Before Mankind Was Locked in a Deadly War (August 22, 2020)

[ChrisReid]

Shot97 has snapped a fun preview from a 1990 edition of Dragon Magazine. At this point in time, the game was still sporting its Wingleader title after Squadron was nixed due to potential copyright concerns. Ultimately Wing Commander was selected over all. I love how the Kilrathi are called "vicious militarists" and the Friend or Foe missile is held up as a "deadly" weapon. And thirty years later, we're still trying to make ray tracing a thing!

Also coming from Origin is Wingleader. Mankind is locked in a deadly war with the Kilrathi in the 27th century. Battling these vicious militarists are the daring pilots of the Terran Confederation. With his faithful wingman flying at his side, the fearless Wingleader battles with Kilrathi aces in heated deep-space dogfights. The game features Panaview, 3-D technology that employs highly detailed, ray-traced, bit-mapped images modeled in 256 VGA colors. You select from four different star fighters and use such weapons as heat-seeking missiles, neutron cannon, and the deadly Friend-or-Foe missile. The price for PC/MS-DOS machines is $59.95.

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Original update published on August 22, 2020

 

[L.I.F.]

The FoF missile is absolutely a deadly weapon late in battle. They're wisely not adding any indication on whom is getting to experience the deadly part.

 

[Oggy]

That is a nifty piece of history;
I am always amazed at the cost of the games back then, $60; and after all this time they are still about the $60 mark. Allowing for inflation they should be over $100

 

[EmuMusicFan]

That is a nifty piece of history;
I am always amazed at the cost of the games back then, $60; and after all this time they are still about the $60 mark. Allowing for inflation they should be over $100

The 3DO Japanese version of Super WC (1994) Price was 8,800 Yen without tax... and the PS Japanese version of WC3 (1996) Price was 7,800 Yen without tax...

 

[ChrisReid]

That is a nifty piece of history;
I am always amazed at the cost of the games back then, $60; and after all this time they are still about the $60 mark. Allowing for inflation they should be over $100

I was wondering if anyone would catch that! $60 wasn't even the final price. Here's the Origin 1991-1992 product catalog. WC1 ended up with a $70 MSRP, and WC2 was $80... before you added the $40 (each!) Special Operations and $20 Speech Pack! That comes to $200 after tax to get a well-outfitted WC2 in 1992. That'd be more than $360 in today's money.

There's been a lot of talk about the next gen of console games popping up to the $70 level, and that's just not an eyebrow raiser to me. SNES/N64 games approached $80 in the late '90s too. That's why I've never really balked at buying these modern special editions or seasons passes and whatnot. Games cost much more to make today, and they've never been cheaper. And if a few games you were going to buy anyway are on services like Xbox Game Pass or EA Access (under $200 per year), those are an absolute steal. I was already paying $10/month for Xbox Live, and so it was just an extra $5/month ($60/year) for me to turn that into Game Pass Ultimate. And all Microsoft published first party games are included, so it's guaranteed I would have bought at least one or two of those. So I'm actually spending less on games now that I ever have, and I have access to hundreds of games I never would have bought before. It's just crazy.

 

[elend]

I really like that Wingleader logo. I think I am going to vectorize that, like the original logo I did. Might as well vectorize the whole series of logos. If nobody did this already.

 

[ChrisReid]

I don't think anyone has vectorized this, but Howard made this for his WC-based game last year:

 

[elend]

Oh yeah, I saw that. Very gorgeous, love it. Although not really like the original of course.