Howdy folks! This series of tweets was part of an attempt to learn how our favorite series was actually released. We're likely each familiar with our own copies of the games and we've all seen other versions on the secondary market… but what was actually released and when? There are a million questions to hunt as part of this process (which is still very much in progress) but I wanted to start with one that has been in the back of my mind for two decades now: what the heck is a "Special Promotional Release"?
Many, many, many copies of the original Wing Commander that show up for sale feature a round seal that reads "SPECIAL PROMOTIONAL RELEASE" circled with some additional text: "VALUE PRICED! < LIMITED TIME ONLY! < UN-CUT VERSIONS!" For years, the conventional wisdom was that this was simply an advertising sticker that was put on many copies of Wing Commander I. It's similar to other callout stickers used on Origin games of that era and I think we all just assumed the text was disconnected marketing-ese (there not being a cut version of the game or ever any fear that that might be an issue.)
Looking at a dozen or so copies of Wing Commander I on a shelf, I realized something interesting: in some cases, the 'promotional release' verbiage wasn't limited to just the sticker… it also appears on the spine sticker and (again, only sometimes!) has a completely different Universal Product Code (UPC.) What that suggested to me was that some (but not all?) of the "SPECIAL PROMOTIONAL RELEASES" were actually published later or at least separately from the original run.
I wanted a framework to work from, so I decided to put together a list of every Wing Commander SKU released in the United States. If you've ever looked closely at an Electronic Arts product you may have noticed that in addition to the UPC under the bar code there is also always an 'EAN.' The EAN is the EA materials number, which is used internally to track not just releases but individual box contents (manuals, disks, etc.) I started collecting every EAN I could find and putting it into a spreadsheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1v4Sx1mfo2psIxvGFINQHf7LPzk9Px6bHQCkuekmIm9A/edit?usp=sharing
Now I know what you're saying: Electronic Arts didn't complete their takeover of Origin until late 1992! This process won't help you figure out what versions of the 1990 Wing Commander release exist. You are correct and also wrong: while EANs (obviously) aren't printed on the boxes of earlier Wing Commander games, EA DID retroactively assign tracking numbers for everything Origin still stocked as of the buyout. Luckily, we have photographed a list of these numbers captured in amber in 1995 from the University of Texas' archive:
https://cdn.wcnews.com/newestshots/full/Origin_Sales_1995_1.JPG
https://cdn.wcnews.com/newestshots/full/Origin_Sales_1995_2.JPG
https://cdn.wcnews.com/newestshots/full/Origin_Sales_1995_3.JPG
This is a super, super important resource because it can confirm exactly which SKUs EA recognizes and which
As you can see from the chart, I filled it out with every later domestic release from EA I could find… plus various compilations, classic releases, re-releases and so on. That alone gave me a wealth of information as to what the numbers mean. They aren't 100% linear… instead, studios and product ranges were given 'swaths' to fill in. Origin, for example, was retroactively assigned the 66xx range and then in 1994 switched to the 100xx range. Classics and bundles are allotted in the 5500s (including re-releases like Kilrathi Saga!) and so on. I experimented with adding numbers from other studios and found out they all had their own range. The system continues to this day! (I also learned how the numbers work for components, which are assigned individual trailing numbers. For example, the first release of Wing Commander Prophecy is 10148 and then the disks are 1014807, 1014817 and 1014827. That's not super useful now, but it might be valuable in the future.
One problem, though, was that EA's retroactive numbering system did not distinguish between disk formats beyond their size. This is no problem at all from late 1994 forward where everything is a CD release… but in 1990 it was still the wild west in terms of disk drives. I am sure professional floppy disk historians will tell us there's actually thousands of others, but for our purpose there were four PC formats that might be sold with a game on them:
5.25" DD (Double Density) - 360 kilobytes
5.25" HD (High Density) - 1.2 megabytes
3.5" DD - 720 kilobytes
3.5" HD - 1.44 megabytes
As you can tell from the sizes, these were something of a progression, with high density drives coming after double density drives to offer more storage-per-disk. In September 1990, 5.25" DD drives were becoming more uncommon and 3.5" HD drives were becoming the norm. Electronic Arts' sales data tracks only "5.25" and "3.5" disk versions of Wing Commander, so… what was actually released?
I could confirm four distinct UPCs from my own collection immediately:
3.5" DD - standard
5.25" HD - standard
5.25" HD - promotional
3.5" HD - promotional
But wait! I dug through the catalog scans provided by Pix (
http://www.pixsoriginadventures.co.uk/downloads/) and found a few interesting notes when compared with the EA SKU list:
1990 Catalog (before release): Lists Wing Commander and Secret Missions 1 for 5.25" DD, 5.25" HD and 3.25" DD… and NOT 3.5" HD.
1991 Catalog (WC1 release, before WC2): Lists Wing Commander and both Secret Missions for 5.25" DD, 5.25" HD and 3.25" DD (NOT 3.5" HD.) Lists Wing Commander II and all three add-ons for 5.25" HD, 3.25" DD and 3.25" HD (NOT 5.25" HD)
1992 Catalog (WC1 & 2 releases): Lists WC, WC Deluxe, WC2 and Privateer (WAY before release) as being available on 5.25" HD and 3.25" HD disks. Other products have DD options, WC does not.
Wing Commander I and II both include disk exchange forms, Privateer, Academy and Armada do not.
At this point, my questions were:
1) Does Wing Commander I (+SM, SM2) exist on 5.25" DD disks?
2) Does Wing Commander II (+SAP, SO1, SO2) exist on 3.25" DD disks?
3) Does Privateer exist on 5.25" disks?
Thanks to the above Twitter conversation, I can say:
1) Yes. I found a 5.25" DD copy on eBay and I found Origin's materials log that shows disk labels were made for this version (and Secret Missions.) HOWEVER - the copy I found in the wild was in a 5.25" HD box… which means the person got the disks through the disk exchange program rather than in a retail box. I suspect retail 5.25" DD boxes of WC, SM, SM2 exist in the US but I have NOT confirmed this.
2) They do exist, but I have not confirmed they were released at retail in the US. One thing that makes the different disk formats more fascinating is that they were all QA'd separately. I found an article in Point of Origin that confirms they QA'd a 3.5" DD version of SO2 and that it was then "out the door to Europe." It's possible that at some point (maybe the whole time?) the DD releases were only available at retail in Europe (where the PC was adopted more slowly and people were slower to upgrade disk drives) and through Origin's dexchange office.
3) Hard no. The catalog was written when Privateer was supposed to be released in 1992… by the time it actually came out, the 3.5" HD was (briefly) king and EA was not bothering with them. To further confirm, there's no 5.25" Privateer SKU in the sales list, where it otherwise would show up (if it existed.)
So what's the "promotional" WC1? It's a 1991 reprint where the game was offered for the low, low price of $60 (down from an $80 MSRP.) 3.5" HD and 5.25" DD versions were released with their own UPCs and some changes (blueprints were printed front to pack to reduce costs, for instance.) A healthy remaining stock of 3.5" DD copies also got the sticker, but they're otherwise identical to the first release because… they are that release with a sticker.
EA also published two 'promotional' WC2 SKUs: a 1992 re-release that came with the SAP and a pack that was Special Operations 1 + 2 bundled together. These were only available as 3.5" HD disks. There was also a SM1/2 bundle which was offered as 3.5" HD or 5.25" HD… but I'm not at all certain the 3.5" HD version has actual HD disks (will have to find one to be sure!)
