Aussie Site Takes Gamers Back (November 15, 2014)

[ChrisReid]

AusGamers just threw a Throwback Thursday shout out to Wing Commnder 3, but rather than splash a one-liner across social media, they've put together a nice review of the game as well. The author does a good job trying to set the stage for an audience whose members may have grown up in the 21st Century. It's important to grasp how revolutionary full motion video was for the time and how the Wing Commander series was pulling off green screen special effects better than some movie studios. It's common for reviewers these days to say the space combat is hard to get in to, but I think that's more a commentary on space sims at large. Genres can be an acquired taste, and with few outstanding examples in the market in recent years, picking up any sim can take some getting used to again. Still, the article is helpful for recruiting new pilots for the war effort! Find the full writeup here

Wing Commander III starts with an intro cut-scene that is no less than 10-minutes in length. Leta??s get that bit out there right away. And in this 10-minute sequence youa??ve got credits, people dressed up in elaborate giant cat suits, the dwarf from The Lord of the Rings consoling Luke Skywalker amongst the ruins of a gigantic spaceship, a ritual sacrifice in a stadium filled with more cat people, more spaceships, a futuristic iPad, and finally another giant cat but this time in a weirdly tight flight suit. Basically, the stuff that would have been impossible to pull off on floppy disk.

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Original update published on November 15, 2014