I don't share the shining hope and optimism

If you're on a budget but still want a great game in your pocket, Wing Commander Prophecy GBA and a GBA or GBA SP should to the trick.
 
I think DS1 was actually developed in Germany

That's kind of interesting. I Googled it last night, and it seemed to be exclusively done in the UK, especially in the writing of the plotlines. Maybe it was a German/UK split, with the plots written in the UK while the actual game was German developed...?

I dunno. I'm too lazy to go look it up again...I should be in bed.
 
There was a decent console Battlestar Galactica shooter a couple years ago as well. I'm not sure which branch of Warthog made that one though.

I have this game. Haven't played it for a while, but the stages I've gone through have been pretty challenging. The graphics are pretty good and the missions varied and interesting. It has a smaller Warthog symbol on the back, but the main "brand" on it is Universal Interactive.
 
That's kind of interesting. I Googled it last night, and it seemed to be exclusively done in the UK, especially in the writing of the plotlines. Maybe it was a German/UK split, with the plots written in the UK while the actual game was German developed...?
No, the whole thing was developed in Germany, even the English voiceovers were recorded by a German studio. The plot was actually written by some well-known German sci-fi author.
 
I've considered that. Given how many awesome games are on GBA. Especially PC conversions.

I've considered that. Given how many awesome games are on GBA. Especially PC conversions.

Yeah... through sheer force of will, the GameBoy/GameBoy Advance probably has the most impressive back catalogue of fun games (or at the very least, it's fighting for this title tooth and nail with the Playstation).

I'm not sure which PC conversions you mean, though -- in this sense, Prophecy is something of an oddity. Nintendo is best known for their first party in-house stuff... and while there's lots (lots and lots and lots) of third party titles for the GB/GBA, it's mostly original concepts (even when they go to port something like Tomb Raider, it ends up being done in a different style from the ground up).

In the case of Prophecy, a small Italian company came up with an awesome proprietary 3D system for the GBA that really outdoes anything else on the system, visually... but because it isn't Mario or Pokemon, it's a third tier budget game that no one has ever heard of. One look at WCPGBA should amaze you -- it's absolutely stunning how much 3D can be done with a GBA, which feels in no way like a powerhouse of a system.
 
No, the whole thing was developed in Germany, even the English voiceovers were recorded by a German studio. The plot was actually written by some well-known German sci-fi author.

I remember that the space MMORPG Darskpace was also developed, at least initially, by the german company Bluebyte. Not sure why the names are similar, tought.
 
Cybermage: Darklight Awakening, Privateer 2: The Darkening and Darklight Conflict would like to have a word with you.

(Interesting aside! In 1996, following the changes to Privateer 2, Origin seriously considered retooling EA's "Darklight Conflict" budget space game into a 'Wing Commander Academy' release to tie-in with the USA television show.)
 
I happen to be a retro gamer, you can’t get much better than the original Super NES version in my book. I love the new “Wing Commander” and “Metroid” games, but there’s a feeling you get when playing the older versions that you can’t when playing “Privateer” of “Metroid Prime 3”.
 
The original Wing Commander was a PC release -- the SNES versions were later ports (two and three years later, respectively).
 
My only complaint and wish

My only complaint (except not having a PSP) is that SNES NEVER, to my knowledge, released the second Secret Missions. What an addition that would be! I never played Secret Missions 2 until AFTER I played the COMPLETE GAME of Wing Commander 2: Vengence of The Kilrathi. It was very interesting to see what Doomsday and Jazz (pre traitor) were like. Jazz...you just know he's evil.

Sega Classics...eh? Funny some of the games released...I don't remember them being classics. One of the games on Sega Classics is Sword of Vermillion (Sega was never high on RPG, outside of Phantasy Star). That game is not well remembered today...back in about 1991 I remeber it was being sold for $90 Canadian...before tax! I remember that game left an opening for a sequel...but it was never made...probably because the game never sold well. I guess it's included to try to recoup the losses from about 15 years ago.

Having said that...they've re-released Privater, why don't they release Privater 2: The Darkening. Hey, there WAS a TALON fighter on one mission. Honestly, I remeber playing that game about eight or nine years ago and thinking it had nothing to do with WC. Well, there's one similarity. Anyone know how much Privater 2: The Darkening cost? I'm guessing somewhere between the budget of WC3 and WC4?

