release of Secret Ops. We said yes, under the condition that we redesign everything and start fresh… which we did, with WCNews.com! Over the years, I’ve had many, many great adventures because of this group, from archiving EA’s old material to helping out with novels and games and pitches.

Wing Commander has been hugely important through my whole life, for varying reasons. I chose to go to the University of Texas at Austin for college after becoming interested in the ‘behind the scenes’ of the Wing Commander universe and falling in love with the town that seemed to be as much a part of the development as anything else. And then just after I started college, I went blind and wasn’t expected to recover… and I genuinely do credit my drive to read the final Wing Commander novel, Pilgrim Stars, as part of why I beat the odds. I don’t think Wing Commander made me see again or anything stupid like that, but it gave me something to work towards which my body dearly needed. (Sadly, it was the weakest of the novels by far :)) And of course I’m here today working with Chris Roberts on Star Citizen, which came about because of my years of experience with the Wing Commander community and my deep interest in the people behind the game. You all know that story already, but suffice it to say it has been quite a ride.

Here’s me, my wife and the WCNews crew at my wedding (note the Pilgrim Cross! :))

https://cdn.wcnews.com/newestshots/full/loaf_wedding1.jpg
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Jdawg, great idea!

My name is Mike, I'm going to be 35 in a few weeks. I'm currently in Nashville Tennessee working royalties for several bands you may/may not have heard of. I spent 10 years in the United States Air Force as a B-52H Navigator/Bombardier, and 2 years in the Texas Air National Guard as a Range Operations Officer for F-16 bombing/gunnery training.

I'm a father of 2 girls (aged 1 and 3) that will be the death of me. Been married to my wife since 2010 and very much enjoying non-military life.

Wing Commander 3 is where I jumped onto the train. My dad saw it and noticed Mark Hamill was in it (after many hours playing X-Wing) this was a game with high potential. I was hooked from then on. Stumbled over this website in my college days and enjoyed reading all that there was here on WC. Didn't start posting until 2011 or so... more's the pity, you all are a great group of folks.

Anyhoo.... in an actual squadron, the newbies will be asked to "Stand up, tell us about yourself" at their first "Roll Call".... and the second you start to speak, everyone in the room yells "SHADDAP!!!!" amongst other things I won't sully this thread with. Good to actually get to say something, I have to say.

Here's some shots of me with the family and with the ol' BUFFasaurus.
family.jpg
guam07.jpg
 
Ben and mike nice stories. Thank you for your service mike. I live in atlanta, and have a degree in computer networking, sad to say never used it. I'm a store manager in retail. I love Knoxville Tn, and if I ever leave ga, that is where I'm going.

Ben I'm so glad you regained your sight, it truly is mind over matter. We three should do a star wars rebels recap thread every week for fun
 
I'll join the crowd.

My name is Josh. I'm 26 and I've been a member of the CIC community since August 2003 (damn). I used to be a whiny teenager that got upset when anyone offered constructive criticism of his ridiculous ship designs. I gradually got better with age, and I really loved the fan productions here at WCNews that enhanced the Wing Commander universe, especially Unknown Enemy and Standoff.

Wing Commander is one of my earliest memories regarding computer games - my dad would place my crib near his desk while he would play, so the scramble and dogfight music has been beamed into my head since near birth. You could say that Wing Commander influenced my love of military aviation, and also made me really want to be a carrier aviator.

Luckily, that particular dream came true. I'm currently a Lieutenant in the United States Navy and a Naval Flight Officer, or NFO. NFOs aren't pilots but we operate the communications gear, radar, and weapons systems on Navy aircraft. Think Goose from "Top Gun" without the pesky ejection accident. Currently, I get the pleasure of flying in the "Eyes of the Fleet" - the Northrup Grumman E-2C Hawkeye. It's been a demanding and rewarding tour so far, but I've loved it.

4204613-e-2c-hawkeye.jpg
 
Hey everyone my name is David. I started my love of wing commander in an unusual way. One day my mom came home with a Macintosh performa computer and a new game for me and my brother to try. I would let you guys guess but you don't need to. I started of with super wing commander and from there actually played wing commander 3 the prophecy. I didn't actually get to play the original wing commander games until my wife of eight years went and bought all the games from gog.com. I love that woman she enables my inner geek. She will even tolerate my occasional down the rabbit hole ship designing where I sit around and think of ways to build a better carrier battle group. Currently I live in Pensacola Florida where I am a navy corpsmen at Whiting field. My favorite memories are actually when I was playing wing commander while on deployment with the marines as part of a Marine Expeditionary Unit. As I live and fight on the ground I always was hoping for a close air support mission in wing commander. Here's a picture of me and my guys in Romania during training in 2013.
 

