To say Origin was ahead of their time is quite an understatement, Wing Commander proves that. It is almost pointless to bring that back up. Retro gamers that were gaming around the “Origin Era” on PC’s know this well. For everyone else, Origin was this development company that was doing stuff gamers only dreamed of. Take Wing Commander for instance, it was released in 1990. It was basically World War II in space and gamers ate it up. There was an actual story told in the game with animated cut scenes that were on topic. For the most part, previous attempts at this style of storytelling was left in the manuals. Or only sparsely shown on screen with static images of low quality if memory allowed. Origin went above and beyond this by having the cut scenes actually related to what was going on. Then there is the actual gameplay to keep early adopters interested.

More than meets the eye

Wing Commander was not just cool cinemas between levels. No, there is an actual game here that was quite awesome. Many have compared the Wing Commander games to Star Wars. In many respects, such as overall story, I could see, somewhat. It would have been awesome had LucasArts done something similar with at least some of their Star Wars games.

Wing Commander is still a sim

Most of the game is played from within the cockpit of a space ship armed to the teeth. Your actions here actually effect the outcome of the storyline that is told between rounds. Win and you get an appropriate cinema. Same for losing or going way above the minimum during a mission. Depending on if you defied orders or not to perform that action of valor in battle your cinema has consequences. Accordingly, you receive a butt chewing or a ceremony.

It has been a while, suit up and ship out

Wing Commander was a seminal release when it hit nearly 30 years ago. If you have not played it yet then hit eBay or Amazon and see all of the various platforms it was released on, mission packs and sequels (Wing Commander III on 3DO was AWESOME).

Carl Williams

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