The History of Wing Commander and Nintendo - Ambitious Ports and a Lost Game
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- čas přidán 1. 11. 2020
- Wing Commander and Nintendo aren't exactly synonymous but the two do share a fascinating history. From ambitious ports spanning two systems and a finished game that was never released, join us to explore the history of this relationship.
Special Thanks to WCNews.com for their incredible archival work regarding this series.
Written and Produced by John Rairdin
Select gameplay footage from World of Longplays and Ace1000ks1975
Details in the credits.
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#WingCommander #Nintendo #SNES - Hry
My mom purchased wing commander for the SNES for me because it was on sale for $15 at a Woolworth's store. When I first played the game, I hated it. I was young and couldn't really understand what to do. Since I had nothing else to play, I stuck with the game and learned to play and got much better. It was pretty difficult for me, but this game opened up my love for space games.
I received WC1 for SNES as an unexpected birthday gift from my aunt in 1992 . I made it an effort to buy Secret Missions as soon as it came out. As soon as PCs became affordable in the next few years I bought all of the games and fought to modify my CONFIG.sys and AUTOEXEC.bat files to make WC1 and 2 work (who out there remembers expanded vs. extended memory). Couldn’t play 1 on PC until Kilrathi Saga since the clock speed was too fast. Nevertheless I acquired all the games like Privateer and Armada which played well. Wonderful times!
Nostalgia just hit me hard. I remember playing this on the Amiga with a joy stick. It was awesome.
I miss Wing Commander :(
You know the series creator Chris roberts is developing a spiritual successor?
It was my top favorite game on SNES when I was a teenage kid, it feels like being in WW2 as a Fighter Pilot stationed on a US Navy Aircraft-Carrier in the Pacific against Japan, only, it was in space, got it from my mom as a Christmas present, I played it for years and loved it...
In another Wing Commander game I hardly ever heard of, you get to pilot a Kilrathi fighter for a few mission, just about three sorties though...
I saw "Wing Commander" at an indie computer store that had a large display screen and a computer that ran it (and three other games) from a Magneto-Optical drive. It was stunning to see and "trial play" it from the keyboard + joystick. I bought it as soon as I got a "Windows 3.1"-level IBM PC clone computer. Getting it to run and keep running was a challenge, which taught me about how to configure my pedestrian computer. Buying the Sound Blaster sound card was the next thing to get, since the PC speaker was more like noise maker. My joystick was the cheap charlie CH Flight Stick, since Thrustmaster was just coming to market, and the computer was a TOOL not a Toy.
I would kill for a Switch port of the SNES Wing Commanders (including the lost one!)
Man imagine if a rom of wing commander 2 could be tracked down.
The SNES game is the most unexpected power trip ever made. That constant 1 on 1 dogfighting, as you gradually score more kills than any other pilot...it's like Larry Niven directed Top Gun, then SEGA got the console rights for a proper VS mode.
Even if it was a necessary compromise, it felt like it fit a space opera - add a Queen soundtrack, and you'd have the best Flash Gordon experience ever made.
On the bright side the one fighter limitation makes Secret Missions less infuriating than the PC version! The new launch animation was cool looking but it always bugged me because that's not how the Tiger's Claw launches fighters, they launch from tubes on the sides as seen in the game and they are only retrieved by the flat-top hangar bay.
Prophecy on GBA is REALLY damn impressive. The multiplayer was shockingly good.
I want someone to dump that Wing Commander 2 port so badly. It has to be out there somewhere.
Nice video, been a fan of Wing Commander since I was a kid playing the first game on PC. Still a shame what happened to the series and how EA just abandoned it, one of the coolest and most interesting IP they own. Nice to see some info on the series I didn't know about.
played this to death back in the day, on the SNES of course
Wing Commander Prophecy on the GBA was my introduction to the series. It is a pretty solid game, though a few of the escort missions are truly brutal even so far as escort missions go.
IDK why they didn't just port Wing Commander 1 to the GBA, would have been a better fit.
Oh man, growing up I was aware of this series but only ever got a chance to play Privateer when I was just a kid. My life would've been SO different if I had had a chance to play this on SNES!
