FMV Defined a Video Game Era

The Wing Commander games are arguably the only ones where known actors have emerged smelling of roses. It helped that unlike many, these games had a real budget – a then-insane $4 million for Wing Commander III, which used the standard bluescreen technique, and $12 million for the fourth game, which finally allowed for actual sets and physical special effects. Mark Hamill’s performance as world-weary space hero Christopher Blair grounded the series in a way that surprised everyone who thought Origin had just hired Luke Skywalker as a gimmick, while Tom Wilson (as the arrogant but insecure pilot Maniac) was pleased to be recognised as something other than Biff Tannen from the Back to the Future movies. Malcolm McDowell and John Rhys-Davies also showed up and gave excellent performances, to the point that the fourth game’s most exciting moment wasn’t the last space battle, but the FMV debate that followed it, where you had to talk a council chamber full of diplomats into acknowledging the bad guy’s naughtiness.

Blast From The Past

Do people ever click this button? It shows you all front page updates from today's date in years past. Here's a gorgeous animated gif we posted ten years ago today! In 2010 we could easily just post the full 250 kilobyte image right here, but I'll save that for 2015 or 2020. Old (low bandwidth) habits from the 1990s internet are hard to break.