Wing Commander a flop on the Amiga

centaurianmudpig

Rear Admiral
There is a short article on how EA's failures on the 3DO and Amiga on eurogamer.net and lessons learnt. This part stood out to me:

Hilleman admitted that, apart from Deluxe Paint, all of its Amiga titles failed to make money.​

I would not have thought that the Amiga version of Wing Commander had sold that badly. Does that mean Wing Commander's success was due to the PC version, or a multitude of ports?
 
There were not that many Amiga's around compared to PC's, depending on what region in the world you lived in.
 
Wing Commander's "success" is 100% the PC port--you wouldn't have had the Amiga, SNES, FM Towns and so on versions if the game hadn't been an industry-shaking hit on the PC first.

But Youngblood is also correct. Wing Commander for the Amiga was done pre-Electronic Arts... and not even by Origin. It was licensed by an outside company called Mindscape, which took care of the development and publishing. So, it wouldn't be what Mr. Hilleman was referring to here.

(That said, I think his memory of the 3DO may be a little selective... EA's involvement in that debacle wasn't because anyone thought the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer was the next big thing... it was because 3DO was created by Trip Hawkins, who used his influence to convince EA to put big money into software development.)
 
As someone who cut his teeth on an Amiga...

I don't know what sales were like, or even what most Amiga users thought of it. Before the internets, it's difficult to guage opinion like that.
I would say that I found it mesmerising. Moreso with an A1200, some fast-ram and a Hard Disk (or 2nd FDD).

Thing is, the A1200 was the rarest of the Amiga models at the time. A500, A500+ and A600's were the norm and the thing ran very very slowly on them. I think you had to have fallen in love with the universe to put up with it. Even on the A1200 it was not what you would call, quick.

One thing the slow frame rate did do for me though, was to hone my targeting :)
 
Thing is, the A1200 was the rarest of the Amiga models at the time. A500, A500+ and A600's were the norm and the thing ran very very slowly on them. I think you had to have fallen in love with the universe to put up with it. Even on the A1200 it was not what you would call, quick.

I remember the slow speed on the Amiga and needing that 1mg of extra memory which was no small cost. I found it a bit of a shock when I first loaded up WC the Kilrathi Saga version. I had to slow the framerate down to 15 or so for it to be playable.
 
Must admit I dont recall it being that slow on the Amiga I had a 500+ with the extra MB of RAM which to be fair was huge!!! My Dad at the time had a 1200 and I used to play on it as it was better on the hard drive no loading times.
 
I remember the slow speed on the Amiga and needing that 1mg of extra memory which was no small cost. I found it a bit of a shock when I first loaded up WC the Kilrathi Saga version. I had to slow the framerate down to 15 or so for it to be playable.

Forget the KS! I remember crying inside whenever I clicked on the 'secret missions' option on the Amiga game menu and it said they were 'coming soon', but never did.
I longed for them AND for WC2. When I eventually got a PC, it was a 486DX4 and came with WC2. I remember loading it up without knowing about the slowdown utility (moslo I think it was). Going though an asteroid field was like jumping to lightspeed in the Millenium Falcon!! haha.

Good times.

Getting the KS and finally playing the secret missions is one of my faveourite memories.
 
Yes, because of the Amiga's lack of SM packages, I too played WC1 on Amiga, upgraded to PC and went straight to WC2 none the wiser. Wasn't until a year or two later I had the joy of remembering that I could now play the elusive Secret Missions for the PC! One of the best months (well, gaming months) of my life. Playing WC1 again but with a whole new plotline. It was amazing, seeing the old faces but finally with new dialoughe, and finally knowing how Blair knew Doomsday.

SM1 and SM2 were great, their absence from the Amiga is a crying shame.
 
Forget the KS! I remember crying inside whenever I clicked on the 'secret missions' option on the Amiga game menu and it said they were 'coming soon', but never did

I was very tempted to ring the American toll number, from England, but figured you can't play a game after being murdered by the bill payers. So I waited for it to never appear on the shop shelves.

Getting the KS and finally playing the secret missions is one of my faveourite memories.

Downloading the secret missions for KS was one the most frustrating points in my life, considering it was something like a 4mb download.
 
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