Attachments

  • 20130722_104443.jpg
    20130722_104443.jpg
    195.3 KB · Views: 222
Sylvester said:
I'm currently a Lieutenant in the United States Navy and a Naval Flight Officer, or NFO. NFOs aren't pilots but we operate the communications gear, radar, and weapons systems on Navy aircraft
Click to expand...
Kindred spirits Sylvester. Nice! Hitched a ride on a C-2 from Guam out to the U.S.S. Reagan back in '07. Had some good times wargaming with you guys. Went through JSUNT back in '04 and had some squids in there along with a German helo navigator. We do have to use the "Goose" description a lot, don't we.... and of course, he died... even though what happened to him defies the laws of physics :mad:.

26? Full-up LT then! I got out as an O-4, but I miss those days as an O-3. No one can tell if you've been one for 4 days or 4 years!

David! Pensacola! Whiting! Man, you squids are taking me back... Water Survival was the best fun I'd had... especially right after SERE up in Fairchild. Only did approaches to Whiting in the simulator.... not one you want to do in the 52.

I wonder how many of us owe our service to Chris Roberts' influence?
 
Last edited:
image.jpeg
image.jpeg
Awesome idea. Hi, my name is Afrim Kosovrasti. I am 33 years old and about to get married on Friday!! I worked a bunch of my life at my family pizzaria but always favored working on computers than I did pizza lol. I like the eating pizza part though....
Anyhoo, I am starting schooling for my new career in web development in April. Until then I am just livin it up off my savings as I transition from pizza man to website man. Needless to say I have been gaming a ton lately!
So I got into Wing Commander almost on accident. Back in grade school a friend of mine rented WC1 on the snes. This changed my life forever. We were both immediately hooked at the action and story in this game. I remember one mission having a crippled ship without any weapons left and all we had was a full gas tank and having to afterburn our way from our current nav point all the way back to the Claw while those damn cats followed us the whole way. I remember that excitement like it was yesterday. We made it back to base barely and if I wasn't so young back then i would have needed a smoke and a shot lol. Anyhoo, since then I was sold. Got a gaming pc and played every WC game I could until needing to build a new one for WC3 then having to upgrade my ram, cd rom drive, and processor to play WC4.
I never forget even now that it is thanks to WC that I got interested in computers. Now all these years later as I go into a computer orientated career I thank WC for getting me out of the grueling pizza industry filled with 13 hr days on my feet with only a 20 minute lunch break. No thank you!
I was very sad when Chris Roberts retired from gaming. Wasn't a fan of the WC movie and the fact that WC would never see CR again broke my heart. I googled him once a year or so and was stoked to hear about Starlancer. I was soooo happy with that game and here I was again building a new pc for a CR game lol. Those Roberts brothers never fail! Was reeeeeeally sad when CR did actually retire and moved to movies. I figured at that point to just give up on Space combat games. I would google his name once a year and every year would be no gaming news.
Then one day I googled his name and I literally junped out of my chair! Chris Roberts is making another game??? I watched the kickstarter video......wholy shit its WC1 with new graphics!!! I was instantly back in the fold. Sadly i missed the kickstarter excitement by about a month. But I immediately moved on to RSI and pledged.
In excitement I found myself dying to play some of the classic WCs without knowledge of how to get em or to make em work on my pc. So I found this place. WCnews. I read years of news updates in that next week. Absorbing everything I missed in those years. Downloading and playing Standoff, then Saga, and trying out others. Here I am using mods on a pc now lol. Thanks WC for getting me back in the gritty of a pc again.
I was hesitant to post in the forums for almost a year. Then once I started I think I may have gotten annoying around here lol. I check up on this place about twice a day. At first I was posting and commenting a lot over at RSI. The people were nice at first. However the more popular the place gets the more A Hole trolls linger. So I started posting more here where people are actually nice and help each other. Also most people here know exactly what they are talking about lol.
So that's my little story. This is an exciting year for me with marriage and new career. I want to thank all of you for being part of the coolest forum ever. Such nice people here. Ben(Loaf) and Chris Reid, thank you so much not only for your hard work but for also being approachable to chat with. The fact that we are all over the Star Wars thread chatting away is awesome lol.
My other hobby was always music. I play guitar and have been for 17 years. Been in and out of a few bands. Anyone use Spotify? If you do look up my name Afrim Kosovrasti and u can hear some of my solo work. Or if you wanna check out this song:
https://soundcloud.com/afrim-kosovrasti/ghost-saloon
From there you can check out the rest of the songs I have on Spotify.
Last things, on the RSI forums i go by Mindcrime. That has always been my forum and online gaming name. I remember playing Starlancer online and doom2 online as Mindcrime. Old school lol.
On that note, how the heck do I change my name from Afrim Kosovrasti to Mindcrime on here? I have gone over ever profile setting I could imagine and still no luck. Thanks in advanced cuz I'm sure its something easy and I'm just not seeing it lol.

