Wing Commander for CDTV
The Terran Knowledge Bank
| Wing Commander | |
|---|---|
| Platform | Commodore CDTV |
| Status | Announced |
| Timeline | Announced - October 1990 Planned Release - Fall 1991 |
Wing Commander for CDTV is a Wing Commander project which was not released. In late 1990, Origin Systems announced plans to support the upcoming Commodore CDTV with internal ports of Ultima VI and Wing Commander. Because the CDTV was developed from Commodore's Amiga 500 the project was also intended to result in an Amiga SKU. Plans for both releases were dropped. Origin later licensed development of a separate Amiga port to The Software Toolworks. This project spun off a port for the CDTV's successor, the CD32.
References
- The evolution of Wing Commander will begin on the IBM PC (supporting EGA, VGA, MCGA and Tandy graphics) around Christmas 1991 [sic], with a likely appearance on the Amiga line. Commodore’s compact disc-based CDTV, using the Amiga as a foundation, will also be a natural location. Eventually, Wing Commander will be ported to video-game consoles. Roberts discussed how easily the game—along with its stereo sound and high-resolution graphics—would port to the Genesis and, whenever it’s brought to the U.S., Nintendo’s Super Famicom. - Andy Eddy, The Making of the Origin Systems' Wing Commander (Video Games & Computer Entertainment, October 1990
- CD-ROM has been making waves in Japan since last year, when people started questing in Ultima I, II, and III on a CD-ROM computer called the FM Towns. Development for this 80286-powered computer was done by Japanese programmers, but Origin will now be developing CDTV products in Austin, Texas. The first Origin products should be Ultima VI and Wing Commander. An Amiga version of Ultima VI had already been planned, and the advent of CDTV most likely means we'll see that sooner than we would have otherwise. Wing Commander, Origin's spectacular space game, had not even been on tap for an Amiga conversion, so the CDTV player can be thanked for this bonus. These are likely to fall into the first-wave category, with both tentatively set for release in the fall of 1991. And you can expect more. Greg Malone, who wrote Origin's Moebius and WindWalker, says, "The kind of fantasy worlds we create are well suited for CDTV, which gives us the room we need for greater detail, vaster environments, and a greater range of interactive possibilities." - Shay Adams, Just for Fun (Compute!, December 1990)
