Wing Commander III was the trifecta as far as the FMV sequences and voice acting. You got 4 of the most talented sci-fi actors of the day up to today in this game. You got Mark Hamill (Star Wars - Luke Skywalker) you got Malcom McDowell (Star Trek: Generations, Clockwork Orange) John Rhys-Davies (Indiana Jones, Lord of the Rings Trilogy - Gimli), and Tom Wilson (All of the Tannens from Back to the Future Trilogy). This is a whose who list of A-List Sci-Fi talent in game! That in itself was something.
The addition of these actors really worked well for this game. It was truly groundbreaking to perform the cut-scenes with well-known actors. However, the script of this work is not good enough and has major problems.
Not just my favorite of the series, but probably my favorite game period, Wing Commander: Privateer. It's also what got me into keeping "retro" systems. I had been working on PCs since the XT, but was happy to sell off and move on to the next new thing. With Privateer, from then on I made sure I always had a system that would run it, even after DOSbox.
Wing Commander games were my main incentive of upgrading my PC in the 90s. Unlike these days, the leaps in technology were huge back then because we were at the early stages and transitioning from 2D to 3D.
Awesome vid! Wing Commander was a big part of my life for a good number of years, and i upgraded several computers during the 90s so i could keep up with the later games. Watching this was very nostalgic, thanks for taking me back!
@@arugulatarsus now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time, to paraphrase Obi-Wan Kenobi 😉 Thanks man, I appreciate the kind words 😊 Seems like a lifetime ago
Nice review. I played all of them on PCs and witnessed the evolution you mentioned. I started with a 486DX33, my first PC… no sound card…and used the turbo button to slow it down for the first tittles. Prophecy was played with a Voodoo 2, I miss those glide game days. Worth mentioning Freespace 1 and 2, amazing games and my favorite space games from those days. You should try and make a video about them…. Jewels forgotten by most retro gamers - I simply don’t see anybody showcasing them.
I played the demo mission for Prophecy endlessly. When I got to that same mission in the campaign, it was all muscle memory and I absolutely dominated.
A nice way to illustrate what a super exciting time it was when everything was moving so fast.! I played and have them all except III so now need to seek it out and give it a try.
Wing Commander II was the reason I bought a PC with soundblaster. That full speech intro blew me away. You didn't need the speech pack for the voiced intro but it added voiced wing mates and IIRC more voiced cutscenes
I remember being blown away by the graphics and fmv with wing commander prophecy on my cyrix 166+ with a 3dfx! I had the feeling being part of the game with the fmv! Impressive special effects for that time !
Great showcase not only for the evolution of pc's but for us as gamers. Also the evolution of development studios. Remember the games that bared the name of their creator on the cover? They made games they would like to play and no one made before. The wing commander games along with ultima series, wizardry, might and magic and kings quest evolved the overall presentation. Only Bethesda is near them today.
I have always thought of WC 3 as one of my favorite space flight sims. I never really experienced any issues with playing it, but I think my PC at the time was powerful enough and patched to better support running it in Win 98. I loved the stories and sub-plots. I have to admit to trying to get both of the leading ladies to hook up with my main guy, but never succeeded in getting both in the same game as rumored to be possible. The flight combat was very challenging, and it took me many hours to finally defeat one of the aces. Good times, albeit very frustrating. Great video sir!
I played WC1 when it was released on a 286, and kept installing it on every computer upgrade my family got until we got a Pentium. The game loaded up fine but when you started a mission you immediately died because you ran into the edge of the universe 😂 I was so glad to see that GOG fixed that with their release.
@@Koozwad Nope. For old folks like me Origin Systems was one of the all times great PC games company, along with Lucas Arts, Microprose and Sierra. I mean, Ultima series, Ultima Underworld series, Wing Commander series, Strike Commander, Crusader were all iconic games. This is also where Looking Glass studio started (System Shock, Thief series) and folks like Warren Spector (Deus Ex) and Chris Roberts (Wing Commander, Star Citizen). They were bought by EA around 1993-1994 and several years later they were dead (but not before they made one of the most impactful game and the first true MMORPG Ultima Online).
It's really amazing how the Wind Commander developers could take their games to the next level of experience, state of tech and excitement with every iteration of the series. Ah-h, the good old days of PC gaming 😁. Thanks for the story, Phil 😉👍!
Very interesting Video. I have never played the Wing Commander Series because when I was little I got scared away from flying games after I was not able to get beyond the training level in the canyon of the first Rebel Assault game. But now i am old and want to give the Wing Commander games a try . I want to experience the whole series on Win98Se retro gaming pc in the near feature.
Breakfast with Phil's. First time I saw Wing Commander was at a CopyFest™in 1991. I held the first one at my house. We were all Amiga users but one of the BBS operators had a 286 with sound and a good VGA card and I was very impressed with Wing Commander. It looked and played like the future. Wing Commander on the Amiga paled in comparison. It was one of the first times I started considering a PC as a main gaming rig.
man wing commander or the game that tried to be a movie (especially with 4) Wing commander 4 was the first PC game I nearly did a all-nighter on (I stopped at 5AM lol). I ran it on a Pentium 200mhz MMX with a S3 video card. ran great on full details the story pulled me right in!
Sadly, this franchise was never on my radar. The only games I played during the 90s were whatever my dad could pirate from co-workers, and later, whatever I had patience to download over dial-up.
Never got deep into the Wing Commander series but I love the way you used them as a reference for the evolution of pc gaming. I wonder which other alternative long going series you could have used to do this... Sierra games? Ultima?
Having played recently, I heavily suspect that it is not only the frame rate plagueing players in Wing Commander III, but that this game also has hit-detection issues, just like Wing Commander IV. Nevertheless, I love this game to death. When I got my first PC, a friend lent me his copy and I was fascinated. I also find that III just has the coolest looking ships of the entire series.
