I blame Chris Reid for this.....

Afrim Kosovrasti said:
Just found something odd. What is his "tin can edition WC3? Check it out http://www.ebay.com/ulk/itm/311473946704
Click to expand...

This version was sold at Sam's Club. It's a stripped down version of the "Premiere Edition" that was available directly from EA Direct.

I will defend the Privateer manual, it has a lot of great in-universe content. The only thing separating it from Claw Marks is the worse layout... and interestingly we have discovered that CM-style line art was actually commissioned but not used for it. I think it'd be at the top of the pile were that included.
 
While I have your attention can I ask you guys another question? Well I'm gonna anyways ; )
WC1 was obviously ported to every system known to man at the time, and all the super WC1 versions and all. Then WC3 saw at least 1 console port as well. My question though is how come WC2 was never ported to anything? I know someone here knows and also some loaf or another may actually know a guy who might have been the game creator. lol
 
Very interesting question!

The trick answer is that there was a single port of Wing Commander II, for the Japanese FM Towns computer. Check out the cool alternative box art: https://cdn.wcnews.com/newestshots/full/fmtownsfralthra.jpg

That said, it is fascinating that there weren't any 'traditional' console ports released. There's a dozen plus variants of Wing Commander I, nearly as many of Wing Commander III... and almost nothing for Wing Commander II. There are several reasons, perhaps the biggest of which was the massive change at Origin in 1991-92 with the sale of the company to Electronic Arts. Before this time, Origin typically licensed out console ports. For instance, Mindscape licensed Wing Commander I for the SNES and Amiga. Origin provided the source code, assets and then it was Mindscape's responsibility to fund the actual development, manufacturing, release, advertising, etc. with OSI being 'hands off.'

That changed significantly with the sale to Electronic Arts. Instead of licensing ports to other companies, Origin began to develop their own in-house teams (as well as using those elsewhere at EA) for specific consoles. Groups responsible for rapidly porting games to the Genesis and the SNES were started in Austin, and EA's infrastructure now took care of the release (before this, it would have been unthinkable for a small, PC-centric company to also do things like manufacture cartridges.) Wing Commander II was dead in the middle of this split, a game developed and released under Origin's watch, with EA taking over a matter of months after release (you can tell how old your copy of WC2 is by whether or not it lists an EA catalog number under the UPC.)

But another major, more nebulous reason is the sea change in game development at the time. Prior to Wing Commander, console and PC games had roughly the same amount of resources to work with, with the most major difference being the freedom of control and configuration allowed the PC. But with Wing Commander and especially Wing Commander II, PCs diverged towards what was then called 'multimedia'... taking advantage of better technology and much, much larger storage methods, PC games in exactly 1991-92 became much harder to port to a very small cartridge. It wouldn't be until 1994, 1995 that CD-ROM-based consoles started appearing to close that gap somewhat. Wing Commander I specifically taxed the consoles it was ported to... the SNES and Amiga 500 versions are slow and choppy because they tried to do with far fewer resources what the PC did. A Wing Commander II of the same quality/design as the PC release would be unthinkable on the SNES, Genesis, PCFX, etc. (There's also some truth to the idea that Wing Commander II was a bit of a stepchild in general; Chris' passion project at the time was Strike Commander and so Wing Commander 2 wasn't seen as as big a project.)

All that said, a number of ports of Wing Commander II *were* attempted, all (but the FM Towns version) were killed for one reason or another.

Wing Commander II for the Amiga - Mindscape licensed Wing Commander II for the Amiga, but the project only made it through the 'proof of concept' phase. Their Wing Commander I Amiga port was significantly delayed (an interesting story in and of itself!), and so when it came time to kick off production on Wing Commander II (about a year after the PC release) the writing was already on the wall for the Amiga as a personal computing platform (they lingered on in video editing roles for years further, of course.)

Wing Commander II for the Sega Genesis - This was a project Origin actually announced and advertised around the time Wing Commander II was released. The plan was to develop a Genesis port of Wing Commander II in-house to build the team that would go on to port Ultimas and develop new console-specific titles. But the Genesis proved a heck of a lot harder to work with than the SNES, and so the Wing Commander II Genesis team was absorbed by... the Wing Commander II SNES team! (There are stories that it wasn't all a tech issue, that Nintendo at the height of their struggle with Sega took umbrage to the idea that Origin was developing for both systems. I know that killed Ultima on the Genesis, but I don't know that it impacted WC2.)

