Super Wing Commander

C

Cyrus79

Spaceman
Hi all,

I've just managed to get hold of a copy of Super Wing Commander and a 3DO to play it on, simply because I've always wanted to play it. Apart from obvious graphical differences (with added movie cutscenes) and speech the dialogue/missions seem to be identical.

I just have a quick question:

Is it considered to be 'official'? And would you say that later games (WC3, 4 etc) are more based on this version than the original.

The reason I ask is due to several things:

1. Armstrong?? I'm guessing Origin hadn't chosen Blair as the name of their main character at this point. Maverick as the callsign seems to have stayed though since that's what it is in Prophecy and the default name from WC Kiltrathi Saga.

2. The New look Tigers Claw looks more in line with later style ships in my opinion than the original, although I prefer the old style Bengal.

3. I can't seem to find much, if any reference on the main WCCIC site, so for that reason I assume it's been 'put to one side, in favour of the original.

4. Fan projects i.e. Standoff are based on the original rather than SuperWC.

5. The Academy Cartoon seems to favour the original style ships, hence the Scimitars and Tigers Claw are similar.

Anyway that's pretty much all I can think of for now, just thought it might make a good discussion!
 
1. Armstrong?? I'm guessing Origin hadn't chosen Blair as the name of their main character at this point. Maverick as the callsign seems to have stayed though since that's what it is in Prophecy and the default name from WC Kiltrathi Saga.
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I've heard this before, and I have some objections. One, Wing Commander III's film shoot was clearly done or at least prepped to a significant degree during SWC's development - the 3DO Super Wing Commander (the original release) has several 'test shots' of a woman in a WC3 uniform standing on the Victory virtual-bridge set hidden away in its files.

Two, I question the conventional wisdom that 'Blair' is a 1994 innovation. Going back to reread the 'Blair' sequence in Freedom Flight I can't imagine how it could have been a randomly selected name -- the sequence doesn't mean anything unless it's chiding a character who actually exists. What would be the point of Hunter's inner-dialogue stopping to make reference to someone who exists only for one line of dialogue?

"Read 'em and weep, guys," Blair said, spreading out his cards. Two kings, three queens; Hunter whistled softly in admiration. Amazing; Blair had been enjoying an incredible run of luck lately—well, in cards, anyway. His lovelife was pretty barren, or so Hunter had heard.

It doesn't make sense if it isn't a joke the player character.

The callsign seems more cut and died, though... in that it clearly wasn't decided until Wing Commander III or whereabout. He's "Prankster" in the official guide and then the 1992 version of the Bible calls him "Phoenix" (a reference to the events of WC2), which actually ended up working its way into End Run... but from SWC on, it seems to universally be 'Maverick', ostensibly after Chris Roberts' own callsign. The Wing Commander III novel (1995) uses it in passing to refer to Blair... and then it picks up steam and becomes absolutely attached to him in later products (Kilrathi Saga material, the movie book, Academy, etc.).

I have an alternate theory, which was that in 1994 Origin was toying with the idea of disassosciating the events of Wing Commander I & II with Wing Commander III. One thing you're all going to see very soon is the original Wing Commander Academy TV proposal, which does just this - it sets Blair's arrival on the Tiger's Claw as being because of the losses in Secret Missions 1, and so makes him *not* the same person as the WC1/2 main character. The first season of WCA would be the story leading up to Secret Missions 2 (which would be the season finale). At one point, before a lot of later retroactive continuity, this was actually a rather elegant solution -- of course, WCA changed during production and ended up with a non-commital 'SM2-like' story arc for its first season. With that in mind, SWC may have been originally an attempt to begin this process.

3. I can't seem to find much, if any reference on the main WCCIC site, so for that reason I assume it's been 'put to one side, in favour of the original.
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We have plenty of information about it, it's just always been harder to organize because there's no PC version to dissect -- if HCl ever figures out how to extract sprites or music from Super Wing Commander, we'll feature it a bunch more. There's some neat stuff out there, though, including five-view renderings of the original models of all the SWC ships, an article with all the SWC talking heads and a copy of the alternate Secret Missions script.

4. Fan projects i.e. Standoff are based on the original rather than SuperWC.
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Eh, sometimes -- there was a silly fad a year or so back where fan projects took SWC designs and attached them to 'unseen' Wing Commander ships -- ie, the SWC Exeter became the Gettysburg-class Cruiser and so forth (... which wasn't even unseen...).

