There's stunning news out of the Portland Retro Gaming Expo tonight as a panel on game preservation has revealed that Electronic Arts has found tapes containing high quality source video for Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger! Here's a BlueSky post from an attendee, solon's haunted library:

We're getting WING COMMANDER FMVs, gang!!! Jim Vessella found over 600 source tapes in the EA archives and have been restoring them

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The panel was hosted by Electronic Arts producer Jim Vessella, already known by the retro gaming community for his work on the 2020 Command & Conquer Remastered Collection. The original description talks about tapes but not Wing Commander specifically:

The Lost Tapes - Preserving the EA Vault and Restoring an FMV Classic
BLUE, SAT. 4:00 PM – 4:45 PM
Featuring: Jim Vessella (Electronic Arts)
Moderated by:

Jim Vessella has been a Producer for over 20 years. In recent years, he has also been a driving force in Electronic Arts’ game preservation efforts, focusing on the digitization of archival assets, releasing source code to the community, and bringing classic titles to modern audiences. At the Portland Retro Gaming Expo, he’ll take attendees behind the scenes of his preservation work, showcase some of the amazing lost treasures that have been recovered, and reveal an upcoming restored game to offer a glimpse at what may be next for EA’s growing library of available classic titles. This is a must-attend panel for anybody interested in game preservation, FMVs, and digital archeology!

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Wing Commander III was shot on tape in 1994. The footage was then reduced to 320x240 videos compressed in a primitive "Xanmovie" format for the release. While the 3DO and PlayStation versions made small improvements in compression and color depth, they were minor and never improved on the low resolution. Unlike Wing Commander IV and Wing Commander Prophecy, a DVD version of Wing Commander III was never developed and the source tapes were believed lost after Origin closed. Here's a quick comparison that shows the massive difference between Wing Commander III, Wing Commander IV DVD and a 1080p BluRay:





And that says nothing about compression or color or any of the other technical aspects of consumer video that have also been perfected over the last three decades! This is, in short, potentially very exciting news for Wing Commander fans!

At publishing, the panel is still going on. We'll report more here as it becomes available!

Update: a second post from the same detail has added some pretty exciting details. We're looking for additional confirmation, but the user in question seems to be a respected member of the retro gaming community.

He's also announcing the Wing Commander III 30th Anniversary Edition:
Kilrathi Saga
FMVs sourced and upscaled
Community Enhancement Patch added
60fps
Controller support

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A second BlueSky user has also posted from the panel!

Incredible good news for Wing Commander fans: Jim Vessella of EA has announced that there will be a 30th Anniversary re-release since they’ve cataloged and recovered a ton of the source video for the FMVs and are working with the community enhancements #prge


Specifically we were shown Wing Commander 3 with @markhamillofficial.bsky.social and the footage looked incredible!

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Looks like the '30th anniversary' edition of Wing Commander 3 is a thing! A Tweet from an attendee:

30th Anniversary of Wing Commander 3 is in the works. It'll contain the non-compressed original footage for the FMVs, EA still had the original tapes it was shot on. Everything has been cleaned up to modernize the game. Wow. I'm sorry excited. @ShamashAran thought you might want to hear about this too.

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Original update published on October 11, 2026

Amazing, I know so many of us over the years have wondered aloud where the WC3 source footage might be.

And even better, they're doing something with it! Very exciting stuff!

So, if this 30th anniversary re-release (God, that makes me feel old) includes fresh encodes of the original source tapes, will they change anything about the gameplay? We know the engine can handle higher poly/res models, or would that be too much to hope for? Also, mentioning a rerelease of KS is interesting, though I doubt they'll make any improvements to WC1 and 2, but one could hope.

Knight26-77 said:

So, if this 30th anniversary re-release (God, that makes me feel old) includes fresh encodes of the original source tapes, will they change anything about the gameplay? We know the engine can handle higher poly/res models, or would that be too much to hope for? Also, mentioning a rerelease of KS is interesting, though I doubt they'll make any improvements to WC1 and 2, but one could hope.

