Wing Commander Ports
The original Wing Commander holds a unique distinction among 'modern' games--more than six different ports during its lifetime! Before 1990, this was much more common, as games were released for a host of home computers and consoles... today, it is rare to see more than three ports of any one game
Amiga: The Amiga version of Wing Commander was actually announced alongside the original--but the man in charge of the port became deathly ill and it was delayed almost a year! The Amiga version is a competent port with music some consider far superior to the original... but unfortunately it ran sluggishly on the common Amiga 500s of the time. Still, many European Wing Commander fans got into the series through this release!
SNES: The Super Nintendo version of Wing Commander was developed under license by Mindscape in 1991-2. The game suffered from reduced colors... but still managed to do an incredible amount with the limited memory of the SNES! A second cartridge was also released, a stand-alone version of The Secret Missions. Both the US and the Japanese versions of the game have new cover art.
CD-32: The CD-32 version was an uprated edition of the Amiga port, featuring 256-color graphics similar to those in the original game. It was bundled alongside "Mean Streats" for the release of the CD32 console.
FM Towns: The Japanese FM Towns version of Wing Commander was very similar to the PC release, although it featured Redbook audio tracks of recorded music rather than the original MIDI soundtrack. It also has a beautiful new cover which shows a Fralthi in action!
Sega CD: The Sega CD version of Wing Commander I came out in 1994 and was similar to the original, with simplified controls. It is unique, though, in that it featured full speech--all of the game's conversations and taunts were recorded for the first time!
3DO: In 1995, Origin released "Super Wing Commander" for the 3DO, a completely revamped version of Wing Commander I. Hoping to introduce the series to a new audience, Origin created new artwork for every portion of the game, much of which confuses existing fans to this day.
Macintosh: With the 3DO in decline, Origin ported Super Wing Commander to the Macintosh (PowerPC). Unfortunately, modern Macs do not support the game.
Windows 95: Wing Commander was ported to Windows 95 as part of "The Kilrathi Saga"--it was later separated from that package and released for free through a deal with PC Gamer!
GameTap: In 2004, EA licensed several Wing Commander games to GameTap, a digital distribution service. GameTap opted to switch focus away from classic games and unfortunately removed Wing Commander from their service. And when was the last time you heard of GameTap?
PSP: In 2006, the "EA Replay" collection for the PSP was published, including updated versions of the SNES port of Wing Commander I and The Secret Missions! Finally, Wing Commander I in your pocket...
... and now, GOG!
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