Digital Antiquarian Explores Wing Commander's Leap to Interactive Movies

The Digital Antiquarian has posted a lengthy article on the history of Wing Commander 3. Much like his previous works, the piece is extensively researched and draws on both archival materials and personal interviews to build the historical context for game. It's a good recap of what WC3 was and how it came to be. The later parts of the article shift more into a meta review from the perspective of 2021. Our author here comes across as fairly critical of the more formulaic missions, binary nature of the plot choices and cheesiness of big space cats. He seems to realize the tonal shift is somewhat jarring after talking about how impressive a product WC3 is, so he ends on a conciliatory note. You can check out the full article here.

The presence of so many recognizable actors on the set, combined with the broader mass-media excitement over multimedia and CD-ROM, brought a parade of mainstream press to the shoot. The Today show, VH-1, the Los Angeles Times, Premiere magazine, the Associated Press, USA Today, Newsweek, Forbes, and Fortune were just some of the media entities that stopped in to take some pictures, shoot some video, and conduct a few interviews. At a time when the likes of DOOM was still well off the mainstream radar, Wing Commander III was widely accepted as the prototype for gaming’s inevitable future.