Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger (MS-DOS)

Developer:

Origin

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Release Date:

1994

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Systems:

DOS, Windows, Mac, 3DO, PlayStation

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger! Not to be confused with 80s hard rock anthem Eye of the Tiger.

With a title like that you might assume that it's the third game in Chris Roberts' Wing Commander series, but developer Origin had been been busy in the three years since Wing Commander II, producing three spin-offs. There was Wing Commander Academy, which was basically a mission generator for WC2, Wing Commander: Privateer, a space trading/combat sim along the lines of Elite, and Wing Commander: Armada, a strategy game with dogfighting. Oh plus there was 1993's Strike Commander, which doesn't have anything to do with Wing Commander except the name, dogfighting, and it being produced by Chris Roberts at Origin.

I've heard a few numbers for how much Wing Commander III cost, like $5 million and $10 million, but $4 million seems the most plausible to me. Either way it was apparently the highest budget video game ever when it came out, which is funny considering that it's a space combat sim. It really shows how much things have changed since 1994. Oh hang on, I've just done the research and it turns out that the highest budget video game of all time is currently Chris Roberts' space combat sim Star Citizen, which has raised $400 million.

The reason this game cost so much is because the series had progressed from floppy disks to four CDs packed with live-action full-motion video, with real Hollywood actors. The game was meant to be taken seriously and required some serious hardware to run, like a Pentium-based multimedia PC with a good SVGA video card and a double-speed CD drive, or a 3DO console. A couple of years later it got a release on the shiny new PlayStation as well, but no Sega CD or Amiga CD32 ports for this one. It almost got ported to the Jaguar, Saturn and M2 as well, but those versions were later cancelled... and not because the game wasn't selling well. In fact this was a massive success despite the fact that so few people had machines capable of running it well, and they were soon making a sequel with an even bigger budget.

SPOILER WARNING: I'll be playing the first few missions and I won't be spoiling anything past that, but these are story heavy space sims and you might end up reading something here you don't want to know about the first two games.

Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi (MS-DOS)

Developer:

Origin

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Release Date:

1991

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Systems:

DOS, Windows, FM Towns

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing PC space sim Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi, which is somehow only the second one of these games I've played. I covered the original Wing Commander back in 2014, but my site's been utterly Wing Commanderless since then.

The Wing Commander series was Chris Roberts' first space saga, coming before the Starlancer games and Star Citizen. In fact it came before the X-Wing series, FreeSpace, Star Fox... even Sonic the Hedgehog (though that last one's not actually a space sim as far as I'm aware). This particular Wing Commander game was old enough to almost get ported to the SNES and Mega Drive/Genesis... but it wasn't. In fact it's the only one of the mainline games to never get a console or handheld port. It did get a release on the FM Towns computer at least, which was well suited to the game considering that it's basically a 386 PC.

I have played the game before, a long time ago, but I don't remember playing very far, probably because it kicked my ass. And this would've been back when I was actually getting some space sim practice! It'd be fair to say I'm a little rusty right now, but I'll give it a fair shot and see if I can at least earn the right to fly the second type of spacefighter.

SPOILER WARNING: I'll only be playing the first few missions and I won't spoil anything that comes after them.

Freelancer (PC)

Developer:

Digital Anvil

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Release Date:

2003

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Systems:

PC

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This week on Super Adventures I'm having a go of PC Elite 'em up Freelancer. I've been meaning to write about this on my site for years but other games kept taking its place in the queue and it eventually got shoved to the back burner. But I played this game to completion back when it was new and I'm hyped to finally get around to jumping back into the Sirius Sector for some simulated space combat.

The game's by Digital Anvil, founded by Wing Commander developer Chris Roberts, who's probably better known these days as the man space sim fans keep throwing money at in the hopes he'll someday give them Star Citizen. Microsoft bought Digital Anvil in 2000, a few months after buying Bungie, but Freelancer escaped Halo's fate of becoming Xbox exclusive. Instead it remained PC exclusive, which still kind of sucks for console owners. If the Dreamcast could handle Starlancer, I bet the newer consoles could've managed the sequel.

Like Star Citizen, Freelancer promised a lot of ambitious features, like a dynamic galaxy with fluctuating stock prices, supporting thousands of players at once! And then the final game had a static galaxy supporting 128 players. It supports exactly 1 player these days, as the official servers were shut down 5 years after release, but I'm sure fans are still running galaxies of their own. It's all irrelevant to me though as I'm only going to be checking out the single player.

(Click the screenshots to gaze upon them in their full 1280x960 majesty).

Star Wars: X-Wing - Collectors' CD-ROM (MS-DOS)

Today on Super Adventures it is my privilege to bore you with my thoughts about the first hour or two of Star Wars: X-Wing: Space Combat Simulator: Collectors' CD-ROM '94! No, no, come back, I've brought gifs as well.

A few months ago I said I was going to bring back balance to the site this year, and this post should finally pull the Star Wars games even with the Star Trek games (in quantity if not quality). Actually I suppose this one should count three times, as LucasArts kept rereleasing it with a new engine and different graphics throughout the 90s. It only ever came out on PC and Mac though for whatever reason (unlike the rival Wing Commander games which made it everywhere).

