Goodbye, 3Dfx (For Real, This Time)

Remember 3Dfx? It was the hardware addon (and later stand-alone graphics cards) that made Wing Commander Prophecy beautiful (see below for an example). Apparently it still existed until recently - in the form of a lawsuit against a modern video card company. PC Pro recently ran an article detailing the end of a suit against nVidia by 3Dfx investors (here). More interestingly, they then published a story with reader reaction... and two out of the three comments remembered Wing Commander. Take that, Quake II!:

"I remember inviting a friend over to play the latest Wing Commander game on my new 3dfx card," sighs jgwilliams. "When he fired off a missile he almost fell off the chair laughing, he just couldn't believe the realism."

bobbdobbs was equally dreamy-eyed: "I can remember watching a friend play the first Wing Commander with bitmapped graphics and thinking 'bleeding ell'. Unless true photorealism suddenly appears there will be no OMFG factor to graphics anymore."

Making the Game - Part 28

"Who is leaving to work with Chris??" asks the September 6, 1996 Component Manager Meeting agenda -- and that question is going to occupy the team, or what's left of it, for time. Several highly qualified veteran developers are about to leave to work for Digital Anvil and that is going to change what happens to Prophecy. This update is full of other news, too: there's a working testbed of the game, the Wasp is being built and WCIVPSX will not ship in time for Christmas, for example. There's even a mention of running Prophecy on a Mac...

Story Concept Document Download (3.7 MB) Date: September 6, 1996 Project: Wing Commander Prophecy Donated By: Billy Cain Pages: 8