I leave you with a funny pic me and my fiancé got at a rodeo about a month ago in hot sunny Phx, Arizona which is where we live. Also a picture of me drunk and laughing my ass off at my high school reunion a lil while back lol.
 
Oh heck, why not. Anonymity is overrated anyway, just ask the NSA! :)

Hello all,

My name is Ben (since we already have one I can be Ben II: The Revenge); my parents were obviously not silly enough to name me Defiance, nor is my surname Industries (however if it were I could be a contestant in the upper-class twit of the year race). I've been an avid Sci-Fi junkie since I could remember. I can blame that on my parents, the only TV shows they would let me watch when I was a kid were the Mary Tyler Moore show and Star Trek. So yeah, Mary just didn't rate in my impressionable young head.

I first ran into Wing Commander when my good friend in High school ran up to me in the hall and said, "Ben! Have I got a good game for you! Come over after school and we can play." I was a bit skeptical at first, since this guy's idea of a good game was Zork. A good game but hardly something I'd want to spend an afternoon watching someone play. Well, I was surprised indeed. I was hooked; and fell into that devilish cycle of having to scrape together enough cash to upgrade my PC when Wing II came out, and again later for Priv, Wing 3, etc. I played a number of titles but it was really Wing and the Xwing series that got me through the college years, and probably had a slightly negative effect on my overall GPA.

Beyond all the gaming I somehow managed a liberal arts degree from K.U. so I'm a Jayhawk through and through; and immediately after graduation upon realizing that while I might aspire to write the next great American novel; I also wanted to eat and not live in my parent's basement. So I taught myself how to write SQL and got a job working as a part-time DBA, part-time Business Intelligence developer. Thus began a long and illustrious career as a BI developer; and things were good, until someone figured out I could "talk developer" as they put it. So I got kicked upstairs into project management. Now that's where I live, a freelance PM who specializes in (of all things) conversion of QAM feeds into an IP streaming platform. A far cry from my roots for sure.

I picked up 3D modelling as a hobby between contracts about two years ago, and it's been something of a passion of mine ever since. Aside from that I also do a fair bit of improv comedy. I do some coaching for Destination Imagination and before the great unpleasantness of 2008, my troupe did several tours for Armed Forces Entertainment. I also have two girls, aged 3.5 and one that just turned two. I've discovered that there seems to be a correlation between their age and the rate at which the hair falls out of my head. :)

Here's me and my oldest:
DadnGirl2.jpg
 
Last edited:
Hello, my name is Dan, 36 years old and I'm a Wing Commander addict.

My first taste was as an early teen. I was in the back of some store, where they hid all the good stuff on the top shelf. And there it was, sticking out above all the other Amiga titles, I must have seen it from half way across the store. Convincing my mum to buy it was surprisingly easy, it must have been fate. At first it destroyed me, after being blown away by the intro, talking heads and the launch cut-scene, ready to become a heroic space pilot whom saves mankind; I became a corpse, time and again.

Fast forward a couple of years, and many losing path journeys later... I eventually found a disk copying utility, made a copy and saved my soul for the first time. However, it was too late to save my sanity as I became haunted by stealth Dralthi, whom could only be seen by their engine flames. Not before I eventually gained taste of victory, thwarting the Kilrathi in the Vega Sector, and becoming a seasoned veteran.

Fast forward several more years, the very heavy Wing Commander 3 box (and at surprisingly cheap price too) brought me back for more. I must have played 30+hours in the first new game (while I could have done it in one sitting, in a time when I was once youthful, I had to make do with 3 days. I think I had something called college to attend back then). A year later, WC4 hit the shelves, I waited a whole 6 months, checking the store every week or so for it's release. Once again the combat ripped me apart.

Finally the Kilrathi Saga appeared, and my first time at WC2. Oh man, that brought back feelings I had in WC1, except I had SB for music, so never quite got the adrenalin rush the Amiga gave (even though the FPS was now in the double digits). Eventually I hit e-bay and bought Privateer, Armada and stumbled across Prophecy, after upgrading from a P90 to a PIII 3Ghz.

I must have come across WCNews just once before it actually became WCNews, as I was surprised to see the site change on my next visit. I posted once, to some random thread, then totally forgot about it. A couple of years later, I remembered WCN and decided to lurk in the shadows for many years. It became a daily habit and still is, checking the front page and occasionally dipping in to forum posts. I eventually became a poster when I started uploading some Let's Play videos of WC, though it became quite obvious I have only skimmed the surface of the WC universe, in terms of lore and canon. Having forgot my original name, and not being able to recover it, a new ID was required. And therefore was born centaurianmudpig, a love (hate?) child from between Iceman and the Scimitar!

