Your first Wing Commander experience?

L

Lunitari

Spaceman
I know a lot of people out there probably did not get into Wing Commander until later in the series, but I would love to hear people's stories about what they went through to experience Wing Commander for the first time. Did you have to upgrade your computer? Did you have to BUY a computer? Did you wait around until the inferior Super Nintendo version came out?

I was an old Commodore Amiga guy back in the late eighties, and I remember reading about Wing Commander in PC Gaming Monthly, and I knew I was in love right away. I saw a tech demo for WC down at a little mom and pop computer store, and I was so blown away that I immediately put my Amiga 500 up for sale and all the software that went with it. It took me a while, but I finally unloaded it. I saved and saved and finally was able to buy my first 486 25 MHz PC with 250 meg hard drive and the works (at the time). I think it was somewhere in the neighborhood of $1500.00, but I had my copy of Wing Commander and I never looked back.
 
I was blown away by WC1 in much the same way, but your Commodore was cutting edge compared to the only computer at my house - an Apple IIc. Space Quarks baby! To play WC, I had to go to my buddy's place and commandere his machine exactly as I do today if I want to play Doom3 or whatever.

I was hooked up through WC2 Special Operations, but after that I did not have access to a computer. It was only when I spotted Prophecy in the bargain bin at Wal-Mart that I rekindled my love of Wing Commander and I played catch up with WC 3 and 4 from Ebay.

Then I saw the movie, but I won't be going into that.
 
my first 286 with only 2mb ram and a 20mb hard disk had to do. I managed a 386 at some point and it had a 16mb hard disk, fantastic stuff.

I played Wc1 right from the off at my friends house, we were about 8 at the time. he got 2 almost as soon as it came out. I remember quite vivdly going to visit him when he first moved and he had a 486 DX2 66 which were all the rage at the time. He had privateer at that point and we played. When I got back I hassled my dad for the cash to buy 1, it was on a bargain thing in a local computer game shop, it was £10. I didn't get pocket money and it took literally weeks to convince my parents to give me the cash. I was appalling at the game to start with.

I got 2 on a CD bargain thing and enjoyed playing that. I remember discovering it had the secret operation one christmas and sat there for days straight just playing. However, I remember when I was playing at my friends house when we were kids about a mission with 6 broasdswords and thrakath but I have never found that mission.

One day whilst on holiday I found WC1 secret missions, the original ones, this was about 1997. I had never been happier, the rest is history.
 
My dad always wanted me to follow in his footsteps and be a fighter pilot, so as a child he always bought gifts that were flight related. He taught me maneuvers like the "aeleron roll, split S, etc." starting when I was 2 or 3. When I became a teenager, he bought me flight simulators for Christmas and birthdays. Even though I never asked for them, I became addicted. My first was the "Red Baron", which I would play for hours every day. Later, he bought me Wing Commander III- at first I didn't think I'd like it because it didn't seem realistic. The game grew on me though probably due to the engaging interactive story, and Nightmare level provided a challenge (though I missed the challenge of a 1v1 dogfight with a talented pilot). I've since played through WC3 and 4 and they are currently my favorite video games. I didn't become a fighter pilot largely because I didn't want to kill anyone or especially risk having the memory of bombing targets which killed civilians (and when you get down to it, a fighter pilot is really a trained killer). However, blowing up imaginary Kats is fine with me, and WC4 was a challenge both from the viewpoints of flying and moral questions- plus it's only imaginary.
 
My first WC was Wing 3. It was a while ago now, but I think that I was at a friends house and he got a new PC about 3-4 months before this, and he got WC 3 free with the PC. Anyway, when at his house one day, we started to play it, (he'd had a go with it a few times before this but only played the first 5-6 missions then stopped playing it. Don't know why though. ???) and ever since I've been hooked. He lent it to me to borrow, and I've had it ever since. Still have it to this day. :D
At first, it took about 5-10 minutes for a mission to load, but not long after I got it, we had our computer upgraded, and after that it would load striaght away. And from there I just kept going with it till this day. :)
 
I have a vague memory of watching my dad playing wing commander 1 when I was just 3 years old. I was too young to play, but I enjoyed watching.

