Hey everyone. My name is Chris, callsign Shot. I'm 31 and am from Detroit, Michigan. I am of the extraordinarily lucky individuals to have grown up with a Commodore Amiga (4 stores nearby sold them, people had them and loved them in America, too), a computer 10 years ahead of its time. I feel my experience is a tad different when compared to many others out there in that my father was the computer nerd. My love for him and wonderment over what the hell he was up to is what caused me to spend endless hours in a chair in the basement watching him play oh so many fantastic Amiga games. And no, not those ones you see from the "100 best Amiga games" YouTube videos. The rest of the world has rewritten the truth regarding that machine in this country, people think nobody bought it, in fact sales are very comparable to any single country in the rest of the world. People think all the good games came from Europe, they even tell you to throw out an NTSC Amiga because of it. The thing with the Amiga is the market for games in America was very similar to all other computers here. My father wouldn't have been caught dead playing Super Frog or Zool, side scrollers... I'm sorry but I also had an NES and Genesis during that period, and "I" wouldn't be caught dead playing Super Frog or Zool. Side scrollers were every so much better on consoles... I loved Mario... I loved Sonic...
But nothing could compare to the power of that beautiful machine, the Commodore Amiga 500. A computer with a personality. You just don't get much love for single computer models, sure, some people might love DOS, but that's not a computer... That's an operating system. The love for the Commodore 64 and Commodore Amiga are like nothing else out there. The Amiga was our female friend. I watched my father play games like Pool of Radiance, best version on the Amiga, spent months on it.... Eye of the Beholder... Civilization, Battletech, Railroad Tycoon, Earl Weaver Baseball (first realistic baseball games with oh so many stats)... Empire... Breech...Lemmings...Lost Dutchman Mine, Sim Ant, Sim City... A-Train... Those are not only some of the best Amiga games of all time, but they are some of the best games of all time. Some of them started life on the Amiga, some of them had their best version there, some of them were almost straight ports from DOS or elsewhere, but they were all oh so good. And it came on a computer that was oh so much cheaper than any IBM with an incredible 4,096 colors, 16, 32,or 64 colors on screen at once, and in a special mode called HAM all 4,096. 4 channels of digitized and sampled music. A computer from 1985 that can make a realistic sounding piano (MT-32 could never do that).
I would watch my father play these games, and yes, I was allowed to play many of them as well... I'll never forget wondering around Might and Magic II, a completely non-linear game world, massive game world... Had no clue what I was doing but I was having a blast! Playing Death Knights of Kyrnn and having the wolf stalk me, visiting the town with a lich mayor. Yeah, I loved Mario and Sonic, but computer games were so obviously on this whole other level. Then, in 1992, a tiny bit later than my DOS friends, Wing Commander graced us on the Amiga.
My life was never the same. Not only would I watch my dad play it...Oh.. I sure as hell wanted to play that one too! Getting killed what seemed like a thousand times on the asteroids of the first mission... Learning how to dodge them only to come back to the Claw and be utterly dumbfounded that I couldn't land! How the hell do I land?! At the age of 7 the manual might as well been the flight instructions for an F-16. I had my mother read and make sense of how best to land... And to this day there's no other landing sequence quite like that first game! I carried Claw Marks around with me everywhere. Well, here you go, I've got some evidence of it!
^ Top, me with my well used issue of Claw Marks. Bottom left, my father on our Amiga playing Railroad Tycoon. Bottom right, me in the chair next to my dad.
I think a lot of people kind of looking in on the Amiga version of Wing Commander having known the DOS version might not quite understand, it may be ever so obvious to them how much better the original was. I'm telling you as a person who didn't see the DOS version until the Kilrathi Saga came out; The Amiga version was every bit as special to us looking in the first time as it was for anyone with DOS. Yes, on a 500 it was pretty damn slow, didn't matter. People forget how many slow ass DOS computers were around back then. I'm sure Wing Commander got a few people to upgrade, but no, most people were playing it on hardware that couldn't quite handle its power. Both me and my father played Wing Commander to death and we never once discussed how slow it was. We had nothing to compare it to. And actually, for any interested, Wing Commander should be played in NTSC mode, emulators default into PAL mode. This is for compatibility reasons. Pretty much all NTSC software worked just fine on PAL hardware, where as lots of PAL software had terrible issues running on NTSC hardware (although many real machines let you switch graphics modes). Wing Commander, obviously originally designed in America on DOS, was supposed to be in a 4:3 aspect ratio. The Amiga version of Wing Commander, with the use of modern emulators and on actual European hardware, put the game into an almost modern day widescreen mode. Near 16:9 aspect ratio. When you take into account that the 4:3 original had its own widescreen moments during dialogue, the Amiga version ends up looking like this ridiculous super wide screen, faces are stretched, and... yeah, PAL Amiga's ran slower than NTSC Amiga's. You'd be surprised at how much a difference that little speed boost can make. To this day I can still play Wing Commander on my Amiga 500 and get through it without pulling my hair out.
