AKAImBatman
Spaceman
Introduction
After all the press CIC has been giving Super Wing Commander as of late, I decided to purchase a copy and try it for myself. While I failed to find a 3DO bundle at a reasonable price, I did manage to find a copy for the Macintosh. As far as I understand, the two copies are the same minus some slight performance characteristics, so hopefully anything I say here will translate to the 3DO version. If not, well I guess you'll have to get a copy and try it for yourself.
Installation
Keep in mind that Super Wing Commander is a ten year old game. The fact that it works at all on a modern Mac is shocking in of itself. The only reason it's runnable is because of Steve Jobs' foresight to include a full copy of OS 9.2 with OS X. 9.2 runs in the background and allows "classic" Mac apps to access the OS X screen (sort of like rootless X on Windows). Amazingly, this arrangement works *really* well. Far better than most emulation layers in other OSes. In fact, it works a little too well.
The game is so fast as to be unplayable.
One would think that Origin would have learned their lesson by 1995 and would have written frame limiting code into Super Wing Commander. But they didn't. And it's *very* annoying.
Thankfully there is an "assistive technology" extension for the classic environment called Slo-mo. Thanks to Slo-mo, I was able to take a 900MHz G3 PowerPC performance demon and make it run at a whopping 17% of its original speed! (I've heard of people wanting to make their computers faster, but slower?
) Then an adjustment to my resolution to run at 640x480, and we're off!
Running the Game for the First Time
I have to say, I nearly cracked up when the first thing I heard out of the speakers was the Mac voice synth crying out, "It's not my fault!" A quick check of the dialog made it clear that Wing Commander needed to temporarily change the screen mode to 256 colors. This is no big issue, and the game switches the color mode back when it's done. Unfortunately, the color mode is very susceptible to corruption. One must make sure to stop the bouncing icon on the dock *before* allowing SWC to change the screen mode, or you'll have to exit the game and start all over. Similarly, one has to be careful not to move the cursor too far to the top or bottom while in the game, or the menus will pop up and cause the same issue.
New Features
I have to say, this really *is* an awesome remake of Wing Commander. Here's a rundown of the features:
Unfortunately, not all of these features are what they're cracked up to be. For example, the FMV landing sequence is very neat, but it denies you a chance to view your fighter's condition. This feature's replacement, the deck chief welcoming you back with either a standard greeting or a "Glad you made it back", is a very poor substitute. And not to mention those voices! Ugh. I can't believe that anyone could murder Scottish, Japanese, Asian, French, and "Righteously cool dude!" accents quite so badly. Halcyon and Shotglass are the only two with reasonable voices, but they both deliver their lines so deadpanned that it's just a pain to listen to. On the bright side, the way Halcyon delivers the "You will be missed" in his death speech, you'd think he was trying to say "Oh well, he was an idiot anyway. NEXT!" I can practically see his eyes rolling while delivering that line.
The combat has also taken a turn for the worse. While the feel is very similar to the original Wing Commander, the changes in features have resulted in a loss of much of the combat information we're used to. Damage control has been reduced to an extremely pretty but simplistic screen that shows a bar for shields and damaged areas of your armor in red. Information about damaged components is automatically cycled through one line at a time, denying you an understanding of your ship's health. Damage is listed as "light" or "heavy" instead of percentages.
The radar borders on useless as it's too small to see any of the blips or get a feel for their relative position. The arrow in the targeting reticle partially makes up for this, but not completely. The addition of the ITTS is mostly just an annoyance as it's almost always *wrong*. A ship could be barreling toward you and the ITTS will instruct you to fire below him. It would be nice if there was a way to turn it off.
Comms and missile selection are completely screwed up. There don't appear to be any hot keys for messages, and pausing the game to navigate through your personal computer is annoying. Ditto on missiles.
In all fairness to the SWC team, they originally built this game for the 3DO. Many of these features are a result of attempting to deal with a controller and a blurry television screen rather than a keyboard and a sharp CRT. For example, a controller simply doesn't have enough buttons for comms, missiles, and navigation, so they were moved to an interactive pause screen. And a television can't show you line art detail and tiny fonts like a computer screen can, so much of the combat information was replaced. If I were to hazard a guess, the only reason why SWC was ported to the Mac was as an attempt to make up for their losses on the 3DO version. (The 3DO never did very well in the market.)