7 years time span was different back then. Now, the Radeon RX Vega 64 is 7 years old and still runs almost everything just fine; just Allan Wake 2 comes to mind as having problems.
Wow. What a great idea to use one game series to perform an IT history lecture. This should be a mandatory position for Z Generation students who just joined the IT science college :)
If memory serves I had a 386 SX 16 and my cousin had a DX 40 but I definitely remember what I thought of as a simulation on mine seemed like an arcade game on his.
WC1 and WC2 were awesome games for their time. It can be tough on a modern machine even using something like DOSBOX to get the speed quite right for them, especially on WC1! Even on the 486 DX2 66 MHz PC I had back then WC1 ran WAY too fast unless I used a DOS utility I had back then called "moslo" to help slow the machine down by wasting CPU cycles.
I've always been a huge wing commander fan (and am still hoping that squadron 42 will come out eventually) Unfortunately last time I tried to replay 3 & 4 with the GOG releases I had these strange jpystick issues where, when trying to make small adjustments, the joystick would sometimes input the opposite direction. It seemed like the input was sort of stuck in the direction of your last input and you had to push the joystick over that hump before your ship would turn the direciton you wanted it to. Could never figure out how to fix that. Might have to try again if it was some odd issue with the dosbox version at the time.
Joystick stuff was heavily improved on the DOSBox fork DOSBox ECE which is abandoned now though, however IIRC those improvements went into DOSBox Staging.
I think it would be great if NightDive could get permission to do a remaster of these either all 6 in a pack or 1-3, 4-6. All running in the modern Kex engine would be really awesome.
Wing Commander III - Heart of the Tiger & Wing Commander IV - The Price of Freedom were my favorites, Wing Commander V Prophecy, was a very nice addition for the series closure. Story wise WC 4 was the best, though, I ran these with my AMD K6-2 400 Mhz system with the following specs: AMD K6-2-400 Mhz EPox EP-MVP3G2+ 3x 128MB PC-100 Samsung Original Diamond Viper V550 AGP + TV-Out 16MB 2x Skywell Magic 3D II PLuS! 24MB< 2x 12MB @ 110Mhz in SLI. Creative labs Sound Blaster AWE64 with 1MB Sound Font memory Win98 SE A-Open 300 Watt PSU Something like this. WC 4 & 5 I later replayed with my intel Pentium !!!/E 650Mhz and a V3 3500 and this was a far better experience.
I also have the original retail version of wing commander prophecy. story didn't pull me in like 3 and 4 did. but I found that its also speed sensitive while it will run on a XP machine...I tried it on a pentium 4 3ghz XP laptop... it ran WAY too fast lol
I love Wing Commander 4 but a lot of the guns just don't do a lot of damage until late in the game. I can hit the enemies but the guns don't do shit! The game difficulty is also set pretty high. Even the second easiest setting is quite challenging.
That's a easier game series to make a PC Evolution Video and I respect that. since The Settlers (1993) has 6 more sequels, and it's most recent reboot. That could be end up being an essay video. Also I feel like Wing Commander I, II and Prophecy would something I would consider to play. Also... Wing Commander II's fly by scenes remind me of Super Nintendo Graphics... Not sure why though.
I first played Wing Commander on the SNES. Which I do not recommend! You got 10 fps tops, and a lot of the controls involving pressing more then 2 buttons on the Pad at once. Wing Commander 3 was the first I experienced first hand on a Pentium PC back in the day, and it was amazing. Never liked part IV, mainly because it was missing Rachel. Prophecy was fine, though.
This is one series I'd love to see a remaster/update of. Update the FMVs, fix the gameplay framerate,etc. I grew up on these games, even have the SNES Wing commander cart kicking around. I never played prophecy for some reason. I'll have pick that up when I get the itch. I've always been bummed; although it isn't an amazing script; there's a performance with John Rhys-Davies and Mark Hamill trapped inside a clunky game.
You're in luck! There's a fan-made remaster of Wing Commander IV in the works right now that's upscaled the FMVs and is placing everything into a new game engine, using (and requiring) the original game assets where possible to avoid copyright issues.
10:23 Why do people keep repeating this myth? Quoting Raymond Chen from his blog post "What was the role of MS-DOS in Windows 95?" - "MS-DOS served two purposes in Windows 95. It served as the boot loader. It acted as the 16-bit legacy device driver layer." ... "Once in protected mode, the virtual device drivers did their magic. Among other things those drivers did was 'suck the brains out of MS-DOS,' transfer all that state to the 32-bit file system manager, and then shut off MS-DOS."
As soon as I saw the title of this video, I subscribed. I liked your video right up until you started talking about Wing Commander 3. I strongly disagree with your opinion on wing Commander 3 and 4. I started off with the first Wing Commander but soon as Wing Commander 3 I had fallen in love. I know opinions are subjective but I had no idea that anybody would have picked any of the other Wing commanders besides three and four as the best.
I think there are other aspects. WCP is a modern 3D game. From this perspective, it really is most definitely recommended for new players. If we talk about pixel art, then WC1 and WC2 still look decent today. If story is the standard, then WC2 is the best. WC3 and WC4 are indeed more successful in terms of business and popularity, but such kind of market enthusiasm was something belongs to that era. Today's gamers aren't thrilled with live-action / voice-overs and movie / TV performances anymore.