Now I'm here. The space flight genre, or anything sci-fi is still my thing. I would like to say I have a passion for making my own space/sci-fi video game, but if I did surely I would have made something by now, so let's say I would like to make something, one day. The problem is, I enjoy playing too much! The thought of making my own video game, from leaving school, is what put me on the path of being a computer programmer, though I'd have to say I'm a casual programmer as I never did anything cool like jump in to exe's or make dll's like we see with fan made patches.

I was a software engineer for several years. Came out of industry to teach, and did so for several years in secondary (high) school. I taught ICT/Computer Science. Decided that teaching was not compatible with healthy living & health. I have just recently come out and now looking for a job in industry, something to do with computers - most likely programming.

Right now, I've just purchased Evochron Legends, even though I couldn't get in to the others. I think age has made me a little wiser and a little (to some moderate degree) less impatient enough to learn something new, which feels and looks very complex. It should tie me over nicely until Star Citizen gets fleshed out more and long enough for Squadron 42's release.

P.S. Congratulations @Afrim Kosovrasti I'm sure Friday will become an amazing day for you both.
 
it really is a blast learning about all y'all. it is amazing how gaming can change your life. My first love has and always will be movies, with gaming coming in a close second. I think that is why I always have gravitated to games with wonderful wild stories, such as metal gear and and my favorite franchise wing commander
 
-danr- said:
I'll play. I hope more people do too as it's nice to put faces to names and learn backstory :)

As my username suggests, I'm Dan. I'm from the very far south-western tip of England. I'll also be 31 in a few months. my trade is genetics. I'm into retro gaming, sketching, hiking in the woods and anything related to science, and aviation; I started my flyers' license some years ago, and intend to complete it one day when I can afford the hours.

I got into Wing Commander circa 1993, my brother had the original on his Commodore Amiga. Later we had Privateer on the PC, and some of my fondest early memories are playing Priv side by side, one of us would pretend to be the co-pilot aboard our Tarsus and run around the room extinguishing pretend fires during combat whilst the other flew.

Really, my obsession began in 1995 when my parents bought me an IBM 386-SX, along with original Wing Commander. Playing the game with its full colour pallet and proper special effects (some of which were missing from Nick Pelling's excellent Amiga port) literally took up hours, days, months of my life. For the first few months, I didn't realise you could 'win' the campaign in Vega, I used to suck so bad that I'd always end up in Hell's Kitchen. Then, one day a breakthrough came, I was promoted to Black Lion Squadron and had found the holy grail of a happy ending and kicking the Cats out of the sector.

I yearned for more.

One of the best trades of my life was when, aged 12, I exchanged two bags of Doritos and £2.50 lunch money for Wing Commander II with a guy I went to school with. The rest is history, I tirelessly sought out the rest of the series, I'd played all of the main series by the time I was 15, but only got hold of Armada and WC1's secret missions in 2002. It was pure joy playing original Wing Commander again, but with new dialogue, new faces and missions - and finally understanding how Bluehair knew Jazz and Doomsday. By this time of course, I'd already wiped out the Kilrathi in WC3; the game remains my favourite in the series. As we discussed recently, the acting is first class, the music emotive, and the ending spectacular - if tragic. Wing Commander 4, for all of its brilliance of script writing and story, still didn't compare with the feeling I got when Kilrah went up. Prophecy and Secret Ops were not a disappointment either, and although there was promise in this new lease of life to the Wing Commander story, I still struggle to enjoy them as much as I do the Chris Roberts era titles.

I only started posting here in 2009, I lurked on and off at the CIC but I was a member of the Wing Commander Aces club a good 17 years ago in the days of dial-up.

Wing Commander certainly played a part in my upbringing, my attitudes towards war, self defense, leadership and hope. I intend to get my kids into it, I only have one child (as yet) an 8 year old girl, I can't really see it being her thing.

I hope, nay, I believe the series is not dead. Time will tell. I'm still praying for EA to take stock of what's going down with Star Citizen. I hope and think, the past is prologue.

3GMJqLX.jpg


tJL9WQZ.jpg
Click to expand...
I also think it's only a matter of time before wing commander comes back. Between star citizen, elite dangerous, star wars, and star trek all coming back, EA would be dumb not to see the the money they could make in the genre. That had to be the reason why they aquired mass effect
 
Last edited:
Bandit LOAF said:
Sadly (for both Wing Commander and Mass Effect), EA has the broad Star Wars license now.

But there may be a way to save WC yet. Stay tuned! :)
Click to expand...
EA is all about making money, they have to at least see the potential with the IP, even the fan made games such as saga were downloaded many times over.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top