Wing Commander II for the SNES is FINISHED! Origin had planed to do a 'stripped down' action-oriented WC2 (same story, different gameplay, later done on the 3DO port of WC3) for both of the popular consoles and they continued work on their SNES version after the Genesis project was cancelled. The game was developed, finished, tested, reviewed in magazines... and then the prototype was shipped off for duplication never to be seen again. SNES sales fell more significantly than expected for Christmas 1994, the game required a special double-sized cartridge... and it was decided that it would be cheaper just not to manufacture it. You can learn everything we know about it here, and I can't die happy until we track down a copy: https://www.wcnews.com/articles/wc2snes.shtml

Wing Commander II CD-ROM - Wing Commander II was the FIRST Origin game 'future proofed' to support CD-ROM technology, which was just coming to Japanese computers at the time. The game's conversation system is designed so that adding full speech (or additional flicks) could be done very easily. Unfortunately, the project never happened. Despite it being the era of multimedia (and enhanced CDs) EA was notoriously stingy about funding CD-ROM updates, and they ended up going 'cheap' on several of them. In the case of Wing Commander II, they opted to simply do the CD-ROM as a shovelware package instead of a talkie... with the mission disks included free. Other impacted projects: Ultima 8's enhanced version became simply Ultima 8 on a CD... Wing Commander Armada was dropped day-and-date on CD with no changes from the disk SKU... and Pacific Strike (WW2 air combat game using the Vision Engine) was killed AFTER all the dialogue was rewritten and recorded! Bioforge Plus, an expanded ersion of that game, met the same fate. I recall Jorg or Erin telling about how EA would routinely cancel the CD-ROM talky version of Privateer and then bring it back, sometimes multiple times in a single day. Eventually he stopped reading his email and finished the game not knowing whether it was funded or not. (The weird exception was Origin's FIRST CD-ROM, a full speech version of Ultima VI... with voices recorded by the developers using a PC mic. That's likely what Wing Commander II would have been like as well!)

* - note that EA's having contractually promised Sega a Wing Commander title ultimately lead to 1994's Sega CD port of Wing Commander I. Wing Commander Sega CD was developed externally by an EA-hired team, with no oversight in Austin... that's why there were two separate, contemporary recordings of the WC1 speech (the other was for SWC) and why there's some genuinely odd stuff in there, such as the complete change in music (necessitated, EA believed, because they had no record of owning the work-for-hire Wing Commander I soundtrack!)
 
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Bandit LOAF said:
This version was sold at Sam's Club. It's a stripped down version of the "Premiere Edition" that was available directly from EA Direct.

I will defend the Privateer manual, it has a lot of great in-universe content. The only thing separating it from Claw Marks is the worse layout... and interestingly we have discovered that CM-style line art was actually commissioned but not used for it. I think it'd be at the top of the pile were that included.
Click to expand...

Did you ever figure out why they decided to drop the art?

I might be a fun project to figure out which pieces should go where in the Privateer manual and do a limited reprint.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
Very interesting question!

The trick answer is that there was a single port of Wing Commander II, for the Japanese FM Towns computer. Check out the cool alternative box art: https://cdn.wcnews.com/newestshots/full/fmtownsfralthra.jpg

That said, it is fascinating that there weren't any 'traditional' console ports released. There's a dozen plus variants of Wing Commander I, nearly as many of Wing Commander III... and almost nothing for Wing Commander II. There are several reasons, perhaps the biggest of which was the massive change at Origin in 1991-92 with the sale of the company to Electronic Arts. Before this time, Origin typically licensed out console ports. For instance, Mindscape licensed Wing Commander I for the SNES and Amiga. Origin provided the source code, assets and then it was Mindscape's responsibility to fund the actual development, manufacturing, release, advertising, etc. with OSI being 'hands off.'

That changed significantly with the sale to Electronic Arts. Instead of licensing ports to other companies, Origin began to develop their own in-house teams (as well as using those elsewhere at EA) for specific consoles. Groups responsible for rapidly porting games to the Genesis and the SNES were started in Austin, and EA's infrastructure now took care of the release (before this, it would have been unthinkable for a small, PC-centric company to also do things like manufacture cartridges.) Wing Commander II was dead in the middle of this split, a game developed and released under Origin's watch, with EA taking over a matter of months after release (you can tell how old your copy of WC2 is by whether or not it lists an EA catalog number under the UPC.)

But another major, more nebulous reason is the sea change in game development at the time. Prior to Wing Commander, console and PC games had roughly the same amount of resources to work with, with the most major difference being the freedom of control and configuration allowed the PC. But with Wing Commander and especially Wing Commander II, PCs diverged towards what was then called 'multimedia'... taking advantage of better technology and much, much larger storage methods, PC games in exactly 1991-92 became much harder to port to a very small cartridge. It wouldn't be until 1994, 1995 that CD-ROM-based consoles started appearing to close that gap somewhat. Wing Commander I specifically taxed the consoles it was ported to... the SNES and Amiga 500 versions are slow and choppy because they tried to do with far fewer resources what the PC did. A Wing Commander II of the same quality/design as the PC release would be unthinkable on the SNES, Genesis, PCFX, etc. (There's also some truth to the idea that Wing Commander II was a bit of a stepchild in general; Chris' passion project at the time was Strike Commander and so Wing Commander 2 wasn't seen as as big a project.)

