The spontaneous explosions are by design... mostly. Probably as a memory management issue, WC1 defines 2 fighter graphics and 2 capital ship graphics to be loaded for each encounter. If you reach a new encounter while ships from the previous encounter are in your field of view, the old ships...

The very first story pitch for WC2 (written in November 1990) does that. It was a neat idea, but it would probably never have survived into the final game. You'd probably need a whole extra floppy disk to store all the Tiger's Claw art assets, and then they'd appear in that one mission and...

I'm astonished at the complexity of the WC3 and WC4 fighter debris. Did anyone see any pieces during gameplay for long enough to realise that the holes in the outside were exposing some interior textures? If the artists who put all those craters and burn marks on the fighter textures ever read...

Other endings in WC4 include: Blair's carrier is destroyed. Blair is executed. A war begins that will probably kill billions. Despite those, I agree that the "poor performance review" is the most painful ending to watch. The scenes playing on the TV in the bar may also be the war you could...

After the update, I'm seeing some sort of corruption during explosions. I would have posted this to your Bug Reports forum, but I couldn't see a way to attach images. Is there one? I'm running Mac OS 10.9.4 with an AMD Radeon HD 6970M. I don't encounter these effects while booted to Windows...

The projectiles that look like giant neutron gun shots are actually from anti-matter guns: longer range and greater damage than anything a WC2 fighter can carry. They also penetrate phase shields, which is why you'll see capital ships firing them against each other. Meanwhile, if you see the...

It was designed for professional musicians, and those who could afford one bought it. The fact that computer games started supporting it, and a few wealthy gamers purchased one, was a happy side effect for Roland. Thanks for that explanation. I know game boxes often included screenshots from...

Does anyone remember the days when just capturing a screenshot from your DOS game involved messing around with a TSR? Those took additional memory of course, so you'd probably have to modify the CONFIG.SYS on your boot disk to squeeze a few additional kilobytes so your game would continue to...

Yes, the mouse controls in Privateer are terrible, and the keyboard controls are even worse. There doesn't seem to be any excuse for this, since WC1 and WC2 engineered both quite well. The difference is that WC1 and WC2 apply some acceleration to keyboard inputs, so if you tap a key you turn a...

Do you mean that you're on Series 4 Mission D? This is commonly rated as the hardest mission in the Wing Commander series. I've never finished it by playing fairly. On rare occasions I've shot down all the Gothri, but with so much damage that I can't survive making the torpedo runs. The...

I've experimented with this, and I consistently get the victory ending if I reach the K'Tithrak Mang nav point and destroy Prince Thrakhath before returning to the Concordia. Destroying Prince Thrakhath alone insufficient and leads to the bad ending. I haven't managed to reach the nav point...

If you eject or return to the Concordia without destroying K'Tithrak Mang, Angel has time to tell you that you're fired, and then you're back on Caernarvon Station and are told that that the Concordia has been destroyed. If you die and select "Continue Script", Prince Thrakhath tells the...

Wow. I was going to say that they were the same shade all along, but you are quite right. The WC2 crosshair really is darker than its WC1 counterpart. For anyone else surprised by this, see the screenshot below. WC1 is on the left, WC2 is on the right. Fortunately, we know enough about the...

Neat glitch. The key you're thinking of for cycling through ships to view is F9.

You're welcome. It's helped me appreciate just how much variety WC1 had in its mission design. Slight variations in Kilrathi fighter placement or targetting had a lot of influence on how each encounter played out. I suggest starting a thread with a new title for WC2. I'm not very good at it...

As before, if Nav 2 is annoying you, autopilot there to begin with. On this map, you should reach it without any trouble. While I advise trying to divide and conquer enemy fighter groups, if they're on your radar, they're already "triggered" and flying towards you. All you've gained is a...

Wow, a whole suite showing all the different moods of the WC1 music. Now we just need an orchestra that's willing to perform live as someone plays the game. The conductor can shout out rehearsal marks to keep everyone matched to in-game events. "Missile lock - Figure G! Victory - Figure T...

Yes. I just re-watched the conversation between Tolwyn and Blair at the start of WC4. (Link is to a Let's Play video with occasional interjections from the player. Sorry.) Knowing what happens in the rest of the game, it's obvious that Tolwyn thinks he knows what motivates Blair... and that...

You're in Corsair 1? First, the mission designers a clearly trolling you when they give you a Dralthi for an escort mission. The Kilrathi know who you are anyway, and they certainly won't be fooled once the two Dralthi start escorting a Drayman. Maybe the marines should have got creative with...

I assume that the Wing Commander III screenplay was mostly written before Malcolm McDowell was cast? Even in writing, it consistently portrays Admiral Tolwyn as concerned about his own image. He doesn't just want to save humanity, he want to be the savior of humanity, and he wants everyone to...