Point of Origin: Vol. V, No. 8

The September 8th, 1995 issue of Point of Origin has a lot of CyberMage and a lot of Longbow... but not much Wing Commander. It's interesting that we don't hear anything about Privateer 2 beyond the monthly collections of press clippings.

A very special thanks to Joe Garrity of the Origin Museum for making this resource available and to Electronic Arts for sending them to him in the first place!

• In Ink has more from Wing Commander IV and not-yet-Privateer 2:

In case you missed it, WCIV was featured in Newsweek magazine in July. "Wing Commander IV director Chris Roberts used real movie sets to create an immersive live-action environment," stated editors in the mag's Cyberscope section. CNN also aired a feature on Wing Commander IV and the Hollywood production also received a write-up in Daily Variety. Rex Weiner called WCIV "The most expensive nonfilm tie-in CD-ROM production ever." Meanwhile, the WCIV hype continued this month in Computer Gaming World. In a news brief resulting from a visit to the WCIV set, writers for CGW said, "If Wing Commander III was like Hollywood, this game is Hollywood."

Speaking of wood, The Darkening has wrapped up its production at Pinewood Studios in the UK. The first glimpses by writers who visited the set appear to be positive. Ben Chiu of Strategy Plus writes, "From what I have seen, The Darkening has the potential to take non-linear format interactive games to the next level in a highly polished package." Douglass Perry, from Next Generation, also visited the set. "While The Darkening is only 15% complete and has the Wing series to live up to, it's got everything to make its forebears shiver in their knickers." Douglass gets our award for coming up with the Point's Quote of the Month. The quote didn't come from Douglass, but instead from Erin Roberts drawing comparisons with Wing Commander III. "The technology we're using makes Wing Commander III look like a dinosaur," said Roberts. Ouch!

Finally, let's close with some honors. The UK's PC Gamer recently released a special edition listing that publication's top 50 games of all time. ORIGIN had six products on that list. They were: Ultima VII (Parts 1 and 2) #42, Pacific Strike #41, System Shock #29, Ultima VIII: Pagan #14, Ultima Underworld II #6 and Wing Commander III #2. In case you're interested, Doom II was listed #1, Tie Fighter #3, Monkey Island #4 and SimCity 2000 #5.

Other ORIGIN products were listed recently among Flux Magazine's 15 Essential CD-ROMs. Flux is a comic book/music/entertainment magazine based out of New York City. Editors had Wings of Glory listed at #15, System Shock #12, Wing Commander III #3 and BioForge #2.

Point of Origin
Vol. V, No. 8 - September 8, 1995 Contents Spotlight: It's a Cover Up
The Gospel
Get out your crayons... it's Picture Pages!
New Hires
EOM
Point Man
The Future
Ticker