Wing Commander III Heart of the Tiger - Retro Review
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 11 июл 2024
- Continuing with a new series of video game reviews, here's a look at one of the few FMV games which wasn't shit, Wing Commander III Heart of the Tiger.
Twitter: SideQuestYT?s=09
Discord: / discord
Subscribe to stay up to date with new uploads :)
00:00 Intro
00:22 FMV Video Games
01:22 Development
02:25 Presentation
06:42 Gameplay
11:11 Story & Campaign
16:22 Conclusion
17:04 Outro
#WingCommander #WingCommanderIII #SideQuest #RowanJColeman 
Игры
I realize you are too young to grasp this but the sound and video quality absolutely lived up to the hype at its time. This was the most amazing thing any of us had ever seen our PC do. Aside from some of the B-level acting, this really was state of the art. You just will never have the right perspective looking at it in retrospect.
Wing commander doesn't get the respect it deserves as the first immersive sim.
You could complete missions in several different ways and not only that you could FAIL and the story continued was incredible.
I would even wear my boyscout uniform and a bike helmet to play. I'd pin my brother's medals on my chest when my character earned them. Oh my God. Such great games.
you can't imagine what a big deal this game was back then. the graphics we were used to was pixel graphics of the nes and super nintendo.
this was mindblowing at the time and your charakter was LUKE Fugging SKYWALKER!!
the wing commander series was like our videogame starwars of the 90s
Right? His take that FMV was disappointing is way off. We'd never seen this kind of stuff before.
I played this TO death, definitely on my top 5 of all time .
You do know that Star Wars Rebel Assault came out before that, right?
Yep, I remember playing the original Wing Commander game on CD. The second one came with my double speed CD-rom drive on my 486sx33. I had an NES and a Commodore 64 back in the 80's. WC3 was absolutely amazing and really was legendary. I still enjoy it to this day.
Agreed. This game was without a doubt YEARS ahead of its time. Simply put, I almost haven't been impressed with a new game since.
Man, Hobbes's betrayal was a gut punch. You first encounter the dude as the captain of a defecting Kilrathi cruiser in _Wing Commander's_ second xpac, and in _WC2_ when you arrive on the _Concordia_ he's basically the only pilot willing to fly with you because Bluehair had been blamed for the loss of the _Tiger's Claw._ Point is, Hobbes had been a staunch ally and friend for years.
Quarter century later and I've still not really made my peace with that plot point.
Yeah i agree…an old friend turning Judas
100% it was hard to turn the gun sights on him
Yea I always loved Hobbes, he was my favourite in wc2. My friend got wc3 and played it through before me, when he told me that Hobbes turned on you I didn’t play the game. I just didn’t wanna see it
Speaking of gut punches...spoiler alert
They never properly address his reasons as to why, especially given his part in WC2, it seems to come out of the blue, like a "gotcha!" moment.
My head canon is that destroying his homeworld was a bridge too far
Excited to see what you think of WCIV. That game is a huge uptick in writing and thematic execution, plus it's got a ton of actual sets rather than entirely green screen.
Judging from the recent Twitter polls, WCIV will probably be the video which follows the Nexus The Jupiter Incident review :)
And I think GOG has the DVD version, which means a huge upgrade in video and sound quality (actually uses the DVD video format).
Wing Commander IV is my favourite game of all time. :D
The gameplay can be a bit rough even on the default difficulty but the FMV is much improved.
@@ryansellers2581 I’m with you.
I think a lot of players chose Rachel simply because… well… the actress who plays her was a very famous adult film star in the 80s.
Looks like you weren't locked on to any enemy fighters in your combat footage. It gives you a predicted target reticule. That makes a big difference.
Had no idea that was a thing haha
@@SideAdventure So, you basically played the whole game on Ultra hard mode. You also missed out on the Excalibur's auto targeting.
If you play other flight sims in the future like this, do yourself a favor and buy a flight stick. They aren’t pricey and make a world of difference.
Also: the WC had keyboard customization. Remapping controls to keys you chose would have familiarized you with all the available options and made for a more personal experience.
Doh, oops :)
Wait until you fly with Hobbes for the entirety of Wing Commander II and it's add-ons, and THEN this happens. It's far worse, because Hobbes Defects back during the secret missions add on for Wing Commander ONE, so it's like 10-12 years of time Blair has known Hobbes.
