Date/Time:
Wing Commander was one of the first space simulator games released by Origin Systems back in 1990, and it was not a very high budget game. The budgets for these early games were probably in the hundreds of thousands of dollars or the tens of thousands of dollars, compared to the budget of most hit games which is in the millions of dollars. Never the less, this game was very successful, because it had a lot of new features which weren’t in computer games before, like cinematic scenes, smooth scaling and zooming of computer graphics, great story line, and good graphics. It was a type of game you wanted to complete the missions to find out what happens next in the story line. This was a winning formula. In retrospect, modern games use cinema, and you see it in almost every game today, like Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Wolfenstein The New Order, Assassin’s Creed IV, and many others.
Back in 1990, computer technology was quite limited compared to the technology we have today. Thus, a space simulator game like this would be the easier to produce, because using the background of the blackness of space requires very little system resources. Chris Roberts, the man who produced this game first wanted to make a space simulator based on Star Wars, but Lucasarts turned down his request. This is why Wing Commander came into being, and a whole franchise was created out of it. Wing Commander started in 1990, and it ended in 2007 with Wing Commander Arena. That is about a 17 year run which isn’t bad at all.
When I first played this game back in 1990, this game cost about $29.99 or $39.99, and there were add ons to this game, like the Secret Mission 1 + Secret Missions 2 disks. You needed the original game to play it, and these add ons cost about $19.99 each. Each Secret Missions disk came with about 20 missions each, and these missions were much more difficult than the original Wing Commander game. These add on games really got me immersed in the Wing Commander universe. These old games came with very good manuals which gave you a background story of the games you were playing.
Wing Commander (1990) was initially released for the PC, and Amiga computers. This game became so popular, it was released for the Super Nintendo, Panasonic 3dO, Playstation, Macintosh, FM Towns, and other systems. This game was relatively easy to play, it ran flawlessly, the game play was smooth, and it was a PC game with a very good story. Before games, like Wing Commander, a lot of PC games didn’t have good stories, most were games that went on and on without any kind of plot or theme. This game gets more challenging as you progress, and the story gets more and more interesting. You learn about the Wing Commander universe, because you are interacting with it. You become part of the game. I have a complete series of Wing Commander game play videos from Wing Commander I to Wing Commander Prophecy. You can watch the first video, and it will lead you to Wing Commander Prophecy. The best way to know how anything is by watching a video about it, because it shows you something a picture can never describe.
I also have videos on how you can run the Dosbox emulator, so you can play old games like these. Here is the link
Dosbox Emulator Tutorial .
Wing Commander (1990) complete playlist with Secret Missions 1 and 2.
Wing Commander (1990) complete playlist with Secret Missions 1 + 2 Link
Wing Commander (1990) Video