Oddities
The Super Wing Commander universe is full of inexplicable oddities that glare out at anyone with even a passing interest in the series:
Conclusion
All in all, I think Super Wing Commander is a really great game and a welcome addition to anyone's Wing Commander library. It's primary failings are that its dependence on the 3DO negatively impacted the game quality, and that Origin just didn't spend enough time and money on making sure this game was up to snuff on both platforms. From what I can gather, this prevented it from becoming a success in the market as people felt a bit gypped out of their money. The result is that the Mac version of this game is now rarer than gold. I only found one copy for sale on Ebay, and it went for nearly $30.00 US. I ended up having to purchase my copy off of Half.com.
This makes me wish we could get permission from EA to redistribute this game. My copy (of the CD only!) arrived in a condition that quickly betrayed its age. One of the first actions I took was to make a DMG backup of the CD on my hard drive. I then put the CD in storage to reduce wear and tear, and now play the game directly out of the DMG file. (In OS X, a mounted drive is a mounted drive. It doesn't matter if you're mounting an ISO or a physical CD. It's all treated the same.)
Good luck everyone, and I hope you find copies.
After all the press CIC has been giving Super Wing Commander as of late, I decided to purchase a copy and try it for myself. While I failed to find a 3DO bundle at a reasonable price, I did manage to find a copy for the Macintosh. As far as I understand, the two copies are the same minus some slight performance characteristics, so hopefully anything I say here will translate to the 3DO version. If not, well I guess you'll have to get a copy and try it for yourself.
Installation
Keep in mind that Super Wing Commander is a ten year old game. The fact that it works at all on a modern Mac is shocking in of itself. The only reason it's runnable is because of Steve Jobs' foresight to include a full copy of OS 9.2 with OS X. 9.2 runs in the background and allows "classic" Mac apps to access the OS X screen (sort of like rootless X on Windows). Amazingly, this arrangement works *really* well. Far better than most emulation layers in other OSes. In fact, it works a little too well.
The game is so fast as to be unplayable.
One would think that Origin would have learned their lesson by 1995 and would have written frame limiting code into Super Wing Commander. But they didn't. And it's *very* annoying.
Thankfully there is an "assistive technology" extension for the classic environment called Slo-mo. Thanks to Slo-mo, I was able to take a 900MHz G3 PowerPC performance demon and make it run at a whopping 17% of its original speed! (I've heard of people wanting to make their computers faster, but slower?
) Then an adjustment to my resolution to run at 640x480, and we're off!Running the Game for the First Time
I have to say, I nearly cracked up when the first thing I heard out of the speakers was the Mac voice synth crying out, "It's not my fault!" A quick check of the dialog made it clear that Wing Commander needed to temporarily change the screen mode to 256 colors. This is no big issue, and the game switches the color mode back when it's done. Unfortunately, the color mode is very susceptible to corruption. One must make sure to stop the bouncing icon on the dock *before* allowing SWC to change the screen mode, or you'll have to exit the game and start all over. Similarly, one has to be careful not to move the cursor too far to the top or bottom while in the game, or the menus will pop up and cause the same issue.
New Features
I have to say, this really *is* an awesome remake of Wing Commander. Here's a rundown of the features:
- Full Motion Video for cut scenes such as the intro, landing on the Tiger's Claw, takeoff procedures (complete with a machine to pack you into an airtight sardine can ), and system jumps.
- All characters have voice acting, including briefings, rec room chats, friendly pilots, enemy pilots, and even the Tiger's Claw landing officer.
- Graphics have been updated with far more realistic artwork, flashier cockpits, and smoothly scaling ships.
- Cockpit slides to the side in reaction to your maneuvers. This effect is only seen in post-Prophecy games, so it's quite surprising to find it in SWC.
- Targeting is enhanced with an auto-lock mechanism and an ITTS reticle. The standard targeting reticle has also been enhanced with an arrow that tells you which way to turn to face the locked target.