After having been captivated by Amigas since 1986, I was extremely disappointed by WC in 1990, and had a real difficulty understanding how people could tolerate the slovenly pixel soup that was the game. Basically, people using graphically and aurally superior hardware at the time (C= Amigas) were fairly negative about WC, but people who had never known computer graphics any better than low-res CGA/EGA and computer-beep soundtracks thought it was fantastic...;) It was always thus...;) Screen shots pictured here are much better than the actual game's "rendering" (page-flipping) as I recall it. The space fighting graphics were so bad that I often could not discern what I was looking at! I wanted to like it, else I wouldn't have bought it, but I just couldn't. In those days, x86 PCs were so primitive that every hardware manufacturer had its own version of custom DOS and if your game was compatible with "Tandy DOS," or "IBM-PC DOS," or "HP-DOS," etc. ad infinitum, well, that was the hardware you had to run it on--or the game wouldn't run! Creative Labs Soundblaster drivers were Bug City. Then Microsoft came along and slowly started to fix all that very, very ugly hardware incompatibility. Yes, those were the days [not]...;)
I remember WC3 being better on Playstation as PC did not actually compete enough to justify the cost till dx api. so No one I knew in high school actually had a pc to game on that could beat the playstation or consoles using disks. FYI I was never a fan of cartridge consoles as the trend was disks are the way for bigger games and better texture packs. I'm not trying to trash pc gaming I'm just saying getting mom or dad to buy a actual gaming pc in the 90s was harder. my first pc was a pre-built and in 2002 only happened when I was able to spend my own money. my dad was mad I didn't get a car first. today kids have the advantage of having parents that understand video games are better than drugs and everyone is not afraid to spend money on digital entertainment even consoles are much higher end after both Sony and Microsoft went amd x86 custom apu for there consoles.
Privateer 2 was my favourite as the Privateer games were same universe games if I recall. You could have carried on with Star Lancer and Free Lancer, The Squadron 42 amd Star Citizen if they ever get released to get up to the modern day, or at least what will be the modern day if 1 or the other gets released. You would think Squadron 42 would have been released by now as its not open world and could get Chris Roberts and co some more money to finish Star Citizen, especially as moist of the cast will not be household names to drive the popularity if they don't hurry up. Damn, got to play these games again now, and Freespace.
I had a friend at the time, who had like multiple high end pc-machines, with all the bells'n'whistles. Seeing the first Wing Commander at that time was almost a religious moment for me ;)
I only played one Wing Commander, and it was Prophecy. By the time I played it I’d already been an X-Wing fan for years and was a complete convert to Conflict Freespace, so I didn’t think very highly of WC:P
I loved Wing Commander 3. My 486 DX33 with a Mitsumi Single Speed CD-ROM had a hard time. But then again it was an Origin Game, so this was normal. The Film Sequences have been a Benchmark and better than everything else we have seen in DOS at that time. And I just loved the General MIDI Soundtrack. I still have the Package and all the paper stuff inside. Unfortunately my father had thrown away a CD-Rom Storage Box a few years ago. This Box stored my original WC3 CDs, Strike Commander CD, Dark Forces CD and a lot more of these Gems. He didn't realize it, but he basically had thrown away a good part of my Gaming youth with a single move. I bought WC3 on GoG, but unfortunately all the Speech and Cinematics aren't in German Language anymore. So I can't have the original Experience anymore.
Progress then was incredible. In raw numbers via minimum requirements for Wing Commander games: 1990: - 286@12 Mhz ~0.9 MIPS - 640 kb of RAM 1997: - Pentium@133 Mhz ~188 MIPS (208 times faster !) - 32 MB RAM (51 times more!) And now compare 2017 and 2024 😉
I remember playing the original Wing Commander on my Dad's 486DX machine in 1993 and it ran great. Then a few years later in 1997 I ran it on my Pentium 150 and it was like speeded up 3x. Impossible to play.
Sorry to write here, but you don't have any means in your website: There is an issue with the version of alcohol120% you have there: I usually download software from your site for DOS and Win98. I got a computer with vanilla Win98se. The version you have installs, but if you try to run it, it complains that "needs a newer version of windows". Furthermore, the uninstaller won't work, and windows uninstaller won't detect it, so you can't uninstall it. So it doesn't work on Win9x, and can't be uninstalled easily. Btw, I didn't even knew there was a Wing commander over Wing2. I actually only played Privateer.
I started with Wing Commander III, already spoilt by all the 3d flight sims and couldn't go back to sprite bases graphics. Somehow I always assumed sprite-based games were cheating somehow ... I have great memories of III, IV and Prophecy but when I watched retro streams of them a couple of month ago, I realized that Chris Roberts always ran out of steam in the second halves of the games, dropping story lines and only providing basic mission briefings. The whole atmosphere always going down the drain. Of course the final videos were grand again.
1997 wing commander prophecy? actually never heard of it.. although there was free space 1998 There was a game I always wanted "teased when installing half-life" its called Homeworld Maybe if they bundled a trailer with other games~
I really enjoyed the entire series. But honestly, the release I spent the most time on was Privateer, followed by WC3. Prophecy was absolutely beautiful and looked great with my Monster 3D at the time but story-wise, it felt empty compared to the Kilrathi battles. Sticking with my reliance on story throughout the series, I felt the lack of a story in Armada made it forgettable.
Never played this series. I think I tried briefly but the reduced room I had in my interests for Space flight sims was spoiled by the Lucasarts X-Wing games and after those I never played the genre until VR Squadrons recently. Funny thing I got myself a Trustmaster T.16000 for that game only. Fantastic video. I would be delighted to have more of this kind for any other game or game saga you liked. Watching your tests of hardware in old games has been always a joy by itself, both when are kown games I played, or new ones to discover decades later, as the ones here. Thanks a lot for sharing.
Wing Commander 3 is probably my favorite game in the series. It hits the sweet spot between engaging gameplay and a fun story. I didn’t have too much trouble with the gameplay, and in fact I find it more accessible and less frustrating than either of the first two games since the framerate, while kind of low, is consistent. The gameplay is not as refined as Prophecy’s, but it’s good enough and I absolutely adore the cockpit HUDs, which I missed in WC4.
