"You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you." In all seriousness, this is the big night: Wing Commander Arena will be released tomorrow morning on or about 5 AM EST. I do not have to remind you that it has been nine years since Wing Commander: Secret Ops, the last original Wing Commander release. Through all this time you, the fans, have kept the faith. The home fires have burned brightly through this long, cold winter as you have produced amazing fan games, written engrossing fan fiction, created magnificent fan artwork and done the hundreds of other things that have proved your devotion to this great series so many times. Let Wing Commander Arena be your reward - surely the first of many! Many of you have had your doubts about Arena. This is perfectly reasonable - I have, on occasion, shared them. Powerups instead of upgrades? Frags instead of kills? Arena is not like any other Wing Commander game made before. There is no grand cinematic story, space combat is on a different sort of plane, it was built for a console rather than a PC... we have all turned over these facts in our brains endlessly. However: it is amazingly fun, it pushes the boundries of Xbox Live Arcade, it maintains an utmost respect for Wing Commander's continuity and fans and most of all playing it feels like playing a classic Wing Commander game. Arena is fun; more fun than I can express. Enjoy it for being new and precious rather than damning it for being strange and different. Sixteen player team matches to destroy massive capital ships? Dogfights amidst massive fields of space debris? Enormous space stations filled with tunnels and hiding places? A giant crater for the personal duels we've all been wishing we could fight? A massive Midway class carrier for us to defend? Who needs FMV, we have a universe to explore! There is ten times as much material here for us to discover than there has been in any other XBLA game, ever. More games are on the way! Wing Commander Arena is groundbreaking for an XBLA title. Arena will sell and it will prove the franchise's viability to those cautious executives. The suits today are not the same ones who abandoned the series in 1998. Men like former Origin President Neil Young, who was instrumental in personally helping us establish this site a decade ago, are in charge of the company now. EA's Producers - fans themselves - are ready and willing, awaiting the go ahead to return to our universe. As First Decade begat Command and Conquer 3 so will Arena will lead to Wing Commander 7. I will stake my very reputation on it. You are all the best of fans: you have personally kept Wing Commander alive and saved the series - just like we always promised you would. What's more, you've become my closest friends. There is no greater group of people in the world - and no one could ask for more from you than I have. You have my deepest things and my eternal gratitude. We've come a long way, and there's more work to be done... but today is our day. Enjoy Arena; you've earned it. Now let's hit the flight deck! -- Original update published on July 24, 2007
Will there be a port to Windows Vista? At least for the near future, I doubt it. But let me tell you this: I, like all other wingsnuts, have waited almost a decade for this moment to come true. You bet I won't wait any darn minute longer than when Arena's officially released! Heck, I bought an XBox 360 Premium just to be able to participate in that very moment that will resurrect Wing Commander. (And of course, to blow you all to space dust! *cough* We'll see how long it takes until I'm blown to little pieces... ) Being able to meet you all online in the WC universe alone is worth it! Looking forward to see you on XBLA! United we stand! Only 18 hours to go now...
I would buy one two - that is if I could! It's kind of tricky getting one from a reliable source here - the local microsoft branch is currently considering giving the official distribution rights to someone so hopefully it'll be soon...
I also went out and bought a 360 premuim a couple of days ago, My only regret is that it won't arrive until next monday
I literally just asked for tomorrow off. So I'll you guys this afternoon. Along with the WCA/WCM marathon, hopefully we can get some people into a few games of WCP MP while we are waiting...
