Maybe You Did Buy it for the Articles (February 21, 2012)

[ChrisReid]

Everyone's seen the famous magazine covers that appeared just prior to Wing Commander 4's release, but a lot of people have never read the actual write-ups within. Heart of the Tiger is here to fix that with a scan of the December 1995 issue of Computer Games Strategy Plus. It begins with the Hellcat-chasing-a-Banshee cover, then continues with an article packed full of the game's FMV and space flight screenshots. The text is a wonderful read as the author captures the anticipation and excitement of the upcoming release very well. Enjoy!

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Hollywood "Puppet Master" Bud McGrew recounts "originally there were supposed to be three Kilrathi in the new game. Due to budgetary constraints that would produce three 'only all right' Kilrathi, Origin decided to replace quantity with quality. So now we have one 'movie quality' Kilrathi."

Melek, the sole Kilrathi in the game, was custom constructed using four off-the-shelf Futaba radio control systems. These are connected to a Kuper motion control computer which was modified to work with the radios. To give you some indication of how sophisticated Melek really is, the gorilla "Amy" from the movie Congo was constructed with 23 servos while Melek has an astonishing 27.

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Original update published on February 21, 2012

 

[-danr-]

Thanks but that 'Strategy plus' article is terrible! It leads off with:

'Origin continues the battle against the Kilrathi in the latest installment of the Wing Commander Saga'

...but goes on to explain that the Kilrathi war has ended and that this installment focuses on the Border Worlds. Also, they've credited a picture of Seether as being Jason Bernard! Not trying to nitpick, I love seeing articles like this, but I'm afraid the quality of this particular publication was summed up with the line

'(Wing Commander) is now finally competitive with TIE Fighter'

Ummm, had these people had their eyes shut for the other three titles?

 

[ChrisReid]

Yeah, I had originally quoted the last paragraph of the article, but it's so lengthy and poorly worded I switched to the bit about the high quality Melek, which is great.

At least for the tagline under the header though, I can understand that within the context of 1995. 'Origin continues the battle against the Kilrathi in the latest installment of the Wing Commander Saga' sounds ridiculous to people who've played the game, but "fighting the Kilrathi" was synonymous with Wing Commander at the time, and I can see how it would be hard to wrap your brain around a game where that doesn't happen at all.