I was not imopressed with the Wing Commander III box. The seperete jewel cases of the 3 discs had to be kinda forced into the awkward dimentions on the box. I assume they fixed that.
Thank you for the video! I really enjoy these retrospective videos. I never got to play this particular series but had wanted to. I recently purchased them from GOG and was looking to play them on retro PCs and emulators. The tips at the end of the video will be very useful.
Oh blimey! Don't get me started - too late! ;) One of the first games I played on the first PC I built was WC3 - I finished it, loved/hated it for much the same reasons as you. Then I built my next PC - with a K6-2 - but my S3 Virge card froze before I hit space - so I saved up my pennies, bought a Voodoo 3 and the rest is nuts! My first - plastic - Thrustmaster joystick lasted a couple of years before it's neck broke, it's 'identical' replacement lasted just a day before the same thing happened. I'd go to bed at night with my visuals spinning! Good times! And a BRILLIANT idea for a video. Nice one, Phil!
@@philscomputerlab Just a thought, Phil and - possibly - an idea for another video in the same vein: While Prophecy/Secret Ops were instrumental in me acquiring a Voodoo 3, I subsequently got caught up in the Unreal franchise. The first game - with Glide support - was unlike ANYTHING I'd played before and I ended up playing ALL of them. I got into Quake too, but favoured Unreal, ultimately. The standout - for me - is still the first Unreal Tournament. If I remember rightly: six games over about ten years between around 1997-2007, two single and four multiplayer, along with the changes in PC technology.
Great video Phil! Really like this game-centric format, where you talk about certain games and describe optimal hardware for each. I vote for more of these type of videos! Any games that are best under DOS, Win98, WinXP, etc - maybe concentrating on games that are tricky to get running well
Around 1994 we got a Creative SB16 bundle with a quad-speed CD-ROM drive, SBS-38 speakers and a CD with four full games: Wing Commander 2, Syndicate, Strike Commander, and Ultima 8: Pagan. I played them all to completion, they were pretty much my tween/teen years of gaming apart from a handful of others. Origin and Bullfrog were two of the greatest developers of all time, along with Westwood. So sad to think EA subsumed and disbanded all three of them at pretty much the same time.
@@philscomputerlab It really was amazing, something you'd never get these days that's for sure. They even came with all of the paper manuals, just not the big boxes. Which was your favourite Wing Commander game, out of interest?
loved these games growing up .. they al had different charms ... the videos on 3 and 4 were mindblowing for its time and I really enjoyed taking different paths. great video, thank you !
Sadly Wing Commander Prophecy is not playable anymore on modern machines (win10/11), even when GOG claims it does.. There are a lot of patches to make it playable on actual windows systems and as far as i could find out, they worked fine until recent . But now they do not anymore. Maybe a windows update causes this issue idk. Its quiet annoying since i played through the whole series after 30 years but i cannot play the final part now.. maybe you will find a tweak to run the game:)
Wing Commander III was the trifecta as far as the FMV sequences and voice acting. You got 4 of the most talented sci-fi actors of the day up to today in this game. You got Mark Hamill (Star Wars - Luke Skywalker) you got Malcom McDowell (Star Trek: Generations, Clockwork Orange) John Rhys-Davies (Indiana Jones, Lord of the Rings Trilogy - Gimli), and Tom Wilson (All of the Tannens from Back to the Future Trilogy). This is a whose who list of A-List Sci-Fi talent in game! That in itself was something.
You forgot about Ginger Lynn. 😁
The only well made FMV Game back then. Okay and C&C.
@@pawsnpistons Tex Murphy!
The addition of these actors really worked well for this game. It was truly groundbreaking to perform the cut-scenes with well-known actors.
However, the script of this work is not good enough and has major problems.
Not just my favorite of the series, but probably my favorite game period, Wing Commander: Privateer. It's also what got me into keeping "retro" systems. I had been working on PCs since the XT, but was happy to sell off and move on to the next new thing. With Privateer, from then on I made sure I always had a system that would run it, even after DOSbox.
I vividly remember playing Privateer. The music was beautiful.
Privateer had a great, but unfinished story.
Wing Commander Privateer 2: The Darkening 😮
This was my favourite, the original was great too
Wing Commander games were my main incentive of upgrading my PC in the 90s. Unlike these days, the leaps in technology were huge back then because we were at the early stages and transitioning from 2D to 3D.
Captivating stories as told by Phil's Computer Lab
Awesome vid! Wing Commander was a big part of my life for a good number of years, and i upgraded several computers during the 90s so i could keep up with the later games. Watching this was very nostalgic, thanks for taking me back!
That's great 😃
Wow, I'm glad to see HCL still kicking! (Thank you so much for your mods!)
@@arugulatarsus now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time, to paraphrase Obi-Wan Kenobi 😉
Thanks man, I appreciate the kind words 😊 Seems like a lifetime ago
@@arugulatarsus What's HCL?
@@armorgeddon One of the greatest modders in the wing commander scene.
I was more captivated by Freespace 2 vs the Wing Commander series. Forsaken is one of my favs as well.
I'm still working on finishing Tachyon The Fringe, but Freespace games are ready to go :D
I like wing commander and xwing. Freespace it's good too
Nice review. I played all of them on PCs and witnessed the evolution you mentioned. I started with a 486DX33, my first PC… no sound card…and used the turbo button to slow it down for the first tittles. Prophecy was played with a Voodoo 2, I miss those glide game days. Worth mentioning Freespace 1 and 2, amazing games and my favorite space games from those days. You should try and make a video about them…. Jewels forgotten by most retro gamers - I simply don’t see anybody showcasing them.
Wing Commander 3 and 4 had Windows 95/98 patches which upgraded the engines and made them use DirectX for rendering.
