How Warm's Your Cockpit Seat? (June 16, 2013)

ChrisReid

Super Soaker Collector / Administrator
The new poll asks how long it's been since you've played a Wing Commander game. With the easy availability of the GOG releases these days, we expect the results to be better than the last time we asked this question back in 2006!










The last poll inquired about your favorite box art from the series. Wing Commander 3 took a commanding lead followed by the Kilrathi Saga. WC1 and WC4 also scored well. Poor Academy has perfectly serviceable cover art with some pretty slick Dralthi, but it came up last.

--
Original update published on June 16, 2013
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Are you trying to bait trolls into complaining that the WC2 Drakhri is not a Dralthi? Then you'll point out that the Academy box indeed says "THREAT: DRALTHI", even if none feature in the game. Incidentally, I thought the box also said "MK VI", but the Star*Soldier gloss says "MK VII". The box scan is slightly fuzzy, so I'll believe Star*Soldier here.

And, of course, the Drrakhri has three guns, while the fighters on the Academy box have two.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Are you trying to bait trolls into complaining that the WC2 Drakhri is not a Dralthi? Then you'll point out that the Academy box indeed says "THREAT: DRALTHI", even if none feature in the game. ...
And, of course, the Drrakhri has three guns, while the fighters on the Academy box have two.
Well, with access to the original models, and with tons of high-res renders available, it would be very hard to argue that this is not a Dralthi. You only need to take a quick glance at Privateer to realise that this is the Priv Dralthi, except that it's been slightly retextured.

I wonder if they perhaps actually considered putting that Dralthi into WCA, and ultimately decided against it. Clearly, by this time Origin had come to realise how iconic the Dralthi is, because after the WC2 SO2 addon, there were subsequently only two Wing Commander games ever published with no Dralthi: Privateer 2 and Secret Ops (and WCA, of course, but it does have a Dralthi on the cover). Even WC4, where the Kilrathi played a tiny role, still had Dralthi.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I have a second computer that is an older one with DOSBOX and all my favorite old games and particularly all my wing commander games, complete with SB Live! sound card that lets me use my same ole Gravis 2 button (with 3 buttons) joystick that i've used since I first played Wing Commander.

The Wing Commander I play the most is Wing Commander 4, for some reason that game (Minus the planetary missions) just compels me more than any other, mostly for the personal dialogue between characters.

It would be nice if it was a two set questionnaire and asked which was your WC game you also played last. I'd imagine there are many WC3 fans as well, which is my second favorite WC.

I find it hard to play WC1 and WC2 because the aim seems to much faster and awkward than WC3/4/WCP.

Anyways sorry for the rambling but I play Privateer almost once a week and WC almost every few months. WC4 is up there with Chrono Trigger on my 'once a year' list of games to play.
 
It would be nice if it was a two set questionnaire and asked which was your WC game you also played last. I'd imagine there are many WC3 fans as well, which is my second favorite WC.
Might be worthwhile to do such a poll next - although I think it would be slightly more interesting to frame it in terms of frequency. Instead of asking which game people played last, ask which game they return to the most often (not to be confused with the question of which game they have spent the most time playing, as the two Privateer games would have heavily skewed chances to win in such a poll).

Me, unfortunately at this stage I'm in the "it's been years" category. I just don't have as much time as I used to. I suppose to some degree, I've also been spoiled by UE and Standoff. After a decade of working on those, I don't really feel such a strong urge to go back and play WC games any more. I do wish I could go back to Privateer, but that's the one that would require the biggest time investment.
 
I started a Priv replay last year. I made it fairly deep into RF, but other stuff has prevented me from finishing the game.

Replaying Priv was a blast! The first hours when you are trying to build up money to make your Tarsus not a deep trap are still some of the best!
 
After over 19 years of playing Privateer, I realized I had never flown the Orion! After amassing about 400,000 credits trading, I did a speed run through the original campaign. I'm currently going through Righteous Fire with the Orion. That thing is a tank! I might have to retry the original campaign with a Galaxy next. Was never able to complete it with anything less than a Centurion before.
 
By the way...

The new poll asks how long it's been since you've played a Wing Commander game. With the easy availability of the GOG releases these days, we expect the results to be better than the last time we asked this question back in 2006!
Disappointingly, the results seem to be contrary. Granted, there's only 322 vote so far (the previous poll had 1748) - but then, it seems that the average poll these days tends to get around 400-500 votes. Not sure if polls are changed more frequently now, or if there are less people voting. Either way, the final percentage results are not likely to change too much from what we have now, and these are not looking good. "Hours" has fallen - "days" risen slightly, but "hours" and "days" combined are still lower than the same combination in the previous poll.

"Hours", "days" and "weeks" together are minially lower than previously (within the bounds of statistical error, though). The only really positive sign is that at the high end of the poll, there are more "months" players than "years" or "decades" (not present in the previous poll). Overall, it seems that in spite of the greater availability of games, things are not looking up for the Confederation :(.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Greater availability of games, reduced availability of time :-(((
 
My answer is only "days" because I decided to check CIC before recording my latest Privateer video - if I had done things the other way around it would have been "hours" or, more accurately, "minutes".
 
Back
Top