Watch Wing Commander Run on a Tandy 386 (October 17, 2020)

[ChrisReid]

It's easier to play your classic Wing Commander games today with DOSBox, GOG and compatibility patches like wcdx readily available, but there's also a certain magic to getting an old 386 or 486 running. Not everyone has the time or space to make that happen though, so Philip from RadioShack put together this video of the game running on a vintage Tandy 2500 SX/25. This would have been a pretty good system for getting the original Wing Commander going back in the day!

The planets aligned and I was able to get Wing Commander running on my Tandy 2500 SX / 25 Hard Drive model computer - a 25mhz 386 running DOS 6.2 with Sound Blaster audio. RadioShack pro tip - add EMM3686 to your config.sys file!

He's got an in-depth review of the machine here that's also a fun watch!

My first computer was a 1987 era Tandy 1000 that ran at about 4.77 MHz, so I find this fascinating.

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Original update published on October 17, 2020

 

[Wedge009]

EMM386 or alternatives would have been essential for enabling full features in WC1 and WC2, as I recall.

 

[Mace]

EMM386 or alternatives would have been essential for enabling full features in WC1 and WC2, as I recall.

EMM386 but also loading dos in the HMA, you needed as much base memory as possible for the cockpit animations and ofcourse expanded memory.. and you could still "speed up" by messing around with the turbo button and then repressing ingame, resulting in the game running much faster, lol, good times