2010.284 (October 11, 2010)

Wing Commander 2 Gets Its Due

Chris Gerrish found an article at Maxium PC about the six most important moments in PC audio history. It begins with some background on the first sound cards and MIDI. Then the Sound Blaster, and Wing Commander as its killer app, get a ton of credit for expanding the market. Check out the full article here.

One of the first games to support the Sound Blaster’s digital audio capabilities was Wing Commander II, in the form of an expansion pack consisting of seven floppy disks. Those floppies contained all the digitized audio for in-game voice. So you not only got music, but your wingmen and opponents would talk to you, and some of the cut scenes were voiced as well.

The great spoken intro to Wing Commander 2 was actually included in the base game, which totaled 7 3.5" floppy disks in the most common version. The in-flight speech pack was an additional 3 disks.