I played the demo mission for Prophecy endlessly. When I got to that same mission in the campaign, it was all muscle memory and I absolutely dominated.
Privateer 1 and 2 are my favorite Wing Commander games 😊
A nice way to illustrate what a super exciting time it was when everything was moving so fast.! I played and have them all except III so now need to seek it out and give it a try.
Now go seven years back in the past from today, and good luck finding any notable progress at all.
Cześć Phil. Dziękuję za kolejny fajny film.
Wing Commander II was the reason I bought a PC with soundblaster. That full speech intro blew me away. You didn't need the speech pack for the voiced intro but it added voiced wing mates and IIRC more voiced cutscenes
I never played any WC game except for Prophecy. Just started playing again on a Pentium 3-600 with a Voodoo 5 card. Awesome!
I remember being blown away by the graphics and fmv with wing commander prophecy on my cyrix 166+ with a 3dfx! I had the feeling being part of the game with the fmv! Impressive special effects for that time !
Great showcase not only for the evolution of pc's but for us as gamers. Also the evolution of development studios. Remember the games that bared the name of their creator on the cover? They made games they would like to play and no one made before. The wing commander games along with ultima series, wizardry, might and magic and kings quest evolved the overall presentation. Only Bethesda is near them today.
My favourite game series of all time. Remember playing all of them from a 286 to Pentium. Still waiting for Chris Roberts Squadron 42!!!!
I have always thought of WC 3 as one of my favorite space flight sims. I never really experienced any issues with playing it, but I think my PC at the time was powerful enough and patched to better support running it in Win 98. I loved the stories and sub-plots. I have to admit to trying to get both of the leading ladies to hook up with my main guy, but never succeeded in getting both in the same game as rumored to be possible. The flight combat was very challenging, and it took me many hours to finally defeat one of the aces. Good times, albeit very frustrating. Great video sir!
I played WC1 when it was released on a 286, and kept installing it on every computer upgrade my family got until we got a Pentium. The game loaded up fine but when you started a mission you immediately died because you ran into the edge of the universe 😂 I was so glad to see that GOG fixed that with their release.
Origin was one of the companies, whose every new game always meant you had to upgrade your PC. 😂
Yes 😅
Isn't Origin a computer brand? Perhaps one and the same?
@@Koozwad Nope. For old folks like me Origin Systems was one of the all times great PC games company, along with Lucas Arts, Microprose and Sierra. I mean, Ultima series, Ultima Underworld series, Wing Commander series, Strike Commander, Crusader were all iconic games. This is also where Looking Glass studio started (System Shock, Thief series) and folks like Warren Spector (Deus Ex) and Chris Roberts (Wing Commander, Star Citizen). They were bought by EA around 1993-1994 and several years later they were dead (but not before they made one of the most impactful game and the first true MMORPG Ultima Online).
@@kosmosyche Oh yeah I see Origin PCs was founded 2009.
Wow i miss this 90's and Wing Commander one of my fav. Games
It's really amazing how the Wind Commander developers could take their games to the next level of experience, state of tech and excitement with every iteration of the series. Ah-h, the good old days of PC gaming 😁.
Thanks for the story, Phil 😉👍!
Very interesting Video. I have never played the Wing Commander Series because when I was little I got scared away from flying games after I was not able to get beyond the training level in the canyon of the first Rebel Assault game. But now i am old and want to give the Wing Commander games a try . I want to experience the whole series on Win98Se retro gaming pc in the near feature.
Go for it, it's an awesome hobby.
Breakfast with Phil's.
First time I saw Wing Commander was at a CopyFest™in 1991. I held the first one at my house. We were all Amiga users but one of the BBS operators had a 286 with sound and a good VGA card and I was very impressed with Wing Commander. It looked and played like the future. Wing Commander on the Amiga paled in comparison. It was one of the first times I started considering a PC as a main gaming rig.
Thanks for sharing!
man wing commander or the game that tried to be a movie (especially with 4) Wing commander 4 was the first PC game I nearly did a all-nighter on (I stopped at 5AM lol). I ran it on a Pentium 200mhz MMX with a S3 video card. ran great on full details the story pulled me right in!
Sadly, this franchise was never on my radar. The only games I played during the 90s were whatever my dad could pirate from co-workers, and later, whatever I had patience to download over dial-up.
Never got deep into the Wing Commander series but I love the way you used them as a reference for the evolution of pc gaming. I wonder which other alternative long going series you could have used to do this... Sierra games? Ultima?
There are so many game series actually. But could also cover a genre for example.
So many good memories… THANKS!!!
Having played recently, I heavily suspect that it is not only the frame rate plagueing players in Wing Commander III, but that this game also has hit-detection issues, just like Wing Commander IV.
Nevertheless, I love this game to death. When I got my first PC, a friend lent me his copy and I was fascinated. I also find that III just has the coolest looking ships of the entire series.
Very good - great idea and nicely presented. Do Ultima next! U9 full 3d acceleration - although I needed to run that on a voodoo 3500.
7 years time span was different back then. Now, the Radeon RX Vega 64 is 7 years old and still runs almost everything just fine; just Allan Wake 2 comes to mind as having problems.
WC3 is still my highlight of the series. Cannot remember any gameplay/fps issues.
Happy Friday Phil!
Yes, finally weekend :D
Great video
Wow. What a great idea to use one game series to perform an IT history lecture. This should be a mandatory position for Z Generation students who just joined the IT science college :)
If memory serves I had a 386 SX 16 and my cousin had a DX 40 but I definitely remember what I thought of as a simulation on mine seemed like an arcade game on his.
Awesome video Phil! Wing Commander I from GOG is using slow cycles cpu or is the game patched for any cpu speed?
It uses slow cycles.
