After far too long a wait, GOG.com has released the fourth game in the Wing Commander series; Wing Commander 4: The Price of Freedom is available for the steal-of-a-deal price of $5.99 right now!

Colonel Christopher Blair, former savior of the Confederation, has hung up his spurs and retired as a farmer on a desert world. While Blair has been enjoying the start of his well-earned retirement, a new menace has surfaced. Tensions between the outer colonies and inner Confed worlds are higher than ever. As the newly-reactivated Colonel Blair, you have to decide how to save the Confederation–or if it should be saved at all.

At the time of its release, it was the largest and most expensive video game made yet with an over-the-roof budget of $12 million. The cast was filled with SF superstars like Mark Hamill as Christopher Blair, John Rhys-Davies as James “Paladin” Taggart, Thomas F. Wilson as Todd “Maniac” Marshall, and Malcolm McDowell as Admiral Geoffrey Tolwyn. Once again, this ragged band of heroes has to save the galaxy. The Wing Commander series captured perfectly the feeling of being both a game and a movie, and Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom is arguably the most cinematic and epic game of the whole series.

The also released Darwinia for the somewhat higher price of $9.99. Which…okay.

Naturally, both the Wing Commander CIC and Pix have put up a plethora of articles celebrating the release, and both sites have also given acknowledgement to Origin fan and gifted programmer HCl, who led the team of Wing Commander fans that went right back to the game’s source and fixed it up to work on modern systems.

The Wing Commander CIC is also hosting what they are calling the “DVD Patch“, which upgrades both the Windows and DOS versions of the game to the “spectacular DVD version”, which includes a lot of full-motion video cutscenes.

And don’t forget to check in on #Wingnut; I’m sure the CIC crew will be lighting up that particular IRC channel in celebration today.