- Navigation, comms, missile selection, and ejection have all been consolidated into a personal computer interface. Whenever you hit a key for any of these options, the game is automatically paused while you make your selection.
- Every possible action aboard the Tiger's Claw is accompanied by an animation (e.g. door opening, spotlight shining, chair sliding back, etc.) and a voice announcing what the action will do.
- Your character now has a name, "Lieutenant Armstrong"
Unfortunately, not all of these features are what they're cracked up to be. For example, the FMV landing sequence is very neat, but it denies you a chance to view your fighter's condition. This feature's replacement, the deck chief welcoming you back with either a standard greeting or a "Glad you made it back", is a very poor substitute. And not to mention those voices! Ugh. I can't believe that anyone could murder Scottish, Japanese, Asian, French, and "Righteously cool dude!" accents quite so badly. Halcyon and Shotglass are the only two with reasonable voices, but they both deliver their lines so deadpanned that it's just a pain to listen to. On the bright side, the way Halcyon delivers the "You will be missed" in his death speech, you'd think he was trying to say "Oh well, he was an idiot anyway. NEXT!" I can practically see his eyes rolling while delivering that line.
The combat has also taken a turn for the worse. While the feel is very similar to the original Wing Commander, the changes in features have resulted in a loss of much of the combat information we're used to. Damage control has been reduced to an extremely pretty but simplistic screen that shows a bar for shields and damaged areas of your armor in red. Information about damaged components is automatically cycled through one line at a time, denying you an understanding of your ship's health. Damage is listed as "light" or "heavy" instead of percentages.
The radar borders on useless as it's too small to see any of the blips or get a feel for their relative position. The arrow in the targeting reticle partially makes up for this, but not completely. The addition of the ITTS is mostly just an annoyance as it's almost always *wrong*. A ship could be barreling toward you and the ITTS will instruct you to fire below him. It would be nice if there was a way to turn it off.
Comms and missile selection are completely screwed up. There don't appear to be any hot keys for messages, and pausing the game to navigate through your personal computer is annoying. Ditto on missiles.
In all fairness to the SWC team, they originally built this game for the 3DO. Many of these features are a result of attempting to deal with a controller and a blurry television screen rather than a keyboard and a sharp CRT. For example, a controller simply doesn't have enough buttons for comms, missiles, and navigation, so they were moved to an interactive pause screen. And a television can't show you line art detail and tiny fonts like a computer screen can, so much of the combat information was replaced. If I were to hazard a guess, the only reason why SWC was ported to the Mac was as an attempt to make up for their losses on the 3DO version. (The 3DO never did very well in the market.)
Oddities
The Super Wing Commander universe is full of inexplicable oddities that glare out at anyone with even a passing interest in the series:
- Why was your character given the name Armstrong? Wing Commander III was developed right around the same time, so it seems odd that the two projects didn't coordinate.
- What's with the eye patch on Paladin? This game was created post-WC2, so why change the character to such a degree?
- You Privateer fans will love these screenshots from the online copy of Claw Marks:
It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a hunter in a demon! No! It's... a Scimitar?
Nooowww we know what happened to the Raptor! It became the Gladius!
This is a Gratha. Umm... yeah. I think someone *really* ran out of time on the 3D models.
Conclusion
All in all, I think Super Wing Commander is a really great game and a welcome addition to anyone's Wing Commander library. It's primary failings are that its dependence on the 3DO negatively impacted the game quality, and that Origin just didn't spend enough time and money on making sure this game was up to snuff on both platforms. From what I can gather, this prevented it from becoming a success in the market as people felt a bit gypped out of their money. The result is that the Mac version of this game is now rarer than gold. I only found one copy for sale on Ebay, and it went for nearly $30.00 US. I ended up having to purchase my copy off of Half.com.
This makes me wish we could get permission from EA to redistribute this game. My copy (of the CD only!) arrived in a condition that quickly betrayed its age. One of the first actions I took was to make a DMG backup of the CD on my hard drive. I then put the CD in storage to reduce wear and tear, and now play the game directly out of the DMG file. (In OS X, a mounted drive is a mounted drive. It doesn't matter if you're mounting an ISO or a physical CD. It's all treated the same.)
Good luck everyone, and I hope you find copies.