All that said, a number of ports of Wing Commander II *were* attempted, all (but the FM Towns version) were killed for one reason or another.

Wing Commander II for the Amiga - Mindscape licensed Wing Commander II for the Amiga, but the project only made it through the 'proof of concept' phase. Their Wing Commander I Amiga port was significantly delayed (an interesting story in and of itself!), and so when it came time to kick off production on Wing Commander II (about a year after the PC release) the writing was already on the wall for the Amiga as a personal computing platform (they lingered on in video editing roles for years further, of course.)

Wing Commander II for the Sega Genesis - This was a project Origin actually announced and advertised around the time Wing Commander II was released. The plan was to develop a Genesis port of Wing Commander II in-house to build the team that would go on to port Ultimas and develop new console-specific titles. But the Genesis proved a heck of a lot harder to work with than the SNES, and so the Wing Commander II Genesis team was absorbed by... the Wing Commander II SNES team! (There are stories that it wasn't all a tech issue, that Nintendo at the height of their struggle with Sega took umbrage to the idea that Origin was developing for both systems. I know that killed Ultima on the Genesis, but I don't know that it impacted WC2.)

Wing Commander II for the SNES is FINISHED! Origin had planed to do a 'stripped down' action-oriented WC2 (same story, different gameplay, later done on the 3DO port of WC3) for both of the popular consoles and they continued work on their SNES version after the Genesis project was cancelled. The game was developed, finished, tested, reviewed in magazines... and then the prototype was shipped off for duplication never to be seen again. SNES sales fell more significantly than expected for Christmas 1994, the game required a special double-sized cartridge... and it was decided that it would be cheaper just not to manufacture it. You can learn everything we know about it here, and I can't die happy until we track down a copy: https://www.wcnews.com/articles/wc2snes.shtml

Wing Commander II CD-ROM - Wing Commander II was the FIRST Origin game 'future proofed' to support CD-ROM technology, which was just coming to Japanese computers at the time. The game's conversation system is designed so that adding full speech (or additional flicks) could be done very easily. Unfortunately, the project never happened. Despite it being the era of multimedia (and enhanced CDs) EA was notoriously stingy about funding CD-ROM updates, and they ended up going 'cheap' on several of them. In the case of Wing Commander II, they opted to simply do the CD-ROM as a shovelware package instead of a talkie... with the mission disks included free. Other impacted projects: Ultima 8's enhanced version became simply Ultima 8 on a CD... Wing Commander Armada was dropped day-and-date on CD with no changes from the disk SKU... and Pacific Strike (WW2 air combat game using the Vision Engine) was killed AFTER all the dialogue was rewritten and recorded! Bioforge Plus, an expanded ersion of that game, met the same fate. I recall Jorg or Erin telling about how EA would routinely cancel the CD-ROM talky version of Privateer and then bring it back, sometimes multiple times in a single day. Eventually he stopped reading his email and finished the game not knowing whether it was funded or not. (The weird exception was Origin's FIRST CD-ROM, a full speech version of Ultima VI... with voices recorded by the developers using a PC mic. That's likely what Wing Commander II would have been like as well!)

* - note that EA's having contractually promised Sega a Wing Commander title ultimately lead to 1994's Sega CD port of Wing Commander I. Wing Commander Sega CD was developed externally by an EA-hired team, with no oversight in Austin... that's why there were two separate, contemporary recordings of the WC1 speech (the other was for SWC) and why there's some genuinely odd stuff in there, such as the complete change in music (necessitated, EA believed, because they had no record of owning the work-for-hire Wing Commander I soundtrack!)
Click to expand...

Now THAT was informative. Thanks Ben. I had no idea they had so many port plans for WC2 that just didn't work out. What a huge waste of work. Has there ever been any record of a physical copy of WC2 Snes? That would be an interesting find.
 
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Also......I think I have a problem......I can't stop buying WC stuff....you guys created a monster in me lol.
image.jpeg
 
Afrim Kosovrasti said:
Now THAT was informative. Thanks Ben. I had no idea they had so many port plans for WC2 that just didn't work out. What a huge waste of work. Has there ever been any record of a physical copy of WC2 Snes? That would be an interesting find.
Click to expand...
Well, WCII Snes has been a holy grail of this community for quite some time. I believe no one knows what happened with it, even though it was mentioned several times.
 
Yeah i just did a bunch of research on the wc2 snes thing. Crazy how a copy was never tracked down. Not even a rom is out there.
 
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