13:00 I really REALLY wanna know how they got such good 3D animation on the game boy advance. They must have done something special, because whenever I go digging I cannot find anything that says the GBA had any sort of 3D acceleration, not opengl or direct3D or an FX chip or anything. In fact technical info on the GBA is limited and theres nothing about how it renders. Its the one area of trivia the internet cannot seem to provide.
People also managed to port quake and the original pc tomb raider to gba... Probably just do everything on the CPU!
I honestly think the SNES port of Wing Commander is one of the best PC to console ports of all time. It's one of the few ports that was better than the original. The graphics were better, the difficulty wasn't as insanely high as the PC version, and it was just all around more fun. I also got into the series by playing the SNES version as the first game, and I'm glad I did. I might not have been so into it had my first experience been the PC game.
Excellent video.
Great video 👍🏼
Great video! I really hope someone finds a review copy of WC2!
This is a franchise I associate with PC gaming and the 3DO, funnily enough. the port of Wing Commander 3 for the 3DO is almost PC perfect, and Super Wing Commander for the console actually put in voice acting and extra animations for all the dialogue with everyone aboard the Tiger's claw. I remember my dad HATED super wing commander because it made him think of "Clutch Cargo" and it lacked Mark Hamil, so he wanted nothing to do with it.
My dad is a very shallow man when it comes to what he likes and dislikes in video games and I kinda hate it.
They could work a deal out with Nintendo to release WC2 as an exclusive "snes classic". That's what they did with StarFox 2.
The fact wc2 never got released is really tragic
I never knew they were gonna release a WC2 port on the SNES. I was a crazed WC fan back then, and would have killed for a copy lol.
Music was superior on the SNES than on the PC by faaar.
I had to call the Nintendo Hotline to learn how to freaking land the fighter. Only game I knew on the SNES or any console to use Select+R and L as modifiers.
Wing Commander never had permadeath (at least on the PC). If you died, you just reloaded your last save. You could save and load between missions in the barracks. Sure, you could play the game as if it had permadeath by just erasing your saves if you died, but I don't know anyone who did that, including myself. That said, I guess it's possible the SNES version had permadeath, but I wouldn't know since I only played the WC series on the PC.
To clarify I was refering to your wingmates, in that if they were shot down they didn't just come back for the next mission. Rather you went to their funeral and they were gone for the rest of the game. The player themselves only had permideath if you forgot to write down your password since the SNES version didn't have saves ;)
@@NinWRTV Ah yes, in that case, you're right. I remember murdering all my wingmen just to see if I could. I couldn't kill every single one of them (you could only fly with some wingmen in some systems, some of which were only on the "winning" or "losing" paths), but I did a number on them.
i bought wing commander but it wouldnt work on my tandy 1000 so my first experience was on the SNES like you..
Wtf. How was Wing Commander 2 not dumped?!? That's freaking tragic. What a waste.
holy shit i was expecting the gba version to way worse than it actually is, like a painfully pathetic version of the original wing commander but with another name slapped on it, boy was i fucking wrong whew
Man this new didn't even mention Star Citizen once
what does this video have anything to do with star citizen
@@11th_defender51 spiritual successor of sorts. Even the same dev chris Robert's. I know it wouldn't get its own section cuz nintendo but I thought they'd mention it in some capacity
@@captainfach The problem with star citizen is that they'll only release it when funding reaches zero, so probably not in the next decade
@@11th_defender51 "anything" ?!? Origin launched cult space combat and RPG games in the 1990's. What they managed to code at the time was truly insane, unbelievable. When Chris Roberts comes back years later to make another space combat game... well shit yes : Star Citizen has a LOT to do with Wing Commander. It's his big brother 30-35 years later.
Morality : PC and Amiga were better in 1990 than Nintendo is in 2020. Why do they even bother porting such games if it's to destroy what made them cult.
Don't call expansions DLC. It is insulting. They were called expansions for a reason.
Incredible franchise. Thank the maker it hasn’t been appropriated by the woke. Who do we need to pay off to get the WC2 SNES rom?
Go back to your antiwoke safe space, kid.
Wing Commander celebrated human diversity and flipped off far right authoritarians back before you touched your first controller.