Seeing all the efforts that went into this game. The cartoon (Wing Commander Academy) and the live action movie that got made in the late 90's make more sense.
The movie was complete garbage. It makes the games look like masterpieces. I saw that movie the day it came out and it pissed me off at how bad it was.
Dude -- you weren't alive when FMV became a thing. Your take on the limitations of the trend are anachronistic. What they were able to do with CD-Roms was magical.
Wow, this takes me back. I remember playing this in high school with a mate of mine staying up all night savescumming in order to get the Excalibur as soon as possible. Rachel, all day every day.
I played these games when they were new. There is also a game called Privateer II also by Origin and set in the same universe which has an all-star cast including Clive Owens, Brian Blessed, Amanda Pays, David Warner, John Hurt, Christopher Walken and many more. It would be worth a review as its story is a classic protagonist with amnesia and having to play the game to solve the mystery.
I think Privateer II flew under the radar due to the drop of the Wing Commander moniker. Most WC fans I've known only played the core games, never any of the spinoffs. Also, fun anecdote - I have a screenshot from Elite Dangerous of Lev Arris in my crosshairs. And yes, I killed him.
@@silenceburns1336 You may be right. It also came before the internet. So, realistically unless you stumbled upon it in a Gamestop or Babbage store you might not know it even existed. There were some print magazines for games but they tended to focus on the consoles as they were almost entirely advertisement driven by the big console shops like Nintendo.
I spent hundreds of hours on this game back when I was in my mid/late teens. Got so good at it that in a couple of missions when a bad guy is meant to escape, I actually was quick enough to destroy them first. It was hilarious watching the cut scene play out of them escaping when I'd literally just blown them up!
I'd like to see your take on the colony wars games.
100% agreement!!!
Hobbes twist was a real surprise back then. especially when you know him since wing commander 2
My friend and I would play this game together. Him on the joystick, me on the keyboard and we developed a great Maverick & Goose relationship during gameplay, eliminating the complaints made in this video really fun lemonade.
I did the exact same thing with my buddy, then I bought a HOTAS and made myself redundant. LOL
Kids these days... I love how Ginger Lynn totally flew over your head.
The fact that Mark Hamill plays a live action version of the Blair character (in the game) after he did the voice acting for the same character in the anime is awesome.
You mean Wing Commander Academy animation? That is a 1996 TV animation.
These games were unlike anything else available at the time. The story is what makes these so beloved.
Mark Hamill is famous for playing Luke Skywalker in Star Wars(1977). He was also in the 1978 film Corvette Summer.
PROTIP: Get a decent analog joystick with a throttle and play it again. The joystick doesn't have to be really high-end - I had a Quickshot Super Warrior and it helped me out a lot, both on WC3 and WC4.
There's a series of novels which tie into the games. They explain a bit of what's going on behind the scenes and it really adds impact
I really liked Milk Run/End Run, and the book after. I liked, but know the game novels had their issues. So if someone was to pick any of them up, start with the first two. They were only based on the games.
Was brought to this vid after having just viewed your new WCIV retrospective.
I appreciated that you prefaced this review with the FMV "craze" that had been happening at the time, as WCIII was in my view the first game to really get it right. Despite the technical limitations of the time it really was quite impressive!
I've always appreciated the WC series of games and for those of us who were doing custom PC builds, they made for great benchmarking!
Excellent job sir! 👍
I just couldn’t believe they hired Ginger Lynn lol
To this day the most excited I have ever been for a video game, loved the first 2 and got this as a pack in with a new PC having had no idea it even existed! Blew me away at the tender age of 12 and still keep a retro PC around so I can give this and WCIV a blast every now and again :)
Regarding the game not "hand holding you", that's because it was designed in an era when the game came in a box, had a quick start guide, had a real printed manual, and many such games had keyboard overlays.
The developers could expect you would be in 1994, not 2021, and thus know how games worked at the time.
This isn't your fault, it's just a nature of the time. There was no concept that you'd have the game without the supporting materials from the box.
For fun, go look up how many pages were in the Falcon 4.0 manual. :)
Besides Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, John Rhys-Davies, Thomas F. Wilson and Jason Bernard I remember Ginger Lynn Allen. Who starred in some other "movies" in the 80s. For those who remember.