Space combat was vastly improved in 3 onwards. I never had issues with hitting anyone, but you do need a good joystick, imho
I'd argue you should have mentioned Academy, Armada, and especially Privateer.
Good point!
Nice video ❤
WC1 and WC2 were awesome games for their time. It can be tough on a modern machine even using something like DOSBOX to get the speed quite right for them, especially on WC1! Even on the 486 DX2 66 MHz PC I had back then WC1 ran WAY too fast unless I used a DOS utility I had back then called "moslo" to help slow the machine down by wasting CPU cycles.
Thanks!
Thank you 😊
This was the reason why instead of Amiga 1200 i went to PC world :)
I've always been a huge wing commander fan (and am still hoping that squadron 42 will come out eventually)
Unfortunately last time I tried to replay 3 & 4 with the GOG releases I had these strange jpystick issues where, when trying to make small adjustments, the joystick would sometimes input the opposite direction. It seemed like the input was sort of stuck in the direction of your last input and you had to push the joystick over that hump before your ship would turn the direciton you wanted it to.
Could never figure out how to fix that. Might have to try again if it was some odd issue with the dosbox version at the time.
Joystick stuff was heavily improved on the DOSBox fork DOSBox ECE which is abandoned now though, however IIRC those improvements went into DOSBox Staging.
I think it would be great if NightDive could get permission to do a remaster of these either all 6 in a pack or 1-3, 4-6. All running in the modern Kex engine would be really awesome.
That would be terrific 😊
Played wc2 on my parents 486/dx2 66, played wc3, 4 and prophecy on my amd k6/2 450, prophecy with a canopus pure 3d2 voodoo2. I'm that old 😅.
Awesome and you're still young 😊
Wing Commander III - Heart of the Tiger & Wing Commander IV - The Price of Freedom were my favorites, Wing Commander V Prophecy, was a very nice addition for the series closure.
Story wise WC 4 was the best, though, I ran these with my AMD K6-2 400 Mhz system with the following specs:
AMD K6-2-400 Mhz
EPox EP-MVP3G2+
3x 128MB PC-100 Samsung Original
Diamond Viper V550 AGP + TV-Out 16MB
2x Skywell Magic 3D II PLuS! 24MB< 2x 12MB @ 110Mhz in SLI.
Creative labs Sound Blaster AWE64 with 1MB Sound Font memory
Win98 SE
A-Open 300 Watt PSU
Something like this.
WC 4 & 5 I later replayed with my intel Pentium !!!/E 650Mhz and a V3 3500 and this was a far better experience.
Thanks for sharing 😊
I also have the original retail version of wing commander prophecy. story didn't pull me in like 3 and 4 did. but I found that its also speed sensitive while it will run on a XP machine...I tried it on a pentium 4 3ghz XP laptop... it ran WAY too fast lol
I remember playing Descent: Freespace before Wing Commander Prophecy and that pretty much ruined it for me.
I love Wing Commander 4 but a lot of the guns just don't do a lot of damage until late in the game. I can hit the enemies but the guns don't do shit! The game difficulty is also set pretty high. Even the second easiest setting is quite challenging.
That's a easier game series to make a PC Evolution Video and I respect that. since The Settlers (1993) has 6 more sequels, and it's most recent reboot. That could be end up being an essay video.
Also I feel like Wing Commander I, II and Prophecy would something I would consider to play.
Also... Wing Commander II's fly by scenes remind me of Super Nintendo Graphics... Not sure why though.
I first played Wing Commander on the SNES. Which I do not recommend! You got 10 fps tops, and a lot of the controls involving pressing more then 2 buttons on the Pad at once.
Wing Commander 3 was the first I experienced first hand on a Pentium PC back in the day, and it was amazing.
Never liked part IV, mainly because it was missing Rachel. Prophecy was fine, though.
i played almost every wing commander game up to prophecy, sadly, non of the special op missions or the spin off games save for privateer 2
Hey Phil. Great video. Does prophecy have controller support on modern systems?
@@100Underscores Yes it supports USB input devices!
@@philscomputerlab thanks mate
This is one series I'd love to see a remaster/update of. Update the FMVs, fix the gameplay framerate,etc. I grew up on these games, even have the SNES Wing commander cart kicking around. I never played prophecy for some reason. I'll have pick that up when I get the itch.
I've always been bummed; although it isn't an amazing script; there's a performance with John Rhys-Davies and Mark Hamill trapped inside a clunky game.
You're in luck! There's a fan-made remaster of Wing Commander IV in the works right now that's upscaled the FMVs and is placing everything into a new game engine, using (and requiring) the original game assets where possible to avoid copyright issues.
@@MadMac5 Oh wow! Thanks for the heads up. I'll keep an eye out for that.
I had a 286 12mhz, I couldn’t play this, I had to upgrade to a 386 sx 25 to get any decent game play, this was big money in 92
10:23 Why do people keep repeating this myth? Quoting Raymond Chen from his blog post "What was the role of MS-DOS in Windows 95?" -
"MS-DOS served two purposes in Windows 95. It served as the boot loader. It acted as the 16-bit legacy device driver layer." ... "Once in protected mode, the virtual device drivers did their magic. Among other things those drivers did was 'suck the brains out of MS-DOS,' transfer all that state to the 32-bit file system manager, and then shut off MS-DOS."
i think yur next video should be getting win98 running good on an am3+ with fx chip going on do it.
Privateer ?
8:09 NOT in Denmark back then. 90%+
PS. If just StarLancer was around? aka on GOG(Damn You! Microsoft😞)
As soon as I saw the title of this video, I subscribed. I liked your video right up until you started talking about Wing Commander 3. I strongly disagree with your opinion on wing Commander 3 and 4. I started off with the first Wing Commander but soon as Wing Commander 3 I had fallen in love. I know opinions are subjective but I had no idea that anybody would have picked any of the other Wing commanders besides three and four as the best.