This was actually the very first Star Wars game developed in-house at LucasArts, by an independent team that later formed Totally Games and went on to make a bunch more X-Wing space sims (plus a Star Trek one) before kinda dropping off the map. After 1999's Freespace 2 bombed there just wasn't as much demand for space combat games like this any more. I can't help but wonder if the genre might have lived longer though if console gamers had gotten to play the best of them.

Wing Commander (Amiga CD32)

The first 'W' game on Super Adventures this year is... Wing Commander, on the Amiga CD32!

Yeah I realise that the original PC DOS version is likely to be a better experience, but I got this version bundled with a CD32 years back (on the very same disc as that piece of crap Dangerous Streets in fact), and I really should give it a try at least once.

Wing Commander is one of the big games from the early 90s like Doom and Myst that made the PC into a serious rival to the 16-bit game machines of the era, with its advanced 256 colour VGA graphics and... music. Sound cards existed a couple of years before Wing Commander, but this inspired people to buy their first Sound Blaster and turn their sensible personal computer into a gaming platform. Amiga owners were already jealous of the Genesis/Mega Drive at this point, they were getting ready to be jealous of the upcoming SNES, and now they had to be jealous of really expensive 386 PCs too! Sure all three systems eventually got a Wing Commander to call their own a few years down the line, but none could pull the game off with the same speed and visuals as the PC. Probably.

Anyway this is going to be the same deal as ever: I'll play it for an hour or two, share my opinions of how it's been so far, and then leave a comment box at the bottom for you to tell me that it's a good game and my 'review' sucks.

Star Trek: Bridge Commander (PC)

Today I'm playing Bridge Commander, a Star Trek space sim by Totally Games, the makers of the legendary X-Wing and TIE Fighter series, unarguably the best space dogfighting games EVER MADE. Well okay maybe that's debatable, but it's undeniable that people seem to like them and if this turns out to be even 50% as good then it'll be 1000% better than 99% of the Trek games I've played so far.

I like how it boldly proclaims 'YOU are the Captain. You have the Conn.' on the cover and has an empty captain-shaped hole to show that yes it's actually YOU commanding this ship! Plus you've suddenly become a bald man with a strong resemblance to Patrick Stewart and the crew are concerned that if you lean any further you'll fall off your chair.

Starwing / Star Fox (SNES)

Now that's how you do a title screen.

On February 21st 1993, Nintendo released in Japan a game so advanced that it came with its own own on-board RISC co-processor and so revolutionary that it introduced true 3D shaded-polygon gameplay to console gamers for the first time (probably). Anyway, that game was called Star Fox (except for in the countries where it was called Starwing), and seeing as it's just turned 20 years old I figured it'd be a good time to give it a look.

I can't say I haven't played this one before, especially as there's screenshots I've taken from it scattered across the site, but I can say that I haven't really played it properly. I've never last much longer than the first level before I got distracted by something and turned it off.

Starglider 2 (Amiga)

Today I thought I'd take a look at ancient 80s space shooter Starglider 2 and it's already been worth it just because of this art at the start. That picture is just plain awesome. Fortunately the developers realised that a some people would have to eventually skip past the picture to play the game, or to do whatever else people used home computers for in the 80s, so they thoughtfully provided a poster of it in the box.

Back in the day the developers, Argonaut Software, were known for their 3d graphics know-how and a few years after Starglider 2 was released they were hired by Nintendo to develop the Super FX chip for the SNES and program a certain famous space shooter starring talking animals in spiky starfighters. So yeah this game is pretty much Star Fox's older brother.

WarpSpeed (Genesis/Mega Drive)

This one was a request, which could either mean it's a hidden gem, or a steaming pile of shite someone wants to inflict on me for a laugh. I've already got a feeling I know which way it's going to go, but I'll give it a fair shot to prove me wrong.

I'm reasonably sure the game has nothing to do with Star Trek, the developers must have just thought that 'Warp Speed' sounded cool. It gives the impression that the game's going to be like Star Fox... in fast forward!

Star Crusader (MS-DOS) - Guest Post

That's one ugly-ass title screen.

Star Trek: 25th Anniversary (MS-DOS)

I just found out it's the 46th anniversary of Star Trek, so I though I'd celebrate this monumental occasion by playing an original series Trek game. Okay maybe I'm a few days late, but apparently the original version of the game came out an entire year late (and the other versions even later), so hey I'm not doing so bad.

This is the PC/Amiga/Mac game I'm playing by the way. There's two other games with the same name, one for NES and one on the Game Boy, but it seems that they're all entirely different.

Star Wars: TIE Fighter - Collectors' CD-ROM (PC)

GOOD RETRO GAME WEEK, day 6.

I'm playing the final release of the game, running on the X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter engine with texture mapped graphics, and music from the movies instead of the fantastic original soundtrack.

Usually I'm happy when a movie tie-ins feature the music from their films, and the Star Wars soundtrack is awesome, but it is massively overused in the games. Plus TIE Fighter's original music was dynamic, adapting to the gameplay.

Star Wars Arcade (32X)

Another 32X 3d space game! It's actually making a decent attempt at playing the theme music here.

Stellar Assault SS (Saturn)

Surprise! It's Stellar Assault again, only this time on the Sega Saturn. Lets see how it compares.

Stellar Assault / Shadow Squadron (32X)

Or Shadow Squadron if you're in the US.

DarXide (32X)

Damn, those textured polygons look a bit ass don't they? Wait, textured polygons on the 32X?