Old Tech Support Tips Still Valuable

While we've been helping people use exciting new emulators and tools to get the original Wing Commander games running, we've sometimes forget about a few of the original resources that were useful back in the day. Once the appropriate parameters have been set in DOSBox, DOSep or another utility, many of the original workarounds and fixes become valid again. If you get a specific error message or problem at the DOS prompt, the first place you might want to check is our recreation of Origin's original Tech Support Site. It covers everything from Abuse to Wings of Glory with explanations of the various error codes and hardware incompatibilities.

"D002-FFFF" when starting the game (Privateer floppy version).
This error message indicates that there is a problem with your sound card configuration. Run the INSTALL program again and select NO sound and NO music. Run the game again and see if you can get past the error message. If you can get past the error message with Sound and Music turned OFF, then you will need to run the install program again to set your sound up a second time. Be sure to know the proper address, IRQ and DMA values for your sound card before you install the game again. Incorrect IRQ values can cause this error message as well.

• Wing Commander 1 Help File
• Wing Commander 2 Help File
• Wing Commander Prophecy Help File

EA VP Discusses Franchise Funk

The Next Generation gaming site is back, and they've got an interview with Electronic Arts' Marketing VP Frank Gibeau. He addresses some of the general criticisms the company has faced recently and explains how many people like to unfairly single EA out. The article also touches on how Electronic Arts decides what established franchises to purpose when funding a game for development.

“Do we have enough new IP? No. I’d love to have more. I’d love to take more risks and be able to enter new and bigger properties into the market,” he says. “Sometimes franchises get tired and go away and we recognize that. It’s vital to our success going forward to bring in new and fresh ideas, and there are new ideas that our teams are working on that are not yet announced.”

But even a deep-pocketed company like EA has to admit that risks are harder to take, as they become, well, riskier. “We are leading 150-person teams,” Gibeau says. “These [games] are highly complex endeavours. The number of people who can come up with great ideas that will be popular and can be brought to market on time is pretty rare.” EA’s position as behemoth market leader; its throbbing internal studio complex; and its mega-bucket ability to buy in licenses, sports leagues, and much-loved indie developers, has made it the first stop on any big game hunt for the ills of the industry.

For Gibeau, an employee of 10 years standing (straight from college), this is a corruption of the truth. “I can go work for a movie company and make more money,” he says. “But I don’t want to. I’m here to make great games. And that is what we do. [The criticism] is kinda irritating, so we want to get the truth out there.”