I think there are other aspects.
WCP is a modern 3D game. From this perspective, it really is most definitely recommended for new players.
If we talk about pixel art, then WC1 and WC2 still look decent today. If story is the standard, then WC2 is the best.
WC3 and WC4 are indeed more successful in terms of business and popularity, but such kind of market enthusiasm was something belongs to that era. Today's gamers aren't thrilled with live-action / voice-overs and movie / TV performances anymore.
Wing Commander 3 was 4 CDs, not 3.
dont forget wing commander privateer ;D
Too bad you didn't include Wing Commander Privateer and it's sequals.
After having been captivated by Amigas since 1986, I was extremely disappointed by WC in 1990, and had a real difficulty understanding how people could tolerate the slovenly pixel soup that was the game. Basically, people using graphically and aurally superior hardware at the time (C= Amigas) were fairly negative about WC, but people who had never known computer graphics any better than low-res CGA/EGA and computer-beep soundtracks thought it was fantastic...;) It was always thus...;) Screen shots pictured here are much better than the actual game's "rendering" (page-flipping) as I recall it. The space fighting graphics were so bad that I often could not discern what I was looking at! I wanted to like it, else I wouldn't have bought it, but I just couldn't. In those days, x86 PCs were so primitive that every hardware manufacturer had its own version of custom DOS and if your game was compatible with "Tandy DOS," or "IBM-PC DOS," or "HP-DOS," etc. ad infinitum, well, that was the hardware you had to run it on--or the game wouldn't run! Creative Labs Soundblaster drivers were Bug City. Then Microsoft came along and slowly started to fix all that very, very ugly hardware incompatibility. Yes, those were the days [not]...;)
I remember WC3 being better on Playstation as PC did not actually compete enough to justify the cost till dx api. so No one I knew in high school actually had a pc to game on that could beat the playstation or consoles using disks. FYI I was never a fan of cartridge consoles as the trend was disks are the way for bigger games and better texture packs. I'm not trying to trash pc gaming I'm just saying getting mom or dad to buy a actual gaming pc in the 90s was harder. my first pc was a pre-built and in 2002 only happened when I was able to spend my own money. my dad was mad I didn't get a car first. today kids have the advantage of having parents that understand video games are better than drugs and everyone is not afraid to spend money on digital entertainment even consoles are much higher end after both Sony and Microsoft went amd x86 custom apu for there consoles.
PlayStation could handle videos really well..
Privateer 2 was my favourite as the Privateer games were same universe games if I recall. You could have carried on with Star Lancer and Free Lancer, The Squadron 42 amd Star Citizen if they ever get released to get up to the modern day, or at least what will be the modern day if 1 or the other gets released. You would think Squadron 42 would have been released by now as its not open world and could get Chris Roberts and co some more money to finish Star Citizen, especially as moist of the cast will not be household names to drive the popularity if they don't hurry up.
Damn, got to play these games again now, and Freespace.
It burns to have game
Yes so true 😁
I had a friend at the time, who had like multiple high end pc-machines, with all the bells'n'whistles.
Seeing the first Wing Commander at that time was almost a religious moment for me ;)
I still think Wing Commander Academy was the best of the bunch. Being able to do your own scenarios was amazing.
I only played one Wing Commander, and it was Prophecy. By the time I played it I’d already been an X-Wing fan for years and was a complete convert to Conflict Freespace, so I didn’t think very highly of WC:P
I found X-Wing just too difficult to enjoy ..
@@philscomputerlab have you played Tie Fighter? It’s much more forgiving and an all around better game.
I loved Wing Commander 3. My 486 DX33 with a Mitsumi Single Speed CD-ROM had a hard time. But then again it was an Origin Game, so this was normal. The Film Sequences have been a Benchmark and better than everything else we have seen in DOS at that time. And I just loved the General MIDI Soundtrack. I still have the Package and all the paper stuff inside. Unfortunately my father had thrown away a CD-Rom Storage Box a few years ago. This Box stored my original WC3 CDs, Strike Commander CD, Dark Forces CD and a lot more of these Gems. He didn't realize it, but he basically had thrown away a good part of my Gaming youth with a single move. I bought WC3 on GoG, but unfortunately all the Speech and Cinematics aren't in German Language anymore. So I can't have the original Experience anymore.
Good old memories. There are so much things coming to my mind when thinking about these days and Wing Commander.
I played a ton of the Wing Commander: Prophecy demo back in the day, but never got to play the full game.
Progress then was incredible. In raw numbers via minimum requirements for Wing Commander games:
1990:
- 286@12 Mhz ~0.9 MIPS
- 640 kb of RAM
1997:
- Pentium@133 Mhz ~188 MIPS (208 times faster !)
- 32 MB RAM (51 times more!)
And now compare 2017 and 2024 😉
Yes it's slowed down so much...
Really appreciate all the info on where to get these games and how to get them running on a retro pc!
Excellent overview of the series, you should make more videos like this, thank you Phil. ♥
I remember playing the original Wing Commander on my Dad's 486DX machine in 1993 and it ran great. Then a few years later in 1997 I ran it on my Pentium 150 and it was like speeded up 3x. Impossible to play.
Sorry to write here, but you don't have any means in your website: There is an issue with the version of alcohol120% you have there: I usually download software from your site for DOS and Win98. I got a computer with vanilla Win98se. The version you have installs, but if you try to run it, it complains that "needs a newer version of windows". Furthermore, the uninstaller won't work, and windows uninstaller won't detect it, so you can't uninstall it. So it doesn't work on Win9x, and can't be uninstalled easily. Btw, I didn't even knew there was a Wing commander over Wing2. I actually only played Privateer.
