Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi (SNES)

Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi
Platform	Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Release Date	Unreleased

Description

Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi (SNES) is an unreleased Wing Commander game developed in 1994-5. Unlike the first two SNES Wing Commander titles, WC2 was developed in-house at Origin Systems in Austin. The development team was lead by Billy Cain, who would go on to design Wing Commander Prophecy. The game was planned for a May, 1995 release.

Wing Commander II was developed but never released. The decision was financial in nature: sales of Super Nintendo consoles declined more than had been expected for the 1994 holiday season and Wing Commander II was a large game which required a more expensive type of SNES cartridge. Review copies were apparently sent to magazines and the finished master was shipped to Pony Canyon in Japan. No copies of the game have been located.

The game is considered the last 'holy grail' of Wing Commander fandom; locating and preserving a copy is a major goal of WCNews.com.

Differences

• Wing Commander II would have different significantly from the PC release. Gameplay was said to be more arcade oriented to better suit the platform and audience, similar to the changes made in the 3DO port of Wing Commander III.

• Many changes to the artwork are visible in the published screen shots, including full color communications VDUs, an 'invisible cockpit' in the bomber turrets and two VDUs instead of one in the Ferret cockpit. Most cockpit elements seem to have been redrawn and graphics were generally simplified for the SNES' lower color palette.

• Lines of dialogue in the published screen shots differ in some instances from the PC version, which suggests that the script was rewritten to some extent.

Known Credits

Lead Designer / Project Director - Billy Cain

Programming - Axel Brown, Julian Alden‑Salter

Art - Eric Lund

Testing - Chris Primozich

Music - Barry Leitch

Reviews

At least two magazines printed reviews of Wing Commander II SNES, the April, 1995 issue of Electronic Gaming Montly (EGM) and the May 1995 issue of GamePro. Both were extremely positive, with EGM claiming that "this is one of the best translations from a PC to a gaming console I've ever seen." The EGM review was written by Ken Badziak and the GamePro review was by "Toxic Tommy" (Wes Nihei).

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  EGM Review (Page 1)

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  EGM Review (Page 2)

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  Game Pro Review

Screenshots

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