LOAF Fixes an FM Towns - The Adventure Continues!

Bandit LOAF

Long Live the Confederation!
Just this teaser for now - but stay tuned to hear how my Wing Commander computer project is finally going again after two cross-country moves and a little crowd funding project :)
 

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Have you found copies of the games?! I actually had WC1 + WC2 on this platform in my possession a couple of years ago - but picked them up used and both CDs were beyond repair. I tried a DIY scratch fix kit to no avail before giving them to a local data recovery bloke who couldn't fix them either. Since then I've been trying to hunt down a good condition specimen.

Keep us posted!
 
I have wanted to see the FM Towns versions of WC 1+2 actually running for a long time. Look forward to more on this. Heres a couple pics that may be of interest...
 

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Good luck! I guess finding time for your WC hobby has become harder so I wish you some very pleasant and fulfilling hours!
 
Have you found copies of the games?! I actually had WC1 + WC2 on this platform in my possession a couple of years ago - but picked them up used and both CDs were beyond repair. I tried a DIY scratch fix kit to no avail before giving them to a local data recovery bloke who couldn't fix them either. Since then I've been trying to hunt down a good condition specimen.

I do! I hunted them down years ago, after the first time I saw the amazing Wing Commander 2 FM Towns box art. There are four releases that I know of, total: Wing Commander, Secret Missions 1 + 2, Wing Commander II Deluxe and Wing Commander Armada. I’ve heard rumors of a cut down ‘Wing Commander Light’ that was available via mail-order from Fujitsi and which ran on the Marty console… but I haven’t been able to substantiate that in any way (essentially, it appears in a single period list of games and is reference nowhere else.)

Unlike other ‘updated’ western games (especially: Lucasarts adventures and Ultima VI) the FM Towns ports of Wing Commanders don’t really fetch a premium. I’ve heard that the only significant difference is the Redbook audio… but that is, in and of itself, pretty cool! Wing Commander II seems to be the rarest, with Wing Commander I being pretty much available constantly. You’ll need a deputy service to buy things from Japanese auctions and eshops, but it’s actually a pretty painless process. I’ve used Celga (www.celga.com) for many years and they’ve always been professional and kind. Japan’s Yahoo Auctions are the best place to start (auctions.yahoo.co.jp) and you can search for Wing Commander using “ウイング コマンダー.”

I also used Celga to import the FM Towns and the still-on-a-boat PC9821 that will eventually hopefully play that systems’ port of Wing Commander Armada! (So many Armada ports.) But I’ll detail that process when we get to it!


Good luck! I guess finding time for your WC hobby has become harder so I wish you some very pleasant and fulfilling hours!

Thanks! I will always make time for Wing Commander… and of course some aspects of my life are a lot more Wing Commander than they’ve ever been before.

For those that don’t remember me… a few years back, I had a couple of these story threads:

LOAF Fixes a…

Macintosh - https://www.wcnews.com/chatzone/threads/loaf-fixes-a-macintosh.25729/

PC - https://www.wcnews.com/chatzone/threads/loaf-fixes-a-pc-or-the-story-of-karga-the-hero.25836/

Amiga - https://www.wcnews.com/chatzone/threads/loaf-fixes-an-amiga-or-¡hola-amigas.25936/

… and then Star Citizen happened! I volunteered to help Chris Roberts out with what he was calling ‘Space Trader’ at the time, developing the crowd funding campaign and some of the basics of the game. That went from working nights and weekends to help my friend into a full time gig when the project really took off.

I moved to Austin, Texas in November, 2012 to work on the project… and then to corporate headquarters in Santa Monica, California in January, 2014 to work more closely with Chris and Sandi. In the process, I married the love of my life (whom I met on Twitter!) and we merged our lives together for all this. It has been an amazing, impossible time and a wonderful adventure….

… but I still love Wing Commander! In Austin, I was dead tired 24/7 and didn’t have the space in our little downtown apartment to really set up my Wing Commander machines. But they followed me there… and now they’ve followed me to Santa Monica, where there’s a spare bedroom in which I can build the dream Wing Commander setup! And now that I’m head of a community team instead of running things myself (James and William, FTW) I have a little more down time. And with a little bit of extra money in my pocket, I decided to finally take the plunge and buy a few Japanese computers.

Before we get to the FM Towns, though, I’ll take a few posts to talk about consoles. My wife, Alexis, was a big fan of the Genesis and the Dreamcast, so to restart the whole Wing Commander project I figured I’d see what the best way to get those running on a modern display was. The end result was that I converted a dozen consoles to RGB output and set up a cool cart with an amazing Japanese upscaler (the XRBG-mini) which lets me roll the old CDX into the living room and play crystal clear Wing Commander Sega CD. So I’ll go back and tell that story with all the details and what’s left to do in this thread first!


(For the record, there is no Wing Commander port for the Dreamcast. But it did get me started on this again!)


(There is StarLancer.)
 
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(There is StarLancer.)

There really is! StarLancer is probably my favorite WC game since wc2, or Privateer, depending. I have to ask, though, if you're allowed to tell how much is Star Citizen going to be 'WC only not,' because initially with the trailer, we were promised a lot of that (like StarLancer), but latetly it has been like 'buy our really RL-expensive ships so you can play modern Freelancer.' Of course, as a WC fan, I'm distressed by this, as it implies the 'free roaming' aspect of SC will be focused over the 'fight our campaign private' elements that made WC so compelling initially. Either works for me, as I'm a huge fan of both, or maybe either, but I genuinely feel either fandom might get royally screwed over.

(Also I haven't been able to catch up on as much SC lore and development-blogs as I feel the next CR project deserves, so feel free to correct me if I made unreasonable assumptions in my post!)

(Also, I'm super impressed with CR being a reasonable game dev, because people like Richard Garriot comes across as a bit 'dogmatic' when it comes to game development, new or old. I'm super excited Chris gets to make a new game, I'm just unsure which side will be favoured in such an ambitious project with so may working parts!)
 
Excellent! I dearly hope one day we see a 'LOAF fixes a SNES' - providing somebody finds the 'Lost Ark' in our lifetimes.
 
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