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Wing Commander 3 was one of the best games in the Wing Commander series, and it was the last game for the Kilrathi Saga. The system requirements for this game was pretty high at the time having a minimum requirement of a 486 DX-33 mhz system. This was at a time when most households had 386 SX/DX and 486 SX based computers. 486 DX computers were very expensive in 1994, a 486 DX cost about $2000+. From 1994 onward, the games required more and more power processors to run decently. I bought this game in 1995, and I ran it on my Pentium 100 computer. It ran pretty well.
The game graphics were very different from Wing Commander 1 and Wing Commander 2. Wing Commander 3 took advantage of CD-ROM technology to its fullest. Meaning, it used mpeg video technology and coupled it with the massive storage space of CD-ROM disks. Back on those days, a hard drive was typically anywhere from 250 to 500 megabytes, and a CD-ROM could hold 640 megabytes of data. A CD-ROM could hold more data than most hard drives at the time. Wing Commander III came with 4 CDs, so you had to swap CDs, because there was no way to install 2560 mbs in a hard drive which was about 500 mbs. The game itself required about 20 mbs of hard drive space, and much of this space was used to save games and core game files. You cannot write on a ROM disk, so the hard drive was useful in providing for this need. The mid 1990s was a time when a lot of interactive games were produced, because CD-ROMs was becoming a standard feature on all computer produced from 1993 onward.
Wing Commander 3 had a all star Hollywood cast with the main character being Mark Hamill from the Star Wars Trilogies. Originally, Chris Roberts wanted to a make a space simulator based on Star Wars. Unfortunately, Lucas films never gave him the rights to do that, so he created the Wing Commander franchise. I guess, this is why Mark Hamil was made the main character of Wing Commander 3 and Wing Commander 4. The game ran at a resolution of 640 x 480 which was very high at the time. Most games in this period ran at 320 x 200, but the higher standards made this game standout. Wing Commander III had a very good story line, like its predecessors. Coupled with interactive video technology, it made you want to complete each mission to see the next story. Kind of like reading a book or watching a movie. Wing Commander 3 cost about $4 million to produce, because it had a lot of famous actors in it. You also had professional camera crews who took hours of video clips. That was quite a big chunk of money for producing a game at the time. This was at a time when most games had budgets of $100,000 or less. The first computer games in the early 1980s were made by a single person with a shoe string budget.
As technology became available to game developers, the more complicated it got. The more people that were required to produce it thus having bigger budgets. The video and computer gaming industries wasn’t a spec on the map in the early 1980s, and now it is a multi-billion dollar industry. It is a $91 billion industry today, and it is bigger than Hollywood now.
The simulator model for this game was made to match the cinematic scenes of the game. Wing Commander 1 and 2 also used the same techniques. This was at a time when the video footage looked much better than the actual video game play. Even on the first Playstation, the video clips looked so much better than the actual game scene. It wasn’t until the early 2000s when cinematic scenes matched game scenes. I like how Chris Roberts integrated these aspects to all of his games. The simulator model also ran very smoothly on a decent computer. Although, when you were in an environment where there were surface textures, like being in the ship or on planetary mission. You get major slow downs when you aren’t in the blackness of space environment. That was due to the technological limitations at the time. Despite its minor problems, it was a great game. You should try out this game, and it can be run on Dosbox. I bought the original CDs for this game on Amazon.com, and it didn’t run as smoothly as it did compared to my old Pentium computer. Never the less, I was able to run it and make a video on it.
One thought on “Wing Commander III”
Great overview, thank you