Forgotten Wing Commander

S

Sir Peanut

Spaceman
You all forgot about the SNES Wing Commander!:mad: Whats up wit dat? Try and add some ships and maps to the Database. Note here if and when you do. Thanx!:D
 
I'm not sure what you mean. The SNES port of Wing Commander has the same ships and maps as the original PC version.
 
Yeah, it would have used really expensive catridges and that hurt its chances of being mass produced.
 
It really confuses me when a games company develops a game all the way to the point where it’s ready to be loaded to its medium or worse, ready to be shipped and then cancels the game. (SG1: the Alliance is a good example):(

The producers have already spent vast amounts of money getting the game project to the point that it is ready to be released.
Admittedly in the case of WC2 on the SNES the cartridges would cost a lot but they would have known that fact at the start of the games development, and as I have already mentioned they have spent a tonne on the game. Why not just go that little bit further and release it???
Else they have just spent hundreds of thousands of pounds/dollars/yen/etc and thousands of man hours for nothing.

WHY???
 
So will somebody out there will have a version of the game though? like an origin employee, before it would of been copied too the cartridges, like a master copy or something? oooh and the same question about the prophecy dvd version, do you know if anyone would have a master of that?

But i guess the rules and copyrights at EA would stop them from dumping the game too a ROM status for download and use with emulators so we could see what we missed out on, if they even had a copy.

Its just such a shame that 2 versions of Wng Commander games never made it into production, especially WCP dvd as i love my WCIV dvd, just immerses me more in the story with the higher quality video and not having too swap disks.

Vermin
 
kutla2003 said:
WHY???
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IIRC the SNES was already on the way out, so that combined with a really expensive cartridge price pretty my assured that it would be a money loosing proposition to produce. As far as the company was concered the descision was a no-brainer.
 
Vermin said:
So will somebody out there will have a version of the game though? like an origin employee, before it would of been copied too the cartridges, like a master copy or something? oooh and the same question about the prophecy dvd version, do you know if anyone would have a master of that?
Click to expand...

Yup, and some day we'll find it.

AD said:
IIRC the SNES was already on the way out, so that combined with a really expensive cartridge price pretty my assured that it would be a money loosing proposition to produce. As far as the company was concered the descision was a no-brainer.
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Yeah, WC2 SNES was nearing completion in the summer of 1995, a couple years after both WC1 and SM1 were released. If you think about where this puts it in the market, it makes a little more sense. We're now post-WC3 and half way to WC4. The Playstation is out and the N64 is a year away. The Playstation 1 version of WC3 was just nine months away. It seems like they might have started too late.
 
There's another aspect which connects to all this.

Origin started development in-house console ports in ~1994 as a way of generating quick revenue. Prior to this, Origin-derived console games (like Wing Commander and The Secret Missions) were done by other companies under license at other locations. Origin discovered that doing their own quick console games was a fast way to make money.

Joe Garrity tells a good story about the man in charge of Metal Morph (a largely unknown Origin-developed SNES side-scroller that reuses everything but the kitchen sink, including more Privateer graphics than you can shake a stick at) finishing the project and then learning that Richard Garriott wanted to talk to him. He was terrified that he was going to be fired -- there's a reason you've never heard of Metal Morph... but then it turned out Garriott wanted to thank him: Metal Morph made enough money to put Origin in the black.

They developed a mess of Ultima games in-house (including some which didn't make it out in the US)... and WC2 SNES was the very last part of this project. The game is supposed to be amazing in the technical feats required to put WC2 on a SNES... but it would have cost a heck of a lot to put on the market -- because of the extra large cartridge required. Since SNES games were being done at Origin to make a quick profit instead of a long term profit (like a main stream Wing or Ultima game would be), it died somewhere between it's being completed and being sent off to Pony Canyon.
 
The bottom line has indeed been such a factor in loss of some almost completed and actually completed games and I am sorry that some of the WC's did not make it to us.....the costs of the transition to full modeling and 3D as with WC 3,
and on to IV were eveidently very high, I have read that WC IV was at least 3 million, is this true? Some of the Myst series cost up to 10 million ......so there are costs in development especially in the graphics and the code....

I am amazed at the quality of the WC series even early on!
 
they probably didn't lose much cash with the shelving of WC2-SNES... it was a port in a much simpler time.

and AFAIK, WC3 cost was around 4 million dollars. WC4 doubled it to 8million.
 
Edfilho said:
they probably didn't lose much cash with the shelving of WC2-SNES... it was a port in a much simpler time.

and AFAIK, WC3 cost was around 4 million dollars. WC4 doubled it to 8million.
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Yeah, they didn't really have to do much with a WC2 port, the manufacturing was the only real cost and when it turned out to be so expensive they shelved the idea thereby saving quite a bit of money. Would have been nice for us though :(
 
Maj.Striker said:
Yeah, they didn't really have to do much with a WC2 port, the manufacturing was the only real cost and when it turned out to be so expensive they shelved the idea thereby saving quite a bit of money. Would have been nice for us though :(
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Life isn't always centered around the people.:(
 
Life isn't always centered around the people.
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Well, that's sort of a selfish view of it all. It's sad that we didn't get to play a video game, but 'the people' whose livelyhoods depend on their company making money have a lot more than that at risk in these situations.

and AFAIK, WC3 cost was around 4 million dollars. WC4 doubled it to 8million.
Click to expand...

Wing Commander IV cost at least $12 million.

The bottom line has indeed been such a factor in loss of some almost completed and actually completed games and I am sorry that some of the WC's did not make it to us.....the costs of the transition to full modeling and 3D as with WC 3,
and on to IV were eveidently very high, I have read that WC IV was at least 3 million, is this true? Some of the Myst series cost up to 10 million ......so there are costs in development especially in the graphics and the code....
Click to expand...

The high cost of Wing Commander III and IV were primarily because of the film shoots. Modern games cost a similar amount, though, because development teams have become larger and larger out of necessity in the past decade (well, increasingly larger in the past two decades).
 
ChrisReid said:


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Hehehe, I remember reading that particular issue in a computer store when wc4 first came out. That was probably the second time I heard that there was a sequel to wc3. That sealed the deal.... I made sure my cousin bought the game.

(My pc wasnt wc4 capable and in retrospect, I should have bought it anyway and just played it at his house, however it did provide the incentive to pick up a creative dvd rom/dxr2 package with the DVD version of WC4.)

Interestingly I also learned about the DVD version in a computer. magazine that had a blurb about how the DVD version would breath new life into the game (because of the picture quality). And also in french class('96) there was a non-computer magazine that had a paragraph and picture of the french (CD) version.
 
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