Wing Commander: The Gaming Standards
To celebrate the launch of Wing Commander and Wing Commander 2 on Good Old Games today, I went through and dug up a series of YouTube clips from a series called The Gaming Standards, which looks at the history of the first Wing Commander, the man (Chris Roberts) who created it, and the things that influenced its development:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kazfB2cZYzE&w=480&h=390]
The Gaming Standards, Part 1
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB8szuwUjOc&w=480&h=390]
The Gaming Standards, Part 2
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEScfdQ8sWI&w=480&h=390]
The Gaming Standards, Part 3
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKbQtVoqtgI&w=480&h=390]
The Gaming Standards, Part 4
That’s about it for Wing Commander-related material, Dragons and Dragonettes; hopefully you’ve been checking out all the tasty morsels at the Wing Commander CIC and have enjoyed those too. And if you haven’t already, head on over to GOG and grab yourself a copy of the games!
Nice reviews, although he has an obsession with death early on. The frame rate could have been better in the videos he recorded, especially the older games. Chuck Yeager’s Advanced Flight Trainer and Jetfighter II ran extremely smooth (15+ FPS) on my system at the time. Wing Commander was only slightly more disappointing in frame rate, as my CPU was 16 MHz. You knew you needed to get a faster CPU when Wing Commander needed to run just a bit smoother! Same with Ultima VI…
Someone should code or use an existing engine that matches Wing Commander’s gameplay. It could create its own data files that match the effects of the originals through careful observation and comparison. The flight physics and controls (UI) would take first priority, attacking and defending maneuvers (AI) second and missions (story) third. Between missions plot segments could be played to heighten the action based on how crazy you had acted, or who had died.
Where are all the Wing Commander engines? Wipeout? F-Zero? Oolite?