Talking to your pilots, making specific decisions, and taking certain actions are all very important as there's a morale system in the game. Basically, if you say or do things that they approve of, they'll fly better and respond to your orders quicker and more accurately (except Maniac, who just does whatever he wants).
Additionally, this morale system also takes into account who you want as your wingman and how often you choose them. So if you really like having someone on your wing and you constantly choose them, some of the pilots might ask you if you have a problem with them or Captain Eisen will talk to you about how you're managing the squadrons as the CAG on his ship. This gets particularly interesting when you choose Flint as your romance because if you refuse to take her with you enough times AFTER having committed to the romance, she'll get really pissed off at you for "trying to protect her."
I preferred Flint over Rachel, despite Rachel being the canonical romance (which is referenced in the next two games). That said, it makes sense that Rachel is the canonical choice because there's a ton of violations (both military and ethical) in having a romance with Flint since you outrank her (she's a lieutenant and you're a colonel) and you're her commanding officer as the ship's CAG.
I'm a little bit on the older side of millenial but I loved the WIng Commander series when I was young. In some ways was the predecessor to games like Mass Effect which I also loved because it reminded me so much of Wing Commander. Glad you liked it overall. Wing 4 I think you'll like better. Make sure you have at least the DVD version when you play it for the better video quality. Also there are some fan HD versions you can download and put in the game.
The WC series was amazing! I paid $5000 for a 386SX20 just to play Wing Commander 1 back in the day! 😀 I wish Chris Roberts would make some progress on Star Citizen...
Love these games and love your vid but as a lifelong Wing Commander I must tell you....you really gotta play this with a flight stick and keyboard. A mouse just can't do dog fighting justice. Thank you for doing vids on these almost forgotten classics. Keep up the great work!
I dug out an old joystick to try, but it wouldn't co-operate with my PC unfortunately.
This was definitely my favorite Wing Commander game. All that video jankiness that you're experiencing, was part of the original experience. Yes, I have that many gray hairs.
I remember when i was a pretty small child (i am exactly as old as Wing Commander 3), my older brothers found a PS1 copy of Wing Commander 3 on a flea market. The older one and my dad remembered it from when it came out and approved highly. So we younger ones popped it into my brothers PS2 and were super blown away by this off brand Luke Skywalker adventure. At least until the firsf mission, where we did not understand anything about the controls or the game mechanics and only ever accidentally made it as far as engaging the autopilot and encountering the first Kilrathi Darket fighter. We never made it past that first guy. He shot us down so often. Years later, it was cathartic to finally blow that cat-bastard out of my stary sky. Best moment in the game.
As a WC veteran, you might be interested in Wing Commander Saga. Its a completely fan made and free to download Wing Commander game that takes place simultaneously to Wing Commander 3. No FMV and ship exploration, but its fully voiced, with a lot of in flight dialogue and banter and even professionally so and every mission has a fully animated briefing by your squadron leader. It's a blast to play and it took me right back to Wing Commander 3. Except that you are not the mighty Commander Blair, but a regular low ranking pilot in the thick of the late Kilrathi war.
Well, i didn't play the prior two or the fourth but heart of the tiger was my favorite, as well (among the space simulators).
Awww, the Longbow was my favorite fighter! Let the enemy get behind you then get in the rear turret and blast them! Thanks for the great video and a trip down memory lane. This game was difficult to get to run back in the 90's on my Pentium 1.
It was interesting as someone who played this in the late 90s seeing Josh Lucas have his 15 minutes of fame out of nowhere. I also love X-Com: Enemy Unknown and Francis Chao (Vagabond) plays Shen the Engineer in that game.
Met him last year and was tickled to hear my remember Vagabond and his fate.
Listening to you vent about the Longbow at 10:00 mark, hilarious 😂
You're correct that the sound issues are an emulation problem.
There are no real fixes for the video resolution unfortunately, it's over two hours of footage compressed down for CD-ROM. The Playstation version for whatever reason has slightly better compression. Luckily Wing Commander IV has DVD version footage available so it's a big improvement.
I remember when this first came out and my dad managed to borrow it from a guy at work for me (on 6 cds if I remember).
I hated it when Hobbes betrayed me after I stuck up for him so many times.