Is it considered to be 'official'? And would you say that later games (WC3, 4 etc) are more based on this version than the original.
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Well, yes, of course it's official - it didn't just fall out of the sky randomly. Exactly how it mixes with the original game is up to interpretation and debate ( we see these same adventures in different artistic styles quite a few times, after all).

I'll go ahead and say what no one ever wants to admit, though - that Wing Commander 3 and 4 aren't based on either version. In developmental terms, they're practical relaunches - you don't see the same ships, the characters don't refer to their previous stories, the styles are different... I don't think the FMV games tie back to any of the talking head games very cleanly. Wing Commander III and IV were both attempts to reach a broader audience rather than to directly continue a story.

Privateer, on the other hand, is linked to Super Wing Commander... they use the same designs for the Dralthi and Salthi, and in general the same artists for other work that isn't shared, and so feel similar (the same iteration of the combat engine, too). Of course, that's not an exact science either... they don't share, for instance, the same Drayman -- and the Privateer Broadsword is the WC2 Broadsword, which brings into question the SWC Venture.

No clean progression either way.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
I have an alternate theory, which was that in 1994 Origin was toying with the idea of disassosciating the events of Wing Commander I & II with Wing Commander III. One thing you're all going to see very soon is the original Wing Commander Academy TV proposal, which does just this - it sets Blair's arrival on the Tiger's Claw as being because of the losses in Secret Missions 1, and so makes him *not* the same person as the WC1/2 main character. The first season of WCA would be the story leading up to Secret Missions 2 (which would be the season finale). At one point, before a lot of later retroactive continuity, this was actually a rather elegant solution -- of course, WCA changed during production and ended up with a non-commital 'SM2-like' story arc for its first season. With that in mind, SWC may have been originally an attempt to begin this process.
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On the other hand, having Blair be Angel's sweetheart (WC2/3) definitely links the two story arcs.
 
Ijuin said:
On the other hand, having Blair be Angel's sweetheart (WC2/3) definitely links the two story arcs.
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I think LOAF was discussing it more in view of the visual style than per actual storyline. Visually speaking, the few things that do remain the same from wc2 (PC) to wc3 are the Concordia seen in the intro and Thrakhath and the Emperor who both seem like very conscious efforts to copy the identifying features of two of the main Kilrathi characters where as hobbes seems quite different. And the human characters don't look much like their animated counterparts at all.
 
I can see I've got a fair bit of catching up to do knowledge wise! I feel somewhat out of my league.

ChrisReid said:
https://www.wcnews.com/background/swc.shtml
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Ok my bad, should have done a bit more searching!

Bandit LOAF said:
We have plenty of information about it, it's just always been harder to organize because there's no PC version to dissect -- if HCl ever figures out how to extract sprites or music from Super Wing Commander, we'll feature it a bunch more.
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I can't even get my PC to recognise the fact that there's a CD in the drive if I insert it.

I did access the system menu though, the movie files appear to be *.mov (I'll have to double check that one). The only way I can think of getting them to PC would be to directly record them from TV to DVD re-encode them to xvid or something similar and transfer them that way. I'm not sure about other content though.
 
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Cyrus79 said:
I did access the system menu though, the movie files appear to be *.mov (I'll have to double check that one). The only way I can think of getting them to PC would be to directly record them from TV to DVD re-encode them to xvid or something similar and transfer them that way. I'm not sure about other content though.
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Yes I beleive they are *.mov However they are not quicktime. I took apart the wc3 3DO demo that was posted not long ago and that's what it uses too. however I don't know on any program that can convert or play the files just yet, It's some kind of wierd codec I guess. I did talk to a guy though that is looking into the 3DO codec and hopefully his work will help in this regard (which will be great because both the 3DO and PSX wc3 have better quality video than the PC version. The actual resolution might be similar but I believe its the compression thats actually better.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
the 3DO Super Wing Commander (the original release) has several 'test shots' of a woman in a WC3 uniform standing on the Victory virtual-bridge set hidden away in its files.
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Where? Where?
 
Where? Where?
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There's a "play all movies" feature in the debug mode (of the 3DO version - I don't know if they're in the Mac release).

While holding X, press B, B, C, C, A, A. You'll hear a 'swoosh' sound. Then release X and then press LS, RS and P at the same time. You'll enter a debug menu with all sorts of options, including a view movies menu. I *think* it's the last two or so on the list that are the WC3 'test shots'.
 
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