The music...Oh my god the music... This was space opera to me... And yeah, I've got an MT-32... I still think the Amiga sounds better! The MT-32 may have sounded a bit more realistic with its heavy string focus, but it's too subtle for my tastes. The Amiga version is bold, in your face. The fan fare is incredible, my favorite music in the game is the barracks music.. But only on the Amiga... I think it's pretty bad on the MT-32, and of course, let's not even mention the way 99% of DOS users heard it back in the day, through an Adlib FM sound card.... Yuck...
But not just the music my friends, oh yeah, the graphics were utterly amazing. They blew my mind. Yes, the 256 color original was stripped down to 16 colors on the Amiga. And you know I wish they had used 32 or even 64 colors at least for the dialogue scenes. I think even the 500 could have handled that just fine. I sort of feel it was more about putting it onto 3 disks than anything. Take a look at Monkey Island 2 for DOS and then look at the Amiga version. The two are nearly identical despite DOS being in 256 colors and the Amiga in 32. Why? The game came on 12 disks for the Amiga. People forget how much space had to do with graphics, not just hardware. Look no further than the SNES version of Wing Commander, probably the poorest port, but it had tons of colors on it... Then look at the Sega CD version, looks a lot better than the SNES, why? It's on a CD, lots more space to work with.
Anyway, I have to say that despite using 16 colors, the carefully chosen colors along with the dithering absolutely pull it off. I've seen Wing Commander in EGA mode for DOS, the Amiga destroys it! With the same resolution as the original DOS version (320x200) it also bested the consoles , every pixel that was in the DOS version was in the Amiga version, not all the colors, but the pixels were there. The Amiga version is without a doubt in my mind the finest port of the original Wing Commander. When I got the Kilrathi Saga and started playing the DOS version oh my was I in for a shock, in a bad way. hahaha... I hated the music (which was digitized for the Kilrathi Saga) and I was sure the Amiga version looked better too... Obviously I was wrong about that... Or was I? To me growing up with the Amiga version, those dithered graphics made everything feel so aged... So war ridden... It seemed to fit the actual mood of this 40 year old war so much better. No, I don't actually think the Amiga version looks better than the DOS version, but it looked good while being different, and I imagine that's the reason I kind of felt the Amiga looked better as a kid.
I fully recommend everyone play the Amiga version, not the CD32 version...No... Why on Earth would anyone want to play an identical port where the ONLY difference is the music? I suppose people that love a game as much as we... But no, the original Amiga version is a technical marvel on an Amiga, much like it was on DOS. You all know what the DOS version looks like, get a tiny bit different experience by playing it on the Amiga with its 16 colors. Speed it up if you wish, but play that original!
Oh wow, so much already... I missed out on Wing2 because it didn't come out on the Amiga, got Wing3 in 1995, had to give it back before I beat it because my sister got in a car accident, we needed to send back our new computer. Got Wing 4, then the Kilrathi Saga, Prophecy... Oh yeah, the Privateer games were in there as well. I've played them all way more than I can count. The series meant so much to me growing up, and to this very day.
I happen to make videos on YouTube, I consider it a retro nerd channel, as in, I'll make videos on anything old and nerdy. But my primary focus is on computer and console games from the early 80's to late 90's. I have in fact done a couple Wing Commander videos already, and plan to review all of them... Umm... If you happen to go there, it's possible you might hear some bad things about this very forum... I had reasons for that, but it's behind me now. They are still very good reviews in my opinion, I even have a written review for Wing4. The name, in case anyone cares, is MrShot97 - I won't link it directly, if anyone actually cares, it won't be hard to look up. I've recently given this place another chance and I'm looking forward to giving my opinion from time to time.
