Your first Wing Commander game?

[ChrisReid]

I think you are exaggerating. I don't recall WC2 needing hours to decompress. Now if we talk about Strike Commander, that is a different topic *sigh*

I think it was about 2 hours, or at least the installer warned it's be 2 hours on the lower end computers. I do recall having to leave it for quite a long while while it churned.

 

[Dervish]

My first Wing Commander game was Wing Commander 3. I bought it after seeing on television that Mark Hamill was the star. Plus I love space flight sims, and thought it was neat to play an interactive movie.

 

[Kilrah]

Wing Commander I on my friend’s 286 with VGA and no soundcard. One or two years later I got my first PC (386 16MHz soundblaster 8 bits) and bought WC II.

 

[TurboTim07]

Wing Commander IV. I was in 4th grade. Played it at Sears while we were shopping for a computer. Later, we ended up buying the Compaq at Sears instead of Office Depot much to my delight because the one at Office Depot didn't have WC4 with the computer. Made me even more happy that it was a double-sided DVD. Later rented WC3 for PSX and had a lot of fun with that one, wish I could get it for PC but i can't right now. Had an opportunity to buy Wing Commander II one time but ended up buying Rebel Assault (damn do i regret it now) because i wasn't as into Wing Commander at the time. That's pretty much it.

 

[Bakhtosh Redclaw]

Wing Commander. I got it in a pack called "Space Legends" with Elite Plus and Megatraveller. I played on my 486 DX2, and I remember I had to slow the CPU down in the BIOS for the game to run at a reasonable speed...

Good days, good days.

 

[Cmdr JunkoZane]

Mine was Wing Commander IV for the PC Bought it back in 98 and still play it today aswell as Wing Commander Propecy

 

[Dahan]

The only thing that disappoints me is that I have all the Wing Commanders Games for PC except for Wing Commander 4 which is for Playstation and dont have a complete copy of secret ops (

 

[MjavTheGray]

It was 1992,
it was an incredible slow IBM PS/2 - 286 6 Mhz, and a WC1
Veeeeeeeeeeeery slow to load,
veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery hard to fly,
but that was nice
But I didn finish WC then,
it was 1995 a 10Mhz 286 with EGA, when I did it.
Nice time.
Nice game.
A pleasure to remember

 

[MjavTheGray]

Hey, cff-san
I would agree with the fact that WC2 took an hours to decompress.
We're talking of diskette era, aren't we?
So, unzipping 20 Megs from diskettes does really take so much time on a 286 PC.

 

[cff]

Hey, cff-san
I would agree with the fact that WC2 took an hours to decompress.
We're talking of diskette era, aren't we?
So, unzipping 20 Megs from diskettes does really take so much time on a 286 PC.

If you include the time to copy them to the HD, then I'd agree. The pure decompression wasn't that slow in my memory.

 

[MjavTheGray]

Well... I do remember it nicely..
We had a 286 AT at our disposal in university
So, at 8 pm me and a friend of mine stormed the room, saying to everyone we had a lots of
thigs to do, and started to install WC2.
Insert disk 1, wait...
Bzzzt... bzzzzt... bzzt for no little time
Insert disk 2, and so on...

At 11 pm we at last could run it.

So I have a real experience of installing WC2 on a slow PC

Surely it is a matter of seconds on my VIA C3 733 Mhz today

 

[Ragnar]

Mine was the third... Man, was that a great game! I got it in a pack, along with Crusader: No Remorse and another game I can't remember...
Anyhoo, 'twas about '97 or '98, and Christmas was up, so my mother (no knowin' anything 'bout computer games and such) decided to go out and get me a strategy game (I specifically told her to tell the man behind the counter that she wanted something like a Dune II clone ). 'bout a half-hour later, she shows up with this (seemingly) huge box (it had 3 games and about 6 CD's) with Mark Hammil's face on it, along the Silencer's mean-looking red armor and a starship of some sort somewhere in the background. I forgot about Red Alert and all that, and started dissecting the box and the CD's in it... My PC then was what they called "High End": Pentium 6x86, 200MHz, 32 MB RAM, and an ATI Rage with 2 MB...
I think that, since then, that i've finished The Heart of the Tiger about 6 or 7 times, trying out all the possible scenarios (hooking up with one of the girls and all that ), and I still love it...

 

[TigerDragon]

My first experience was long ago playing Wing Commander on a friend's 3DO, I am guessing that must have been WC3. Then I didn't get to touch WC until the free release of WC:SO. After that, I got hook, and played the games backwards: WCP, 4, 3, 2, etc.

Would love to find sometime to work through the 2 Privateer games.

 

[brynn]

Wing Commander, on a PC no longer fit to be a calculator. I remember how cool we thought the savegames being bunks was. Then onto WCII, second time with the speech pack.

Good fun.

 

[ChrisReid]

Yeah, games in the 1990s had such personality involving mundane things such as savegames. Even the later WC games generally made savegames part of an in-game terminal. That's a lot classier than a generic menu you access by pressing F5.

 

[brynn]

Not just that but also the "drip, drip, drip" of the bucket. It just added that bit of atmosphere. I know, I seem easily pleased now, but as those who remember will atest, the original Wing Commander wasn't just about good Sci-fi sim shoot-em-up action (as it is now, which is why we still play it when there are more modern and better looking alternatives) but it was so radically different to games of the time.

Even things like the branching mission tree were seen as amazingly innovative.

 

[Glenford Doofus]

Armada

 

[LarkInFlight]

My first.. was THE BEST Wing Commander 1 on Amiga 1200. It was 2nd game I`ve bought, it was amazing! I didn`t have a time to read manual first so I just blew up my first mission.. Then I found the finest figher of all Wing Commanders{in my opinion }: "The Raptor" while flying in Star Slayer Sqdrn. It could take an incredible amount of damage! I just LOVE it! I promised myself I`ll play (and win) every Wing Commander game... I did it.. I still love to play Wing 1, and I think that all Wing Commanders are great!...I still play them of course...

 

[Sharky Hetro]

My first time playing one of the games was Secret Ops, back when i was about 8 years old. (Maybe less)(1998) It was really fun, and I actually shot some enemy's down. Unforntualy, we sold the computer to get a new one, and there it went. Now, just today, I found it agian. (I didn't know what it was called, so finding it was hard.) And discovered the forums trying to get a call sign and code for Secret Ops.

It's such a fun game still. Just how I remember it.

Sharkster

 

[ChrisReid]

Yeah, the Secret Ops event started when you were 7. We're nearly at the point where our youngest members were born after Wing Commander 1 was released. Though the community was full of 14 year olds almost a decade ago, we see almost none now.