We got a new PC just before wc2 came out and stangely, the game ran way too fast and was unplayable. I remember laughing when my dad kept crashing into the asteroids on the first mission because the ship moved too fast to control. So he never got passed mission 1. I had to wait until the kilrathi saga version to play this game.

When my dad bought wc3, I was 6 years old and this was the first wing commander game I actually played. It ran beautifully on our new pentium. I thought the FMV and the 3D game engine was amazing and spent ages playing it.
 
My first Wing Commander experience was playing the Secret Missions on SNES. I thought it was a real cool game so I went out and picked up the Original Wing Commander also for the SNES and I was looking forward to WC2 being released for the system. When it wasn't, my next experience with the series was when I picked up WC4 for the PS. I thought it was a great game so then I also got WC3 for the PS. I hadn't played WC2 ever but I thought from the beginning scenes that hobbes was a great character and I flew with him as my wingman all the time the first time I played WC3. I was shocked when he killed Cobra and gave information on the Behemoth to the Kilrathi. Naturally I went after him...
 
My cousin and I nearly freaked out when we saw WC in a Babbages in 1991. At the time I was the only one in my family to have a PC. We looked at the box, read all of the game's descriptions, and I just had to have it. Funny thing was that I had never heard of it. I randomly pulled it off of a shelf to look at it and have wondered since then how my gaming "history" would have developed if I had skipped past it or bought something else. WC was only the second video game for the PC (non-shareware) that I'd ever purchased. I had a Sega Genesis at the same time and gamed almost exclusively on it. Anyway, it ran fine on my then practically new Tandy 386SX-25 with 2MB RAM and an 85MB HD. It was around that time that I realized that I needed a joystick, a sound card, speakers, etc. The rest is history.
 
How funny Whoopass, my father was a pilot as well....not a fighter pilot, but a civilian pilot. He had always wanted to get me into flight school too. His brother (my uncle) was also a pilot, and my grandfather was a combat pilot in World War II. In fact, I have his pilot's uniform in my closet. A great piece of history. Buuuuut, I am getting off the beaten path.

I actually have a second Wing Commander story. Sometime after Wing Commander 3 came out, I had kind of dropped out of the computer world for a while. I remember playing WC4 in the electronics dept. at the Fred Meyer I managed down in Grants Pass, OR. Well, during that departure was when 3D acceleration was born, and I did not know anything about it. I remember seeing WC Prophecy on the shelves, and my passion was rekindled again! My ancient computer was in no way shape or form capable of playing Prophecy, so I peddled that piece of poo poo away, and bought a Hewlett-Packard Pentium, and I thought I had done the right thing, but it did not have video acceleration, even though it read "Direct 3D Ready" on the box. I had never heard of 3Dfx at the time, but after reading a great deal about it and seeing Prophecy run on the Voodoo chipset, I decided that the only way I was going to play this game the way it was meant to be played was to build my own from the ground up, and so I did exactly that. I put together a Pentium 2 233 MHz with a Voodoo Rush card. Life was good.
 
Lunitari said:
How funny Whoopass, my father was a pilot as well....not a fighter pilot, but a civilian pilot. He had always wanted to get me into flight school too.
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Cool, there's probably alot of people from aviation backgrounds on these forums since the main aspect of the game is that it's a combat sim where you play the role of a pilot. I'm curious, since your dad wanted you to fly as well, was he the one who bought you WC or was it your idea? Also, it would be interesting to hear how many pilots, flight buffs, or almost pilots there are and how that played a part in your WC addiction. More importantly, it would be interesting to hear the "why's" behind people's addiction: if you say "I bought it because it looked cool" or something along those lines: WHY did it look cool. For instance, why did you decide to play WC instead of other often equally popular games at the times: Roger Wilco during early WC games, Star Trek, etc..?
 
I became interested in Wing Commander on my own Mr. Whoopass....my father had not touched a computer in his life, but he thought it was pretty neat when I showed him the game on my PC.

That is a good question. "Why did we get into the game?" Well, for me....I had been looking for a great space sim that met my visual expectations, but there weren't any. I think the closest I had was a game called Elite on my Amiga. That was a pre-Privateer game and was one of the great space sims of our time. Wing Commander was the first sim that really bolstered that "Star Wars" excitement inside of me. I could really get lost in the game. It had it all, great story, unsurpassed graphics, awesome sound, etc. It just blew me away. Like I wrote earlier, it was the game that made me finally retire my Commodore Amiga.
 
