I'm calming the old broken brain this weekend with a little research project: studying the evolution of Claw Marks! Like all holy books, Claw Marks evolved over time with edits and changes made by other contributors as Wing Commander I was ported and re-released...
And it's pretty fascinating seeing the changes! The original manual was developed in 1990 by the late, great Aaron Allston before Origin adopted digital publishing. It's the perfect lore booklet, absolutely defining the tone of the original game.
In 1994, Origin recreated it digitally for the Sega CD port (and then Super Wing Commander). Tuesday Frase overhauled the text, with changes ranging from dropping Oxford commas to rewriting sections and adding others!
And then in 1996 it was updated again for Kilrathi Saga with a host of lesser changes (and a totally new layout). And of course there are spinoffs and foreign translations that add interesting tidbits on occasion!
Just found a kind of haunting one: compare the last sentence of Bossman's bio between the original and the Sega CD version!
Sega CD - Cat Bites
3DO & Macintosh - Cat Bytes
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