Nice article, but aren't all the WC1 screenshots from the Amiga version? That wouldn't normally be a problem, but this article is all about the rise of PCs as the superior gaming platform.

If you want to build rockets in the US, you don't just have to comply with the FAA - there are also International Traffic in Arms Regulations. If you can put a satellite into orbit, you can drop a bomb on the city of your choice. The reverse also holds - Sergei Korolev and Wernher von Braun...

Well, it's not like you could preserve all the esoteric elements of Ultima (like the eight virtues) while making an action RPG that defines a new sub-genre and becomes a beloved classic in its own right. Why do they take the time to specify "Western RPG"? Yes, I'm aware that certain game...

Yes, I often notice scripting, and it bugs me no end. My biggest peeve is the RPGs where you see a crowd of uniquely named / dressed characters standing around with weapons drawn. You know when you get too close there's going to be a cutscene, and then they'll all attack, and there's nothing...

In most Wing Commander games, any one ship is easy to destroy. The challenge comes when ships are multiplied. This is good game design, because they can be reused in different combinations. The "shoot stuff, and shoot more stuff" gameplay has more variety than at first glance. Yes, you have...

Yes, the existing X-COM timeline is too far into the future. The world of X-COM: Apocalypse was wonderfully creative - but first you had to understand the superscience future, and then you had to understand the aliens on top of that. Then Interceptor moves even further forward. Having every...

Savage Empire came with a map? Years ago I bought a CD-ROM compilation that contained Savage Empire, but it came with almost no supporting documentation. I attempted to map it myself, but gave up given the repetitiveness of the terrain. Maybe I can finally complete the thing. I've seen this...

Very true. It says a lot about us that Doom gave us multiplayer deathmatches almost 20 years ago. Many games in that era also offered cooperative multiplayer, but it just wasn't fun. While the technology was one limiting factor (you really want voice chat), game mechanics didn't adapt. Even...

Yes, this is the problem. I would welcome a Wing Commander FPS, if it acknowledged a unique aspect of the Wing Commander space simulators: the wingmen. It is right there in the game title, after all. Don't make me a one-man army, and don't make me part of an infinite army of tough-guy clones...

From a game design perspective, the purpose of a Confed capital ship is to get into trouble so the player and their fighter have to save the day. (Or, in the case of the Behemoth, the failure to save the day is part of the story.) Capital ships - both friend and foe - can never have enough...

Neat. The ship dealer storyboards seem to show five distinct vessels. There's a shiny new Tarsus at the left, for the one person on the planet who regretted selling theirs. The prongs at the lower center look like the ship in the "New Chicago" hangar storyboard, which in turn looks like a...

For the good of future mods, and original new games for that matter, can we please see an end to this game design anti-pattern? Briefing. Interaction. Do the tasks described in the briefing. Surprise! Surprise delivered by unskippable conversation. Interaction. React to the surprise. On...

Here's what Star*Soldier commits to: There is a "VN Day" to celebrate the end of the war (p3:"I’m outraged by the current move to ignore VN Day in favor of Confederation Day.") The war involved entering Nephilim "fluid space", with a risk of being trapped there and destroyed (p23: "When the...

In the DOS version the hand may disappear altogether if it doesn't have enough free memory. The comm faces and cockpit damage vanish too, as you describe happening on the Amiga . With even less memory, all explosions (including those on the surface of damaged capital ships) are replaced with a...

Having become curious about those tiny scratches, I looked at the DOS files in HCL's viewer, 'wcnav'. The file 'scramble.vga' contains the damage graphics. It includes two 'shattered glass' pictures, at locations 300,137 and 300,444. So, they were included but never used in the DOS version...

Does that imply that you would simply swap to a 'Secret Missions' data disk and run it with the existing WC1 Amiga executable? If so, is there any potential for adapting the data files from the DOS version? Does the Amiga version still contain files like Briefing.000, Module.000, etc.? If...

You may already know this, but you can press 'd' for a damage report. This lists each component, giving it state as Light / Moderate / Heavy / Destroyed Here are all the systems that may be damaged. Ion drive - Reduces your top speed. Power plant - Your weapon energy and shields regenerate...

For completeness, the BBC Micros were a subset of the machines made by Acorn Computers. In order of manufacture, they were the Acorn Atom, BBC Micro, Acorn Electron and Acorn Archimedes. If anything, the Archimedes deserved success more than the Amiga... and received less. However, its most...

Is there anything in the in-game statistics or fiction to suggest that Flash-Paks are faster than torpedoes? The fact that they don't become the dominant anti-capital-ship weapon suggests one of: They're much more expensive than torpedoes, In some way they're less effective than torpedoes, or...

Yes, the most logical way to notate the overture is in B flat major (two flats). As Farbourne says, this is equivalent to A sharp major, but B flat major is easier to read and play. I recommend looking at the MIDI version; even with its help, there's plenty of work to do. I understand it was...