Here's my all time "Re-release And I'll Play It Again And Again" list from Origin Products:

WC 2 (FULL speech during cut scenes)
WC3 (ALL DELETED SCENES ADDED)
WC4 (ALL DELETED SCENE(S) (?) ADDED)
STRIKE COMMANDER (Never got to play that)
WINGS OF GLORY (Best Flight Simulator, outside of Wing Commander, that Origin ever released)
BIOFORGE (Again, never got to play it)

I really wish that EA would do what Lucas Arts did around 2000, release a HUGE packet of all thir games on CD, only EA would have to do it on DVD/ Blu Ray
 
My only complaint (except not having a PSP) is that SNES NEVER, to my knowledge, released the second Secret Missions. What an addition that would be! I never played Secret Missions 2 until AFTER I played the COMPLETE GAME of Wing Commander 2: Vengence of The Kilrathi. It was very interesting to see what Doomsday and Jazz (pre traitor) were like. Jazz...you just know he's evil.

Sega Classics...eh? Funny some of the games released...I don't remember them being classics. One of the games on Sega Classics is Sword of Vermillion (Sega was never high on RPG, outside of Phantasy Star). That game is not well remembered today...back in about 1991 I remeber it was being sold for $90 Canadian...before tax! I remember that game left an opening for a sequel...but it was never made...probably because the game never sold well. I guess it's included to try to recoup the losses from about 15 years ago.

Having said that...they've re-released Privater, why don't they release Privater 2: The Darkening. Hey, there WAS a TALON fighter on one mission. Honestly, I remeber playing that game about eight or nine years ago and thinking it had nothing to do with WC. Well, there's one similarity. Anyone know how much Privater 2: The Darkening cost? I'm guessing somewhere between the budget of WC3 and WC4?

Here's my all time "Re-release And I'll Play It Again And Again" list from Origin Products:

WC 2 (FULL speech during cut scenes)
WC3 (ALL DELETED SCENES ADDED)
WC4 (ALL DELETED SCENE(S) (?) ADDED)
STRIKE COMMANDER (Never got to play that)
WINGS OF GLORY (Best Flight Simulator, outside of Wing Commander, that Origin ever released)
BIOFORGE (Again, never got to play it)

I really wish that EA would do what Lucas Arts did around 2000, release a HUGE packet of all thir games on CD, only EA would have to do it on DVD/ Blu Ray

Oh, no, don't you DARE taunt us with the BluRay possibility. Just as with Betamax vs. VCR and DVD vs DivX, I'm waiting to see which format goes to the mainstream before I even begin to decide on which format I'm going to have later on down the line. If we're going solely on Sony's track record, BluRay will probably fall out and HD DVD will emerge the victor.

Either way, though, that's a pretty good idea, having the old stuff all on a DVD-ROM pack like that. I wonder if EA even knows what it's missing out on with potential like that?
 
as someone who just finished playing the kilrathi saga ports of wc1 and 2 yesterday i can see several sides to this issue. Yes the psp port isn't as technologically advanced as it could have been, but at the same time each port has it's own issues, from wc1 dos having only midi music to wc1 snes having new content, to the bugs in kilrathi saga. a perfect wc1 was never going to happen because one doesn't exist. However, that being said the original games were all excellent for their time and are still very replayable now. if you like wc1 buy EA replay, and try writing to EA telling them what you liked and didn't like about the port and maybe if they're considering doing a wc2 port they'll take some of your concerns to heart.
 
An enhanced super-improved re-orchestrated WC1 would (most likely) not have worked, as any "remake", it would probably age a lot faster then the original.

If you want to go down on the Midi-music, I had an external synth hooked up to my soundcard at the time, and the things I liked most about the music at that time, were not as present in the re-orchestration as I would have liked them to be. In my experience, and those of my friends, kilrathi saga sounds a lot less immersive then the original midi's when played back through a good synth.

"Digitized" graphics also age very fast, if you have played "Megarace", "Rebel assault", or one of the american laser games products, you know what I am talking about.
 
