Wing Commander (video game)
Wing Commander is the first game in Chris Roberts' space flight simulation Wing Commander franchise by Origin Systems. The game was first released for MS-DOS on September 26, 1990, and was later ported to the Amiga, CD32 (256-color), Sega CD and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and re-released for the PC as Wing Commander I in 1994. An enhanced remake Super Wing Commander was made for the 3DO in 1994, and later ported to the Macintosh.
"Raptor heavy fighter" redirects here. For the USAF stealth fighter, see Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor. For other topics, see raptor (disambiguation).Wing Commander
Origin Systems
Chris Roberts
Warren Spector
Chris Roberts
Jeff George
George Alistair Sanger
David Govett
Two expansion packs for the game were released: Wing Commander: The Secret Missions in November 1990 and Wing Commander: The Secret Missions 2: Crusade in March 1991.[3]
The game was considered a major step forward for space dogfight games, featuring graphics, audio, and a story campaign that invited comparison to the Star Wars films. Set in the year 2654 and characterized by Chris Roberts as "World War II in space", it features a multinational cast of pilots from the "Terran Confederation" flying missions against the predatory, aggressive Kilrathi, a feline warrior race (heavily inspired by the Kzinti of Larry Niven's Known Space universe).[4]
History[edit]
Development[edit]
Wing Commander was originally titled Squadron[9] and later renamed Wingleader.[10] During development for Wing Commander, the EMM386 memory manager the game used would give an exception when the user exited the game. It would print out a message similar to "EMM386 Memory manager error..." with additional information. Before the team could isolate and fix the error and they considered a work-around, one of the game's programmers, Ken Demarest, hex-edited the memory manager so it displayed a different message. Instead of the error message, it printed "Thank you for playing Wing Commander".[11]
This workaround was removed before shipping the game, once the problem was fixed.[12]
Release[edit]
Wing Commander shipped in 1990 for PC/DOS as the initial platform[13] and came with an instruction booklet styled as a shipboard magazine, Claw Marks.[14] It provided tactical suggestions, statistics on fighters and weapons both Kilrathi and Terran, capsule biographies of notable pilots on both sides of the line, and general shipboard news (such as the discontinuation of the popular comic strip Hornet's Nest, due to the recent death of its artist, Lt. Larry "Tooner" Dibbles). Notable contributors to the Claw Marks magazine include Captain Aaron Allston, Major Warren Spector, and Col. Chris Roberts.[15] The game also shipped with a set of blueprints for the game's four playable fighters, the Hornet, Scimitar, Rapier, and Raptor.[16]