When and How you heard or saw something about WC for the first time?

I think it was back in '92 or something...

A friend of mine gave me a couple of games, included WC1 and WCA.

I played WC1 by guessing numbers, and played a lot WCA.

Then, when KS came out, (what year?) I bought it, and played it on my dad's 486DX. Slow, but it worked.

We got a cat. I called it hobbes. Later I found out hobbes was a traitor. :(

Then I bought WC4, WC3 (yes, in that order) and ordered WC2 for $1 somewhere. I bought WCP as soon as it came out.

Last year, on a big computer convention, (largest in the country) my eye fell on the original, boxed 3.5" disk version of WC1. Complete with claw marks, manuals and stuff. (in 2001!!).

I discovered the WC CIC somewhere in 2000. Started developing my Wing Commander RPG in 2000. Wrote several fanfics.

And I am still fanatic about it :)

TIA

Zim
 
Must've been back in early '95, when my dad began sifting through the gaming CD's that came with the new computer he bought about a year before. Up until '95, all the CD's had been doing was sitting on a shelf collectin dust--- I hadn't been interested in comps back then, so I didn't actually notice it. That was, of course, until my dad actually picked up one of the EA compilation CDs, which happened to contain Wing Commander 2, and set it up on the comp as a surprise for me. The next thing I knew he was calling me, saying that there were some 'talking cats' on the screen, and being curious, I began to investigate the game. After my first few missions in a Wing Commander game, I was hooked. In the following years following that fateful day, I devoted my efforts to seeking out the other games of the Wing Commander series, so I could play them all.
 
Back in

I think it was 93/94 when I first saw this game (WC1) for rent for the snes. I saw a space ship on the box so I thought "what the heck."
The thing about this is that I kept renting this game over and over cause I didnt know how to land aboard the Tigers Claw! (where you have to request permission to land) so I tried to land manually press the bottons in a frenzy... and once I managed to figure it out I felt special.
 
Oh the old times...
I dunno when it was I think about 1 year, before WC2 hit the sheves that I got a pirated, cracked version of WC1 - no manual.
I wasn't really hot for it or anything. It was just another game like those tons of F14,F15,... sims.
Played it directly from disks on the school computers (2 times disk changing just for telling you that there is not enough memory - LOL) as I did not even have a PC then. It was interesting enough to keep.
Later on I played it through on a friends machine (we got kicked all the way into the negative ending as we did not know that WC would be different from the "just survive" approach of other games). He even got a soundblaster 2.0 later on mostly for that game. That was also when we experienced on the second playthrough that there had been 4 fighters in the game. :)
By that time I was impressed by the game, but not really hooked. Got a PC meanwhile and also got such a fancy sound gear. ;-)
I got hooked when I got my hands on a copy of WC2 about a year later. Again a pirated copy.
(yeah, I know, I know...)
Unfortunately it was broken - you could only advance up to the first broadsword mission. So WC2 became the 1st WC game I bought.
Then the fun started when I tried to get the complete WC1. SM2 was easy for some reason - it just had one problem. The WC.exe was cracked. The original SM2.exe wasn't :-(
So the funny number guessing began, but as I could play WC1 I could derive most numbers from observation.
The I tried to get SM1 for more the 1 year. Finally found a shop about 2 hours from my city that claimed to have it (on 5 1/4 of course ;) ). I ended up abusing a school travel for literally running to that shop (we had been going to that town for a computer convention. I left earlier, did run through half the city with a friend and then back to the bus just in time that the class left - carefully hiding the packet :) )
From that time I bought every WC title as soon as I was aware it existed. I dunno how often I bugged that poor guys at the games store about P2 as it appeared about 6 Months too late ('stupid ad' in the WC4 booklet)... I didn't have web access until later that year as far as I remember, so I just went to the shop once a week.
I really became a total Wingnut at university with alt.games.wing-commander
Bought all stuff again/bought the missing stuff since then to also have the English Originals.
 
My uncle bought me Wing Commander when I was 12 for Christmas. I was instantly addicted... schoolwork and studies went out the window, along with the majority of my friends before high school... but I was in perfect bliss. By the time I had reached the age of 16 WC4 had arrived on the shelves. I immediately applied for jobs at every place I could, just to buy it.(How many can say that? Probably a lot of us.) I spent many a sleepless night playing each and every game, in sequence, over the next four years... and will continue to do so. :)
 
Originally posted by Bandit LOAF
.....(Interestingly, I never took much care in learning the keys -- I played through all of WC1 and into part of SM1 without ever knowing about afterburners... this is not to brag about my skill, though, as I have absolutely no idea how I got so far and could probably never do so again. Ah, to have time again...)....

Beginners Luck! ;)
 
Originally posted by Col.Dom
(...)
When I was given my go, I played the first mission (which led to my love affair with the Hellcat V) with nothing but the reaper cannon. (...)

Ah if only the Hellcat V had any reaper cannon... ;)
 
let's see... my first experience was in 1995, summer I think. We had been living in a new house for over half a year, and my brother and I did housework for our allowances. Given that a video store was in walking distance, we'd go there and rent Super NES games and Genesis games.

In the summer, I rented Wing Commander, having no clue what it was. I tried it out, and loved it. Absolutely loved it. I played it constantly (Only to realize that cap ships can be shot down when it was too late... got a bad ending), and showed my friends and everything. I kept renting it week after week, and it even made me think of becoming a pilot. I've since abandoned that dream though in favor of a career in music.

Man, I miss that house... but anyway...
 