But I never completed it, I never knew there was no way to stop the death star weapon from being destroyed before it was used on Kilrah and kept on trying to save it but never could.
Price Of Freedom got a DVD remaster which this could of used as well.
The entire WC series was a big part of my childhood, right from teh first one when I was 10 or 11 all the way up to 4 and 5 in college
2 years late, but... You not locking onto your targets bugs me a lot more than it should!😜
There is also a Wing Commander Prophecy game With Mark Hamill from late 1990s that was running on a PC Pentium MMX 166 CPU With Vodoo Grafic card with 4mb memory. This game was my huge Star Wars play alike game but with Kilrathi cats and a nasty bug insect race that humanity fight against and this game runs on Windows 95, 98 and ME (Millenium Edition). I Recomend this Wing Commander game to be put back into production for todays PC and game Consoles because it has many famous Hollywood actors/actreses with awesome high Video resolution with great Joystick or Mouse Keyboard controls so it should be easy to re-program for todays technology.
I see what you mean about Red Dwarf. I can see "Ace" Rimmer being a pilot there somewhere.
"What a guy".
WC3 & 4. My fav two games till FF7 & now ME series.
This brought back teenage memories, thoughts & so much.
Lol. This video made me emotional.
I feel bad you didn't use a Joystick, the GOG version does use it. A cheap thrift store joystick changes this game so much. But I am glad you had fun
10:15 Funny, I also named the Strakha that way! :D
What a coincidence :D
Excellent review! You definitely deserve a shoutout. I'll see if I can help with that 🙂
Wing Commander III has to be my all-time favorite of the series. Don't get me wrong, WC I and II I loved as well, but I loved the decisions they made when designing the game.
Look up Starlancer from 2000 or so. Nice craft, interesting missions. Needs a tutorial, though.
and they call the enemy bomber carp... then its is the best bomber.... thinking on the misson you fly one....
Playing this game at the time it came out, I do not remember any glitches in the sound. Also, the graphics worked better on the displays of the time.
Now with Wing Commander 3 and 4 handled... do we start askign about Privateer 2: The Darkening for some Christopher Walken and Clive Owen love? (Privateer was a Wing Commander spin off with far more Elite/Star Citizen freedom thrown in.)
WC3 was one of my first proper PC games back on a IBM 586 PC (586 was a Cyrix counter to Intels Pentium. Nostalgia Nerd has a great video on them and how stuff liek Quake killed them off.)
It is so easy to forget how basic the SVGA graphics looked once things started stepping up graphically.
Haha I've seen some clips from Privateer 2 and do know of I have the constitution to take that on haha
Don't forget BRIAN BLESSED and Ilya Kuryakin...
You're getting too close, you'll BURN UP!
One of my young, formative gaming experiences. Being an X-ennial and having played the first two games in the series, I was stoked to play the third installment and blown away with the advancement in tech and graphics that came with it. I don't recall if I used keyboard and mouse or a joystick for this one, but I enjoyed the hell out of it. Got sideswiped by Hobbes' betrayal and ended up with Flint as well. One of the great things is that the game doesn't end if you fail missions, you keep going. Fail enough but survive and you'll end up as the last line of defense at Earth, flying until you get blown out of the sky, which took me the better part of an hour! :D
The original release had a full paper manual booklet that not only told you how to fly, but it instructed you on tactics, such as the afterburner slide. My favorite was Privateer 2: The Darkening, even tho it was a last minute purchase by Origin/EA, that was lightly modified to fit within the same universe.
Sad they don't make games like this anymore. I loved this game.
Me too. Still wishing for a reboot. :)
Watching this video brings back all fond memories of playing this game when I was twelve. Still among my top 3 games.
I had this game when it came out and loved playing it so much. It was very frustrating at times though, for sure. There was one mission on a planet where you had to blow up bases and I accidentally missed one objective and autopiloted to the next way point. It resulted in a never-ending mission with wave after wave of Kilrathi ships.
Thank you so much for this. You got me looking it up (+ IV) and I'm going to see if I can play it again. :)
It's interesting to see your perspective, someone playing it for the first time now, so in a looking-back way. Reminds me when I tried to play Gran Turismo 1 or 2, I thought the details/resolution are really bad, I couldn't see enough to be precise anymore.
