Last summer we gave the Windows VistaBeta 2 a spin to see how well Wing Commander games designed for Windows 95 would run, and the initial results were promising. Now that the final release is available, Sarty has been able to completely play through a battery of WC games for an update. Although his trials reflect compatibility with just one system, the results are surprisingly positive. It appears that virtually every Wing Commander title designed for Windows runs well. Not only is compatibility mode rarely needed to achieve stability, but some traditional Windows XP bugs have even disappeared in Vista! Here's his complete report:
WC1 (KS) - Runs fine without compatibility mode activated. Colors invert and stay inverted whenever I alt-tab out.
WC2 (KS) - Runs fine without compatibility mode activated. No obvious problems.
WC3 (KS) - Runs okay without compatibility mode activated. Colors invert and stay inverted whenever I alt-tab out. Problems with random colorization, running on Win95 compatibility seems to fix the problem.
WC4 - Both CD and DVD versions run fine without compatibility mode activated. No obvious problems.
WCP - Runs fine without compatibility mode activated. Even the typical video-skip bug that I always had was not a problem.
WCSO - Requires compatibility mode to be activated, Win98 worked fine. No other problems during run through of the game.
DOSbox works just as well as it did on XP with Privateer, Academy, and Armada.
No explanation for the color inversion. Even running in compatibility mode doesn’t seem to fix it, so I’m assuming it is something to do with my hardware.
Note that Sarty is still working on testing Privateer 2, but the game already functioned properly during our initial beta trials. We still expect there to be occasional hiccups and issues with specific hardware configurations, but we're quite happy that the new operating system won't hold back Wing Commander fans trying to play their favorite games in the future.
Follow or Contact Us