Bioforge-ing the Super Wing Commander Shuttle

Bioforge, one of Origin's most eclectic games, recently celebrated its 30th anniversary. Billed as the second of Origin's "interactive movie" products, Bioforge was less Wing Commander III and more a totally fresh take that could have modernized the classic Sierra-style adventure game. (It does share an odd central plot with Privateer 2: the search for your forgotten identity… and Bioforge interestingly plays like a lot of the early Darkening pitches read!) Thanks to GOG, Bioforge is still available and playable today. There's even a dedicated fanbase today with one brilliant person hard at work on "OpenBioForge" which aims to modernize the game's framework. Here's an new anniversary trailer showing off some of that work:

So what's the Wing Commander angle? It's a small thing but interesting: Bioforge and Super Wing Commander share a shuttle! The Bioforge team created a "Mondite Gunship" which is used throughout the game and when the Super Wing Commander group needed a quick cutscene showing a shuttle delivering your character to the Tiger's Claw they borrowed the mesh down to the textures. We thought it would be interesting to take a look at where the shuttle appears in Bioforge and share some of that material so Wing Commander fans can have a closer look at their same ship! Here's it's quick appearance in Super Wing Commander; you can pick out the same fuselage number as Bioforge in a single frame!

The gunship appears in four significant parts of Bioforge and we will run through them next. First, here's a quick look at it as it appears in Bioforge's demo and in Origin's Official Guide to Bioforge.:

Scene Three: The Beach - As the game progresses you will discover one of the gunships you shot down has crashed on the beach. Traveling through a series of jumping scenarios lets you salvage a loose warhead needed for a puzzle…

... and you also get to see the inside! You enter the shuttle and battle its commander to get a special weapon. You even get to see the shuttle's onboard UI to target a weapon to solve one of the game's puzzles!

This scene has some props associated with it: the warhead and the key to open the shuttle's cockpit.

Scene Four: The Landing Pad - As you race towards Bioforge's conclusion, you run into one more gunship. You must avoid laser fire from its chin turret as you attempt to get past it to your own escape. It rockets away with the game's villain after you pass.