Memorys

I never used to have a computer and in bettween playing the old gr8s, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, etc we played WC. Later we started playing Xwing and Tie fighter. Having finished them we went back to WC1, and 2.
Then we got privater, we spent hours on that, getting a ship that was amazing. Oh the memorys............
Later when we got our own computer that was good enough i remember going down and getting prophacy.
However i remember compleating it and being quite dissapointed with it, if i had wanted to watch a movie ild of turned the TV on. Also did any oue else find the combat a bit simplistc? u had so many missiles that you could kill ships with very little skill (compared to, say TIE fighter)
So after that i paid less attention to WC :( , we were going to see the film but we never got it over here (was it any good?)

However privater has to be amoung the best games "ever" and i am determined that i will get it working again.
In a spate of "arrgh Priv wont work " i went and bought "Tachyon the fringe" for £7 and its a big pile of steaming pants. could someone please explain to me how it looks worse in this PC with a 64mb Geforce 2 than Prophacy years ago did with some 4mb videocard?? And its not freeform like it says on the case. Steer clear of this game!


Ah Privater......
 
Re: Memorys

Originally posted by Klang
could someone please explain to me how it looks worse in this PC with a 64mb Geforce 2 than Prophacy years ago did with some 4mb videocard??

The amount of memory on your video card has little to do with how good the game looks once you establish that you have the maximum memory that the game will utilize. No matter how good your graphics card is, pong is still going to look the same.
While I don't know Tachyon's specs off the top of my head, I can almost guarantee that it used only a small fraction of the video memory that you made available.
Another part of the problem is simply that Novalogic hasn't had the experience of working with polygons that Origin had. Up until a few years ago, everything from Novalogic was 'Voxels'. They've finally started to move away from Voxols, and probably haven't had enough time and experience working with polygons to be able to craft a true graphical masterpiece.
Yet.

As you pointed out, the game itself was spotty. In one mission, I got frustrated trying to fly through a set of defense turrets that activate after a certain trigger (a message that is not well received). So I finally decided to go ahead and clear out the defenses before I set the trigger off. I figured that at the very least, I could kill one of the turrets before the others started up.
Not a single one of the things opened fire on me, and I cleaned out the whole bunch without taking a scratch, promptly set the trigger off, and then left.

I love Bruce Campbell in that game, though. Great lines.
 
I was ten, it was '94, and I was away at a residential school in Massachusetts. No windows, just DOS there. The one PC that had a CD-ROM drive and Windows 3.1 had it external. Like LOAF, I lived off of early sierra games--SQ 1,2,3, KQ 1,2,3,4,-- but unlike LOAF, I also existed on a healthy diet of text adventures. Until I saw someone running WC on the "good" computer. That summer, someone was unloading their Amiga stuff at a garage sale on my street. He gave me first crack at it, knowing I owned an Amiga. He had WC there. I bought it; I beat it; I'll never forget it:)
 
Originally posted by Bandit LOAF
Wait, how do you know I didn't play text adventures:(? Escape from Rungstan represents, yo.

Pfft, Hitchhiker's Guide all the way...
 
Originally posted by Bandit LOAF
It was my dad who first brought Wing Commander to my attention -- offering to buy it instead, as we were moving to France before Aces would be released. I refused, horrified that anyone could suggest something like that.
Heh, heh. That you can look back and see the irony in that. :)

Originally posted by Bandit LOAF
...one of my dads friends son had a pirated copy, and after spending about an hour randomly guessing the copy protection numbers I got in (I was always very, very good at randomly guessing copy protections of that ilk -- especially with the Warcraft installer... I had a reputation for being able to guess the randomly selected word in six or seven tries).
Hmm, piracy, copy-protection cracking. I remember those days. Hey! Which is not to say I did that! (I wasn't that lucky to play many games...)

Originally posted by Bandit LOAF
Ahh, Wing Commander 1... that amazing box art, those incredible blueprints...
And thus, Bandit LOAF is born. :)
 
Originally posted by Ghost
Crappy joystick or WC2?

*Rimshot*

GOOOO
GHOOOSTTTT...
:p

Both :p

Incidentally, I'm thinking of trading in my crappy joystick and getting a shiny new Logitech. I'm a bit reluctant - after all, my Gravis served through four wars and one major conflict - so I thought to ask: Does digital make much difference, and how much does it improve your game?
 
It's hundreds of times more accurate, but with a drawback: You can kiss using it in the early Wing Commander games goodbye. No DOS supports digital joysticks, with only a couple exceptions.
 
Originally posted by Bandit LOAF
Wait, how do you know I didn't play text adventures:(? Escape from Rungstan represents, yo.

You just hadn't mentioned them in your post

Originally posted by Bandit LOAF
Back in early 1991 I was very into World War II 'sims and was eagerly awaiting the release of Dynamix's Aces of the Pacific. I remember loving the trio of Larry Holland 'sims (Battlehawks 1942, Battle of Britain and (later on) SWotL) and being very excited that my favorite company (Sierra!) was publishing what looked to be the penultimate WW2 game. (Heh, lets face it -- late 80s/early 90s Sierra *rocked*. What the hell happened?).

So I assumed the games you mentioned were the games you played. Sorry. To assume is to make an ASS of U and ME. Escape from Rungstan, the Zork Series, Hithiker's Guide, and practically everything that came from Infocom, escpecially Planetfall(I loved planetfall!). Ahhh... Many games with next gen engines— complete with bump mapping, per-pixel lighting, the whole nine yards— still can't make me as happy as some of my old text-adventure favorites. Then there were AGI games— those were great! Their successors weren't so bad either; In fact, I wouldn't mind seeing some of the cursor-oriented KQ and SQ games come out on the GBA. I wouldn't mind that at all. Still— WC rules them all.
 
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