I started with Wing Commander III, already spoilt by all the 3d flight sims and couldn't go back to sprite bases graphics. Somehow I always assumed sprite-based games were cheating somehow ...
I have great memories of III, IV and Prophecy but when I watched retro streams of them a couple of month ago, I realized that Chris Roberts always ran out of steam in the second halves of the games, dropping story lines and only providing basic mission briefings. The whole atmosphere always going down the drain. Of course the final videos were grand again.
1997 wing commander prophecy? actually never heard of it.. although there was free space 1998
There was a game I always wanted "teased when installing half-life" its called Homeworld
Maybe if they bundled a trailer with other games~
Reception for WC3 was mixed!? I thought it was glowing, but not just because I like it. Most rags did at the time too...same with everyone I spoke to.
I really enjoyed the entire series. But honestly, the release I spent the most time on was Privateer, followed by WC3. Prophecy was absolutely beautiful and looked great with my Monster 3D at the time but story-wise, it felt empty compared to the Kilrathi battles. Sticking with my reliance on story throughout the series, I felt the lack of a story in Armada made it forgettable.
Never played this series. I think I tried briefly but the reduced room I had in my interests for Space flight sims was spoiled by the Lucasarts X-Wing games and after those I never played the genre until VR Squadrons recently. Funny thing I got myself a Trustmaster T.16000 for that game only.
Fantastic video. I would be delighted to have more of this kind for any other game or game saga you liked. Watching your tests of hardware in old games has been always a joy by itself, both when are kown games I played, or new ones to discover decades later, as the ones here. Thanks a lot for sharing.
Thank you 😊
Wing Commander 3 is probably my favorite game in the series. It hits the sweet spot between engaging gameplay and a fun story. I didn’t have too much trouble with the gameplay, and in fact I find it more accessible and less frustrating than either of the first two games since the framerate, while kind of low, is consistent.
The gameplay is not as refined as Prophecy’s, but it’s good enough and I absolutely adore the cockpit HUDs, which I missed in WC4.
I love playing Monkey Commander 1.5.
Awesome vid as always Phil, small correction though - WC3 came out on 4 CDs, I still have the big box with the CDs ;)
Oh 😮
The first 2 game uses sprite scaling third game is using texture mapped polygon graphics
And the 5th game came with Voodoo!
I was not imopressed with the Wing Commander III box. The seperete jewel cases of the 3 discs had to be kinda forced into the awkward dimentions on the box. I assume they fixed that.
I got the limited edition version that was inside of a metal canister made to look like it was holding the film roll for a movie. 😊
Thank you for the video! I really enjoy these retrospective videos. I never got to play this particular series but had wanted to. I recently purchased them from GOG and was looking to play them on retro PCs and emulators. The tips at the end of the video will be very useful.
I had the WC3 DVD Version which had the FMV in DVD Quality. It came with the Creative Encore DVD hardware encoder. Looked awesome.
You mean 4,right?
Awesome memories.
Oh blimey!
Don't get me started - too late!
;)
One of the first games I played on the first PC I built was WC3 - I finished it, loved/hated it for much the same reasons as you.
Then I built my next PC - with a K6-2 - but my S3 Virge card froze before I hit space - so I saved up my pennies, bought a Voodoo 3
and the rest is nuts!
My first - plastic - Thrustmaster joystick lasted a couple of years before it's neck broke, it's 'identical' replacement lasted just a day before the same thing happened.
I'd go to bed at night with my visuals spinning!
Good times!
And a BRILLIANT idea for a video.
Nice one, Phil!
😊
@@philscomputerlab Just a thought, Phil and - possibly - an idea for another video in the same vein:
While Prophecy/Secret Ops were instrumental in me acquiring a Voodoo 3, I subsequently got caught up in the Unreal franchise.
The first game - with Glide support - was unlike ANYTHING I'd played before and I ended up playing ALL of them.
I got into Quake too, but favoured Unreal, ultimately.
The standout - for me - is still the first Unreal Tournament.
If I remember rightly: six games over about ten years between around 1997-2007, two single and four multiplayer, along with the changes in PC technology.
Great video Phil! Really like this game-centric format, where you talk about certain games and describe optimal hardware for each. I vote for more of these type of videos! Any games that are best under DOS, Win98, WinXP, etc - maybe concentrating on games that are tricky to get running well
Thank you 😊
did you play wing commander privateer?
Yes I did!
Around 1994 we got a Creative SB16 bundle with a quad-speed CD-ROM drive, SBS-38 speakers and a CD with four full games: Wing Commander 2, Syndicate, Strike Commander, and Ultima 8: Pagan. I played them all to completion, they were pretty much my tween/teen years of gaming apart from a handful of others. Origin and Bullfrog were two of the greatest developers of all time, along with Westwood. So sad to think EA subsumed and disbanded all three of them at pretty much the same time.
Those are fantastic games for a bundle!
@@philscomputerlab It really was amazing, something you'd never get these days that's for sure. They even came with all of the paper manuals, just not the big boxes. Which was your favourite Wing Commander game, out of interest?
I first played the wing comander series ie the kilrathi saga on win95 on a p133 and wing 4 then on a k62 system for prophercy
That Series is one I've never played yet!
@@philscomputerlab Btw Phil m8 i still have them on cd lol
loved these games growing up .. they al had different charms ... the videos on 3 and 4 were mindblowing for its time and I really enjoyed taking different paths. great video, thank you !
Glad you enjoyed it
Sadly Wing Commander Prophecy is not playable anymore on modern machines (win10/11), even when GOG claims it does.. There are a lot of patches to make it playable on actual windows systems and as far as i could find out, they worked fine until recent . But now they do not anymore. Maybe a windows update causes this issue idk. Its quiet annoying since i played through the whole series after 30 years but i cannot play the final part now.. maybe you will find a tweak to run the game:)