Prowler Outage

Veteran Wing Commander artist Sean Murphy has some memories to share with us... about a game not many people have heard of. In 1995-6 Origin developed Prowler, a 3D mech game for the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer and later Sony Playstation consoles. It wasn't a Wing Commander game, but it was certainly for the same audience -- sci fi combat in a distant future. Unfortunately, Prowler didn't make it -- it lasted all the way to E3, where it was shown next to another lost game, Wing Commander III Saturn. Sean was nice enough to scan a boatload of original sketches and to write up an article explaining his involvement in the project. You can read the whole thing here -- it sounds like it was a pretty cool concept! Here's a sample:

After Super Wing Commander shipped, the team had some down time. We weren't sure what we were going to be working on next, so Glen Johnson and I started fleshing out an idea we'd been tossing around for a mech game. We wanted to see a Gundam-style game, with fast and agile robots leaping about the countryside, as opposed to the heavy, plodding Mechwarrior-style games we'd seen.