Dear CIC Forum,
I never thought this could happen to me, but...

My dad reccomended the original Wing Commander to me after Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe was delayed. Jerry Pournelle had said glowing things about the game in his Byte columns. I wasn't interested -- I wanted to fly *airplanes*, darnit.

I saw the game for the first time a few months later. I was living in France and a friend of mine had a pirated copy... but no answers to the copy protection! After hours of guessing...

The original Wing Commander is a very unique game, in terms of both gameplay and style. You felt like you were part of a big story, but your importance wasn't *overwhelming*. You fought well, other people fought well, the war was won. The ship designs, the uniforms, the characters and history all seemed perfect to me - it was this wonderful pulp science fiction setting.
 
Ah memories, when i was five, or six maybe, ah i don't know, anyway, my mum returned from work one day and had randomly bought wing commander 1 for me and my sister. At once we loaded it. I had less then no idea what was going on or what i was shooting at. In the simulator i thought i was choosing what ship to fly instead of what one to shoot at. As a result i was pomptly killed by a Gratha, and after my sister received the golden sun for ejecting during mission one, i mistakenly thought that was the key to victory. Right up until the Hell's kitchen system.

I guess its not surprising that I completed wing commander 3, (aged 9) before i completed wing commander one.
 
Well... we had this friend who was a member of the Michigan militia. We were over at his place repairing his computer (I became a computer dweeb following my father around when I was about 7 or 8). While I was looking at a gigantic weapons cache, he handed me a copy of the Wing Commander disks and we ran to Osco Drug (a pharmacy chain) and photocopied the manual for copy protection. Yes, yes, I know... don't talk about this on the forum, but hey, I'm relating the story!

Well... it played (barely) on my 286, but it was good enough for me. At first I didn't really get into it, not really understanding the instruction. The part of the manual that I wasn't reading close enough was the WALKTHROUGH of mission 1. This taught you all about communications and mission objectives and all that good stuff.

From there I was hoooked and I bought each game as it came out. Although I didn't get to buy WC2 until it was in a package with Ultima Underworld on one CD. Still have that disc. :)
 
I picked up Wing Commander Prophecy for £2.99 in the ASDA (wall mart) nearby where i live.

the year was 2000, I also picked up the wing commander movie on VHS two weeks afterwards.
 
It must be over 12 or so years by now when one of my friends got his brand-spanking new 386 with Sound Blaster.
WC2 came packaged with the machine and being the show-off that he is, gave me a quick demo of it - my jaw dropped to the floor. The graphics and especially the sound were mind-blowing and I was hooked straight away. It's funny because he never really got into it that much and everytime I went over his place I always asked for a quick go of it - much to his dismay.
I had to wait close to 5 years before I got my own computer to play it, and just in time for WC3 as well! :cool:
 
I used to have this friend, the type that was always the first to get the new toys or the latest soundcard or the hottest games. He always like to show off his prizes to as many classmates as possible, and since I lived on the next sreet over, I was often along for the "show off" tours he performed. I didn't mind really, he was my connection to the PC gaming world- didn't need any PCmagazine or articles, just asked my friend on what was new:)
So anyway, after a week or so he'd usually get bored with whatever it was that he had shown off to everyone, and it was time to get rid of it and make room for the next item. Now this was the part of the friendship that was fun: bargin-time! I got a mess of stuff of that guy for a fraction of the retail prices.
One day he says I have to try this new game called Bioforge. The thing is, it's in a 3game package box along with SystemShock and WC3. 25$ later, I'm the owner off tree new games. By sheer curiosity I load up WC3 before the other games, and I fall in love.
_To this day, haven't even toutched the other two games.
 
Wing Commander was a blind buy for me. It was the first game I bought for my 486. Saw it at a Software Etc and thought it looked cool. I could only afford one game, so it was either this or Mantis. Seemed like I could live out my Star Wars fantasies with it. Later I bought XWing, but this is the game that got me interested in space flight sims. Up until Tachyon, all I really bought was space sims like this. I didn't play WC3 or 4 cause I didn't feel like having to upgrade again. I had to add more RAM just play the first one. Added a SoundBlaster a little while later.
 
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