'Hazardous Duty' Pitch Revealed!

Origin alumni and consummate archivist Binky has discovered another great treasure: the 1997 Origin pitch video for Wing Commander: Hazardous Duty. Hazardous Duty, named after one of George Oldziey’s music tracks for Wing Commander Prophecy, was an attempt to spin Wing Commander off into an FPS game. Binky saved a VHS of the demo all these years and recently digitized it for the ages!

The Wing Commander FPS project would have been built on the then-modern Quake engine and pitted Terran Confederation marines against space pirates and Kilrathi warriors in the Border Worlds. The plan was for it to stand out in the FPS market (and connect back to the initial IP) by featuring a more elaborate AI “wingman.” A very basic demo was done in-house by the Maverick Team (largely a reskinning of Quake, with some level design.) While the project was ultimately not funded by Electronic Arts, the multiplayer was enjoyed for some time in-house by the team!

Check out the pitch video here: