Alternate Universe Wing Commander, Day 1 (June 5, 2002)

Bandit LOAF

Bandit LOAF

Long Live the Confederation!
Sure, you know everything about the original Wing Commander... or do you? For the next several days we'll be introducing you to ports of Wing Commander you may never have known existed! First up, Wing Commander (1) for the FM Towns. The FM Towns was a Japanese computer produced by Fujitsu throughout the first half of the 90s. The system is best known for the high numer of X-rated anime games produced for it... but it was also one of the first personal computers to feature a CD-ROM drive. As such, it had some amazing ports of popular early-90s games, including several Ultimas, several LucasArts adventures and... Wing Commander. So what's so special about this edition?
  • Partial speech: all the in-flight comms are spoken (in Japanese).
  • The original Universe Map: a nifty fold-out plastic road-map of the Vega Sector is included.
  • Soundtrack: The game disc doubles as a music CD, with 40-odd high quality tracks that will play in a normal CD player.
  • Cool new box art: Confed fighters attack a Fralthi... and Blair's flight suit looks eerily like those that later appeared in the movie.


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Original update published on June 5, 2002
 
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I know I'm pulling the out of the great abyss, but do you have a high-res version of this image? I'm considering doing a Fralthi model for Pioneer, and this looks to be some of the best reference for that ship I've ever seen. I might have asked this before - I certainly scoured my hard drive looking for it. Sorry for the inconvenience.
 
I think there was an old thread with a high-res picture... I remember that we were arguing if the woman is holding that big gun or not.
 
Crumblebum... I can make you a high res scan on Monday. Or maybe Chris can before then? I gave him a duplicate WC FM Towns many DragonCons ago...

Actually -- I'll check out new scanners tomorrow. Does anyone have any reccomendations? I haven't bought one in years...
 
Found it! Sadly it wasn't as good resolution as I thought... Sorry. :(

Edit: Yes, it is... Chris posted the higher res version further down the thread!
 
I really need to do high res scans of all of the Japanese box art... and I need to track down some of those international book covers, too.
 
Dyret: Nah, there's a bigger one from Chris lower on the page! That's pretty good. Higher res is always better, but that's a great start. Thanks guys!
Loaf: I'm constantly amazed by the sheer quantity of artwork variations each game has. Lots of really neat stuff out there.
 
Interesting... looks like the FM Towns box art puts the hangars next to the top, inner engine nacells.
 
This is just great!

This reference influences me quite a bit now that I can see it, and the recent Ralari model on the main page appears to take some design cues from this image or others like it as well.

So I guess seeing this and the new Ralari model has inspired me to totally redo my Fralthi :D
 
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