Birth of the Interactive Movies

Here's three more full page Wing Commander-related advertisements, courtesy of Alkarion. You can see the last sets here and here. The first shot shows the classic Wing Commander III artwork, making the bold claim that it is "THE INTERACTIVE MOVIE." The four inset screenshots are taken from the first set Origin released to the public, well before the game's release. Note the "also available for the 3DO" logo -- Origin was taking that port seriously very early on.

The second is for 1993s ORIGIN FX screensaver package. OFX seems like an odd product in retrospect, but one must remember that this was an age dominated by After Dark's iconic Flying Toasters... Origin certainly hoped their flying pigs would earn them a piece of that pie. The release included several Wing Commander modules, including a customizable debris field, a set of spaceships that fly around the screen and 'TCS Paradigm' - a well rendered Paradigm flies back and forth across various space backgrounds. The advertisement reads: "Special Bonus: For owners of Wing Commander II, ORIGIN FX includes a module that plays all of WC II's cinematic sequences when the game is installed on your hard drive. And that's just the beginning - look for add-on ORIGIN FX modules shipped with future games, to showcase their cinematics, as well." Strange as this sounds, it actually happened - Strike Commander shipped with this feature. Too bad the project was abandoned by the time the FMV titles were released...

The final advertisement was part of 1995s 'interactive movie' push, which included System Shock, Ultima VIII, Wings of Glory, Wing Commander III and Wing Commander Armada. "Hunt down the meanest aliens in dozens of different galaxies -- without having to guess what they really look like."

Darkstar One Rising

This month's watchword is Darkstar One -- everyone is comparing this new game to Wing Commander! Gamespy has published a positive preview:

There are a few things that we've come to expect from "space games," regardless of whether they rest on the Wing Commander or Master of Orion side of the spectrum... From our time playtesting a preview build, the game sits squarely on the Wing Commander side of the spectrum... The actual gameplay, as mentioned, is pretty action-oriented -- think Wing Commander."

Since a lot of us are fans of titles such as "Elite", "Wing Commander" and "Freelancer" the decision to make a space shooter came naturally. We decided to create a "simulated" civilization in space that we then connected with a compelling story and a lot of action.