My only complaint (except not having a PSP) is that SNES NEVER, to my knowledge, released the second Secret Missions. What an addition that would be! I never played Secret Missions 2 until AFTER I played the COMPLETE GAME of Wing Commander 2: Vengence of The Kilrathi. It was very interesting to see what Doomsday and Jazz (pre traitor) were like. Jazz...you just know he's evil.

That's correct, there was never an SNES port of Crusade. You can read about the sadly lost Wing Commander 2 SNES port in our archives, which was actually developed by a different team over two years after The Secret Missions.

In the scheme of things, though, the two SNES ports were released in 1992 and 1993... so, well after the PC Wing Commander 2.

Having said that...they've re-released Privater, why don't they release Privater 2: The Darkening. Hey, there WAS a TALON fighter on one mission. Honestly, I remeber playing that game about eight or nine years ago and thinking it had nothing to do with WC. Well, there's one similarity. Anyone know how much Privater 2: The Darkening cost? I'm guessing somewhere between the budget of WC3 and WC4?

Good comment.

Yes, that was a Talon! We recently learned exactly where it came from, too. The Privateer 2 team was originally planning to develop a direct sequel to the original game (ie, following the same character in the same setting), and they went so far as to render some of the original ships out for the RealSpace engine. Chris Roberts began his own Privateer sequel in Austin (which was never finished), and that threw a monkey wrench into those plans... but the Talon survived as a great reference to the rest of Wing Commander when 'The Darkening' was finally done.

Side note: the 'Talon' model is actually reused as the Gratha in Super Wing Commander... so maybe it's actually a Kilrathi fighter? In fact, we recently got a chance to look under the hood of Privateer 2's random mission text and found out that there was actually a second part to that scenario... which would have further explained that the pilot of the Talon had been interviewed by the CIS and that he was from the familiar Wing Commander setting.

In terms of FMV, Darkening had the same budget as WC3 -- four million dollars. It's amazing how much more they managed to do with that in England, including all those great European character actors and all the elaborate full sets. The film sequences remain my favorite in all of Wing Commander.

WC3 (ALL DELETED SCENES ADDED)
WC4 (ALL DELETED SCENE(S) (?) ADDED)

Well, we get into an interesting question which probably hasn't been legitimately dealt with regarding FMV video games yet -- can you go back and add in scenes that were removed without the consent of the director?

There's a reason DVD movies don't simply re-integrate all the extra footage that's included as "deleted scens"... the director chose not to keep them in the film, for his own artistic reasons. How do you deal with that, in terms of Wing Commander?

(I don't believe there are any significant deleted scenes in WC4 -- at leas tnot in the same sense as the news briefings and Hobbes sequence in WC3.)

To those reading the last post in this thread -- the proper external synth for Wing Commander is a Roland MT-32. I use the internal version in my Wing machine, the LAPC-I, and it's beautiful.
 
They did a fantastic job with the video of The Darkening. The actors are great, the art direction is interesting, and the special effects are still good, like on that explosion sequence.
 
In WC3, I'd prefer that the flight movies of the Excals that were cut stay out of the game. The pacing is just too slow, and they don't add anything to the experience overall. You just flew the mission, you don't need to watch a movie version.

As for Blu-Ray... it's way too expensive right now to be used practically.

Incidentally, I agree with Chris' earlier statement... programmers and development teams have done some amazing things to get games shrunk down enough to fit on a cartridge. Resident Evil 2 is a testament to such amazery(tm).
 
In WC3, I'd prefer that the flight movies of the Excals that were cut stay out of the game. The pacing is just too slow, and they don't add anything to the experience overall. You just flew the mission, you don't need to watch a movie version.

Those aren't even really cut scenes. The console versions of WC3 don't have the ground missions, and instead play those movies -- but they were newly rendered for that purpose.
 
I think Wing Commander should be there, not to replay over and over, but to build upon by the fans. Yes, its an excellent game, its a superb game, but you can only play it so many times before getting bored with it. I sense a paradigm shift, if it hasn't occured already: fan based projects increasing, based off the same game we know and dearly love.

As for Flojomojo's post about the PSP, I think it is really really awesome that there are different opinions of how EA Replay will affect the WC community. I for one however smile at the fact that EA still sees a market with Wing Commander still, and its an awesome moment for us wingnuts to see a HANDHELD version of WC1.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
 
Back
Top