I actually never played any Wing Commander game but I was told it was a pretty big franchise back in the day... as in back when Battletech and Babylon 5 were up there in popularity with Star Trek and Star Wars, at least among the truly depraved science fiction fans in that age of the world known as the nineties.
But on September 26th, 1990, the first Wing Commander game was released on something called MS-DOS.
Over the next decade, four more Wing Commander games, numerous expansion packs (before the era of DLC they called them expansion packs you see, your gameplay expands as your wallet deflates), several spinoff games, an animated televion series, ten novels and a Hollywood movie starring Freddie Prinze Jr, Matthew Lillard and that immediately recognizable old French guy that's in lots of movies.
Wing Commander then sort of just... faded away as a franchise. Games were cancelled, the movie just wasn't that good and the franchise, from what I can tell, was unable to move on narratively from the primary focus of the franchise which was a long ongoing conflict with a race of aggressive, expansionist furballs known as the Kilrathi Empire. Plus other games were released like Colony Wars, Freespace and Homeworld.
But Wing Commander was one of the first games (if not the first popular game) that popularized starfighter combat in PC games. It's weird talking about a franchise I know almost nothing about but... maybe I'll have a chance to check it out now and for cheap as well.
The entire franchise is currently 75% off on Good Old Games.
Also...
Check out that Full Motion Video where Luke Skywalker and Gimli shared the same stage.
And an HD Reconstruction of the 1999 Wing Commander film
But on September 26th, 1990, the first Wing Commander game was released on something called MS-DOS.
Over the next decade, four more Wing Commander games, numerous expansion packs (before the era of DLC they called them expansion packs you see, your gameplay expands as your wallet deflates), several spinoff games, an animated televion series, ten novels and a Hollywood movie starring Freddie Prinze Jr, Matthew Lillard and that immediately recognizable old French guy that's in lots of movies.
Wing Commander then sort of just... faded away as a franchise. Games were cancelled, the movie just wasn't that good and the franchise, from what I can tell, was unable to move on narratively from the primary focus of the franchise which was a long ongoing conflict with a race of aggressive, expansionist furballs known as the Kilrathi Empire. Plus other games were released like Colony Wars, Freespace and Homeworld.
But Wing Commander was one of the first games (if not the first popular game) that popularized starfighter combat in PC games. It's weird talking about a franchise I know almost nothing about but... maybe I'll have a chance to check it out now and for cheap as well.
The entire franchise is currently 75% off on Good Old Games.
A look inside the cockpit of the famous Wing Commander series
A look inside the cockpit of the famous Wing Commander series
www.gog.com
Also...
Check out that Full Motion Video where Luke Skywalker and Gimli shared the same stage.
And an HD Reconstruction of the 1999 Wing Commander film