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Gameplay improvements shared so far include some of the existing "fan enhancements" (some of which do include higher resolution support), higher frame rate and controller support:

30th Anniversary Edition
- Kilrathi Saga Integration
- Master FMVs Source
- Master FMVs Upscaled
- Community Enhancement Patch
- Gameplay up to 60fps
- Controller support
- Steam native, GOG, EA app

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See Mash's patch for an example of what's possible:

New Enhancement Patch Upgrades WC3 Resolution and Video! - Wing Commander CIC

The center of the Wing Commander community features news, information, tech support and conversation about the computer game series.

www.wcnews.com

Oh wow, this is pretty exciting. If it's anything like the community engagement for the classic C&C and Red Alert, even more so.

...and are working with the community enhancements...

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At first I read that as 'working with the community'. 'Which parts of the community?' I thought. But it sounds like the enhancements, at this point, not necessarily the community itself?

Steam native, GOG...

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This answers my other concern, I was hoping it wouldn't be locked to EA DRM. C&C Remastered wasn't tied to EA, so it would be good if it was the same for any WC3 remaster. Sounds like this is the case?

Wow massive news and I'm looking forward to it!

Wow cool! I'm wondering which Community Enhancement Patch this refers to, or has anyone here on the forum already known about it? 😄
A complete overhaul of the 3D engine would be awesome, too.
Do we know if the 3D-backgrounds and CGI stuff is also found as source-materials??

What? I mean... what?

An official EA project attached to Wing Commander? Wow! I didn't think that we will ever see something like this.

cd1188 said:

Wow cool! I'm wondering which Community Enhancement Patch this refers to, or has anyone here on the forum already known about it? 😄
A complete overhaul of the 3D engine would be awesome, too.
Do we know if the 3D-backgrounds and CGI stuff is also found as source-materials??

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The newest and most comprehensive WC3 enhancement patch (and one literally referred to as the "WC3 enhancement patch") is the one from Mash at https://www.wcnews.com/news/2024/05/15/new-enhancement-patch-upgrades-wc3-resolution-and-video That's probably a good place to start to get an idea of what to expect - plus higher framerate and controller support as announced specifically.

It sounds like the footage has the CGI elements (not just green screen).

Evan said:

What? I mean... what?

An official EA project attached to Wing Commander? Wow! I didn't think that we will ever see something like this.

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That's what we're here for!

So that means my new WC3 HD Video Pack will be obsolet soon. 🥲

Great news 🔥🔥

Very exciting and unexpected!

Kilrathi Saga was launched on 15 October 1996, so if they're targeting the 30th anniversary of KS presumably they're aiming to release before the end of this year so the integration must be quite far along.

To the CIC crew - didn't you guys come across some of the source tapes and materials in 2009 I think during the visit to EA Mythic to preserve and digitise as much of the the Origin Systems archive as you could?

I hope the other games also on GOG get rereleased on steam too, it would be convenient

What was the original tape format? 1"? U-Matic (3/4")? (VHS is 1/2", for those who don't know). Those 1" and U-Matic tapes would be insanely high quality for the time and would really be a visual treat.

Worf said:

What was the original tape format? 1"? U-Matic (3/4")? (VHS is 1/2", for those who don't know). Those 1" and U-Matic tapes would be insanely high quality for the time and would really be a visual treat.

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I believe they were Sony BetaCams. So I'm mostly surprised the tapes have survived this long. But the masters with the integrated elements might be U-Matics.

I've nothing useful to add, but this is the coolest update in some time!

BrynS said:

To the CIC crew - didn't you guys come across some of the source tapes and materials in 2009 I think during the visit to EA Mythic to preserve and digitise as much of the the Origin Systems archive as you could?

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There were some tapes recovered from EA Mythic, but definitely none of the WC3 source footage was there. A lot of the tapes that had slightly higher res Privateer 2 stuff from there were really not that good of quality either so were verging on unusable. But there were other things, like the highres P2 landing scene frames we've posted about came from those I think if I'm remembering correctly. Whatever tapes there were in the Mythic collection seems to have been peanuts compared to wherever they found this new 600+ tape stash

Is Mash involved? Sure, it the work is OpenSource, but I cannot imagine he was not at least contacted. Anyway, this sounds great.

Unbelievable news!