Mythic Entertainment working on DOSboxed version of Wing Commander (updated)
Updated with new tweets from Barnett; original post below. First, it looks like he’ll be presenting the idea to BioWare honcho Ray Muzyka today:
Come on, Dr. Ray! Come on, EA legal!
And he even teases the possibility of a free release:
Too good to be true?
This news is just on fire, and it’s great to see Mythic and Barnett pushing as hard as they are to get this one out the door. Because if they can, expect to see the rest of the Wing Commanders, and of course the Ultimas, following in its wake.
If you were following Paul Barnett’s Twitter feed yesterday and today, you’ll have noticed some exceedingly exciting news. Granted, it’s nothing to do directly with Ultima, but I would direct the good reader who hasn’t already heard that Mythic Entertainment and the folks behind DOSbox have been talking to get themselves up to speed on the matter. (Yours truly has played a small role in it.)
It started yesterday with this heady news:
I missed Wing Commander's 20th birthday?
Which was followed a while later by a call to arms of sorts:
If you're on Twitter, do this!
And hear this, ye Dragons and Dragonettes; if you have a Twitter account, click the link above and retweet this message! I’ll explain why shortly.
Moving on, the news this morning was even more incredible:
This is promising...
Followed shortly thereafter by:
...and here's hoping this gets passed!
Now, what does all this mean?
Well, on the face of it, it means that Mythic is working hard to get a DOSboxed version of Wing Commander built and (now) approved by EA’s legal department.
But as I said above, any Dragon or Dragonette with a Twitter account should immediately retweet the tweet by Paul Barnett I indicated above, because it goes to demonstrate that Ultima fans are every bit as hot to trot, every bit as keen on a re-release of the series, as are Wing Commander fans for their favourite Origin Systems title(s).
If Mythic can get a Wing Commander game DOSboxed and pushed out onto Steam, Impulse, or Good Old Games, that puts them in a very good position to do the same with any or all of the Ultima titles. Even Savage Empire and Martian Dreams.
Update: Welcome, Blue’s News readers!
It’s not Mythic anymore, they’re (EA) Bioware, please refer to them as such (for one, the official EA Bioware Facebook page lists “Ultima Online” as one of their products, evidence enough for me).
Err yeah well, it’s true Bioware and Mythic have officially “merged”… but then their website still list them as Mythic Entertainment so…
http://www.mythicentertainment.com/index.php
Aye, here’s how it basically works:
Mythic, in other words, remains a (somewhat) distinct entity. Technically, I should be calling them Bioware Mythic, but I’ll wait for their website to change names before I bother going through my tagging taxonomy and changing every occurrence of the old name to the new one.
Call it headache avoidance.
They _need_ to release this on Good Old Games. It belongs there. So does pretty much every other Origin-release ever. Come on, EA.
I’d rather see this at GOG also. Hopefully if they got WC on there and it sold well the rest of the back catalog would follow. EA needs to be on GOG for Origin and Bullfrog alone.
Any release would be welcome but Mythic ought to be looking at rereleasing the Kilrathi Saga versions of the WC games in my opinion which already run in Windows but might need a bit of updating. They had remastered digital soundtracks which are a big improvement for anyone who doesn’t own an MT-32.
On the same note:
If they ever get their hands on the rights to Wing Commander IV, then somebody needs to point them to the ultra-rare high quality dual-sided DVD version of that game.
It required specialized hardware to run at the time of its release, but the fans have released patches to get around that.
I don’t care where they release it as much; I just want to see it released. GoG is a good choice, and probably more…er…contextually relevant. But Steam is also a good choice; EA has an extensive catalog of games there already, and Steam has a pretty big user base.
I also wouldn’t mind seeing the games on Impulse, since Aiera is an affiliate thereof…but any digital distribution portal will do, as far as I’m concerned.
As to Wing Commander 4…I agree, the version with the high quality video would be the best one to release; these days, it wouldn’t really be that much of an issue on the hardware side either, most likely.
But that will depend on what Mythic has in their library of Origin games, which I am led to believe is not as extensive as anyone would like it to be. I’ve already had confirmation that they don’t have a copy of the Kilrathi Saga kicking around, for example. That’s okay, though, because this release is probably as much about getting Wing Commander released as it is about getting the whole DOSboxing concept past EA’s legal department.