Zero Pilots Given (April 9, 2025)

[Bandit LOAF]

The SNES port of Wing Commander II isn't the only Origin game that was essentially finished but unreleased. Here are two advertisements I recently noticed while working on another project: published advertisements for Pacific Strike CD (1994) and Bioforge Plus (1995). These were both 'budget' projects that were far in development when Electronic Arts decided to reorganize Origin's projects. Some material from Bioforge Plus has leaked over the years, including the completed 'gauntlet' feature. I wonder if the unreleased Pacific Strike audio or the extra missions are out there somewhere…





... but one thing Pacific Strike-related that IS out there is its largely undocumented Japanese sequel/remake. In 1998, Sony published a game in Japan called Zero Pilot which according to its packaging is credited to Origin Systems. Huh?! That's right, Zero Pilot is a licensed sequel to Pacific Strike that updates it to be from the Japanese point of view. Instead of fighting through the real World War II, you instead have a fictionalized version along the lines of Ace Combat… and given the fact that the RealSpace engine was ported to the PlayStation for two Wing Commander games, it's possible this game actually uses Origin's technology, too.

Zero Pilot: Ginyoku No Senshi (1998)
ゼロパイロット・ 銀翼の戦士
Zero Pilot: Fighter of Silver Wing
Marionette / Soliton
4 948872 100496

Like Wing Commander III PSX, there's also a published guide for the game! We haven't located a copy yet but they seem to be available cheaply in Japan. The ISBN is 4-7669-2941-1.





Over the next ten years, Zero Pilot got four sequels! Three were for the PlayStation 2 using the RenderWare engine and the last release was for the PlayStation Portable in 2008. None of these games credit Origin Systems in their legal information so whatever deal the series had about Pacific Strike must not be related… but it's pretty satisfying to see that Origin technically had a series of spinoff games that ran into the 2000s!

Zero Pilot: Kokū no Kiseki (2003)
ゼロパイロット・孤空の奇蹟
Zero Pilot: Miracle of the Solitary Sky
Opera House / SAMMY
4 991694 000789

Victory Wings: Zero Pilot Series (2004)
Opera House / SAMMY
4 991694 000970

Zero Pilot: Rei (2006)
ゼロパイロット・零
Zero Pilot: Zero
Opera House / SAMMY
Includes bonus Discovery Channel DVD
4 997766 200606

Zero Pilot: Daisanji Sekai Taisen 1946 (2008)
ゼロパイロット・第三次世界大戦 1946
Zero Pilot: World War II 1946
Marionette / Global A
4 542082 000494

Collectors should also note that there's some cool Zero Pilot merchandise out there. The first game had a poster as a preorder bonus and the second two actually had toy planes that were made as part of the Japanese 'Wing Club' series! One is an A6M Zero and the other is a Supermarine Spitfire.




--
Original update published on April 9, 2025

 

[Bandit LOAF]

(One slight update - I wrote this a few weeks ago and just yesterday a copy of the Zero Pilot hint book arrived! It again has a 1998 copyright to Origin Systems listed but otherwise I haven't learned much. Will get a scan up here eventually! (It IS gorgeous.)

 

[AllTinker]

I wonder if the unreleased Pacific Strike audio or the extra missions are out there somewhere…

I'm still curious what the story was with Pacific Strike's speech in general. I'm still at least suspecting that the speech pack voice data was encrypted in some way - or perhaps uses some quite exotic compression - or both! Normally even compressed audio (of the era) you could still play it back as raw data and hear something. It might be garbled and distorted to hell and back, but it'll be recognisable as some sort of audio. Pacific Strike's speech played in the same way sounds practically like white noise, which is very unusual.

I think it's going to take sitting down and pulling apart the executable to finally figure it out, unfortunately. I've tried quite a few other approaches with no luck.

 

[Quarto]

That is fascinating, absolutely fascinating! I would have totally played Zero Pilot - the concept of an Ace Combat-style fictionalised world is a great workaround for all the hangups related to marketing a game about a Japanese WWII campaign.

I had a look at the credits and screenshots available on MobyGames. Credits-wise, there is not a hint given. Yes, produced by Origin Systems, but not a word more about what that means. However, with the screenshots (https://www.mobygames.com/game/106957/zero-pilot-ginyoku-no-senshi/screenshots/playstation/ ), to me it very, very much looks like Origin's engine. The inflight scenes are like a slightly updated Pacific Strike, but the real giveaway are the interactive interior scenes - the briefing room, hangar and so on. These look extremely like Pacific Strike. I think even the font might be the same. Until, of course, you see the actual briefing sequences, with Japanese text and typically Japanese face icons representing the current speaker. Then the difference is very obvious indeed. There are other clear differences as well - even in those interactive interior scenes, we can see clearly that the character models are in a somewhat different style than Origin's. And in flight, the first person interface is completely unlike anything Origin would do. But the visuals, the way the ground and water are rendered - yeah, I can definitely believe that this used Origin's technology.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

I'm still curious what the story was with Pacific Strike's speech in general. I'm still at least suspecting that the speech pack voice data was encrypted in some way - or perhaps uses some quite exotic compression - or both! Normally even compressed audio (of the era) you could still play it back as raw data and hear something. It might be garbled and distorted to hell and back, but it'll be recognisable as some sort of audio. Pacific Strike's speech played in the same way sounds practically like white noise, which is very unusual.

Very interesting! There's something very appealing about any mystery that, once solved, will provide almost nothing of benefit to anyone The Pacific Strike speech pack does have an interesting part in the game's ignominious history: it showed up on store shelves months before the game! The SAP made it through QA days before the game was expected to... but they found a show stopping bug last minute. No one thought it would be weeks to fix so the SAP went to duplication and packaging... only to be shipped out well ahead of the game.

 

[AllTinker]

There's something very appealing about any mystery that, once solved, will provide almost nothing of benefit to anyone

It's true! Obviously it'd be handy for a hypothetical remake, e.g. perhaps a later extension of that Strike Commander one...?

The Pacific Strike speech pack does have an interesting part in the game's ignominious history: it showed up on store shelves months before the game! The SAP made it through QA days before the game was expected to... but they found a show stopping bug last minute. No one thought it would be weeks to fix so the SAP went to duplication and packaging... only to be shipped out well ahead of the game.

That's part of the reason I suspect it may be encrypted - if they knew soon enough that the game would be out later, maybe they had time to quickly slap something over the speech to stop people extracting the data before the game was available... Maybe? It's a weird one - I'm looking forward to (eventually) figuring out what's going on!

 

[kingmakeress]

perhaps a later extension of that Strike Commander one...?

That would be welcome!

it showed up on store shelves months before the game!

So in theory one could buy a speech pack for a game they did not have? I like that! Was this unintentional error used as a marketing scheme to increase anticipation of the Pacific Strike?