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 Ten Years of Wing Commander IV
It was exactly one decade ago today that the interactive movie reached its high water mark: on February 12th, 1996 Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom was released.
Wing Commander IV will go down in history for its famous film shoot. With an estimated budget of $12 million, Wing Commander IV was at the time the most expensive video game ever made. Like its predecessor, Heart of the Tiger, Wing Commander 4 featured a cast of professional actors -- including Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, Tom Wilson and John Rhys Davies. For the first time, though, the movies were shot on actual sets in Los Angeles using 35mm film. Series creator and director Chris Roberts' had finally brought to life the project he had dreamt of for years: a blockbuster Hollywood movie where you were the star.
The Austin-based Maverick Team deserves equal praise for Wing Commander IV's success. In terms of gameplay it was Heart of the Tiger writ large. Wing Commander III's visually stunning but technologically cumbersome flight engine was streamlined beyond all expectations: for the first time in the series' history a new Wing Commander didn't necessitate a major hardware upgrade. At the same time, the team introduced a host of new features that have now become standard in such games: dual wings, projectile and charging guns, in-flight interactive choices, a FMV map, infiltration and capture missions and more.
Equally important were the moments of quiet brilliance. Wing Commander 4's artists visited the USS Lexington museum and applied what they learned about the look and feel of real life naval aviation to the game. For the first time individual capital ships had their own specific artwork - the TCS Lexington was distinct from the Princeton, the BWS Intrepid from the Tango. The game introduced a working background to the Wing Commander universe, featuring missions set against a complex panorama of communications arrays, weapons factories, shipyards, spacelabs starbases, turret mines and the like. Ground missions featured a detailed surface, eschewing the lumpy yellow blobs of the previous game. These little touches made gameplay more immersive than ever before - and have continued to reward a fandom interested in Wing Commander continuity to this day.
Those who waited for Wing Commander IV will forever remember January, 1996 as the longest month of their lives. The game was originally scheduled for release December 8th, 1995... fans awoke that day to find the disappointing news at Origin's early website: Wing Commander IV was delayed until February. Then, it hit. Wing Commander IV inaugurated one of the greatest years of Wing Commander fandom. Bookended by the release of two major titles, WC4 and Privateer 2, 1996 was an amazing year that helped create the community we know today. The WC:CCG was in full swing, the Academy series was on television, Baen kept novels in print and in development. In the news reports of a theatrical movie began to trickle in -- at the message board fans debated Tolwyn's ideology while lusting over the new Bearcat and Lance fighters. It was truly the best of times.
Ten years later Wing Commander fans continue to fervently hope and honestly believe that there will be another 1996 and another Wing Commander IV.
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Update published on 2/12/2006. View all news from that day.
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Official news, fan projects and topics of particular interest to Wing Commander fans.
- Rapiers in High Demand on the Frontier
- 2010-09-02 -- Kevin Caccamo has released photos of the updated Rapier II to be featured in his Freespace mod, WC Hostile Frontiers. Two basic paint schemes have been revealed, and both revolve around the Republic of Landreich faction. Their use in this remote region mirrors their late era service in the Border Worlds (WC4 novel) and Epsilon Sector (Arena).
- Victoria super Omnia
- 2010-09-01 -- TonViper has cleaned up the textures on his Excaliburs a bit more. These will eventually get added to the Homeworld 2 Mod, which will allow them to be built on command. This pushes the design more towards a fresh factory paint scheme instead of a worn scorched look.
- Star Ruler Space Sim
- 2010-09-01 -- wc3 tipped us off about Star Ruler, which was just released for Windows. It's a space sim/strategy game with dynamic "procedurally generated" galaxies. Individual technologies can be developed throughout the game, and there's also a large multiplayer component.
- HCl Develops Sega CD Voice Extractor
- 2010-08-31 -- HCl took a break from investigating the 3DO file formats to dig into the Sega CD/Megadrive. His preliminary work has already produced a utility that allows extraction of Sega CD speech! WC1 on Sega CD includes full spoken dialogue in place of the original game's subtitles.
- Rapier Returns in Paper Form
- 2010-08-30 -- Péricles is working on a new paper model. His latest masterpiece is the Rapier II Blade based on the original Arena 3D meshes. The ships from Arena apparently make great source models for paper designs.
- Road Trip!
- 2010-08-30 -- The CIC Staff's 2010 adventure is under way! Here's our American crew ready to get the party started. We'll be posting periodic updates to the Facebook page and Twitters (@banditloaf, @aclawson & @chrisreid) if you'd like to follow along.
- Bestowing Bob's Badass Bengal
- 2010-08-29 -- Remember that swanky Tiger's Claw in Bob's recent propaganda poster? It was singled out for being a nifty artistic take on the ship, and now it's yours to download! Grab the 3DS Max 7 model here (160 k zip).
- CIC Forums Go Mobile
- 2010-08-29 -- The CIC Forums look better on the latest generation of smartphones than ever before, but they're still a bit cumbersome to use. KrisV fixed that today with an upgrade to support Forum Runner. The new app support allows iPhone users to browse threads and reply to posts as easily as working with email.
- Radical Rapier RocZ!
- 2010-08-28 -- JasonRocZ has posted another star trio of fighters from the Arena 3D Mesh pack. From left to right, these are the Rapier Blade, Vanguard and Cavalier. Although the ships might look unfamliar to some, they are based on the authentic F-54 Rapier II frame - from Super Wing Commander!
- EA Holding Weekend Sale
- 2010-08-28 --
Did you know EA runs some killer deals on the weekends? The EA Twitter reports that Dead space is $10, Spore is $20 and Mirror's Edge is just $5. These are all the digital download PC versions.
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