The Great Wing Commander Article Hunt, Part One

One activity I love to do to wind down after a long day is to search the Internet Archive for historical articles about Wing Commander. Preservationists around the world have scanned thousands upon thousands of old magazines and they're full of gems that tell the story of our favorite series (and just about anything else you can imagine). Here's the result of a recent night's search!

First up, we've got a short article from an English magazine called Raze (December 1990). It's a preview of the original Wing Commander that correctly identifies it as "a candidate for game of the year". It's always interesting to see what early players of the game thought would be the most important aspects…

German magazine Power Play (May 1991) offers us up a fascinating early interview with Chris Roberts! This was conducted white Wing Commander II was still early in development so there's some fascinating information about the initial concept… including mention of Maniac's intended role as a TV star (and the fact that they were aiming to ship on FOUR disks!). He also talks all about the making of the original game and the then-current plans to port it to the Amiga at Origin.

We have featured this fascinating issue of Amiga magazine "The One" (July 1992) before but we missed the index page which has an uncovered Drakhri render that must've been provided by Origin at the time! It's not the one that appears on the cover of the game. But the article itself is fascinating, all about Nick Pelling's work to port the original Wing Commander to the Amiga.

Spanish magazine "MicroMania" (October 1995) gives us a lengthy, early preview of Wing Commander IV which includes great sidebar interviews with Chris Roberts, Mark Hamill and Tom Wilson. There are also lots of great set photos, including good looks at the fully realized shuttle set.

And here's another brief preview from Computer Gaming World (November 1995). Great behind-the-scenes photo of the Lexington bar! The claim that all of the original cast is returning "except for a few of the female characters" probably wouldn't be great PR today.