The Wing Commander II, III, IV (if not all) were released timed to the Intel's processor release... 386, 486, Pentium, if I'm not mistaken, to take advantage of the 'next' generation. And each release had significantly better visual, sound, 3D simulations, etc. So for some of us that would wait and upgrade the PC to play them, it was an amazing experience each time.
They were also released when console games were just the home versions of arcade games, not as deep, complicated. It was when playing with a keyboard and joystick were the way to go, providing a lot more controls. We used to play with the keycard in front of us, so we know which key is for what. :)
I noticed you played with a mouse. Have you tried playing with a joystick? I imagine even a basic one would add to the immersiveness.
Back then, we also used to play with visual limit, the cockpit or window. Seems to add to the realism back then. The example with the tractor beam on IV: so you have to stop at the right spot, facing the right direction, for the turret gunner to operate the tractor beam. And of course you have to point it to the right object for the best result.
Have you heard of the Wing Commander Privateer? Or the Strike Commander (them trying to bring the action to earth but failed)?
If you haven't, check out Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance. I remember it being one of the earliest most immersive game I've played, where as I fly around, I'd hear chatter on the radio, other space ships flying around.
Looking forward to watching more of your stuff. Thank you again. :)
Man, you can't imagine what a revolution this was when it came out on the PS1. And yes you had to read the manual.
I remember the original wing commander game came with this fantastic manual. Went into detail not only in game mechanics, but also specs on the fighters, carriers, and such. I don't remember if wc3 did. I do remember the 4 cos though
I'm going to sound like a grumpy old man, but back in this era if you wanted to play a flight sim you needed to read the manual. It was in all the PDFs that GOG has available, and it was printed in the box of the original game. There was also often a keyboard reference card that you could keep on your desk that showed you all of the controls. In-game tutorials weren't a thing, because those would have taken far too much time to do when AAA games were being cranked out in 18 months of development time or less!
I felt that the actors were brave to step into that market. I appreciated it.
It was not so common back then for well known actors to play in something "simple" as games.
It took many years for games to be taken serious as a part of the world market. Nowadays that seems almost unimaginable with it's huge economics behind it.
Wow. I was 10 when this game came out. Total nostalgia trip.
What's funny is that despite the janky graphics and silly film capture, the consequences of one's choices had far greater impact than in Mass Effect. I love Mass Effect, but the ending was such a let down. Almost nothing mattered.
I have to say IF you enjoyed this game and WC IV, you really should play 'Wing Commander Saga', a fan made campaign created using the Freespace 2 Engine. It was 10 years in the making and is fully voice acted and scored. In a nutshell you're playing in another fleet other than the one trying Blair and the gang are working with, and it's set during the last few months of the Confed/Kilrathi War, in the aftermath of the Battle For Earth.
Back then all these flight sim type of games came with a quick reference card that show you a layout of keyboard and what each key does. I would have that on my lap while playing until I memorized the keys. I would also read/review the game manual before going to bed.
If my cats hear about the Kilrathi, I may be in trouble.
Any plans for I-War or Freespace? I loved those two back in the day.
Freespace, possibly
@@SideAdventure Do Freespace 2. And point out that Freespace 2 has the best EULA of all time. ;)
...Wait, you're only 25? That voice always made me assume you were older than that.
Playing these games on a real CRT TV/monitor in the 90s was a real treat. My memory is that the gameplay was fantastic and the cutscenes were absolutely stunning, especially against what competitors had available at the time. I played these on the 3DO with controller.
It also featured adult film LEGEND Ginger Lynn, so, it had that goin' for it.
Also, it WAS available on PS1. That's what I first played it on.
Yeah, I played this game to pieces.... I never recall having any control issues.
There was, however, a ground mission where you were supposed to rescue a scientist (that Vagabond punches out) that I for the life of me couldn't figure out how to do. It was also a "losing" mission, so it put me on the unwinable path and I kept trying to beat it before I figured out what was going on.
My favourite game of all time is Star Control II, which has since been released for free under the title The Ur-Quan Masters (copyright for the name, but not the source code). You should absolutely check this out if you haven't already.
In the meantime, I'll check out this channel of yours that I just found.
Damn, not used to hearing Rowan swearing. It's like walking in on ye dad telling a dirty joke to his mates🤣
I remember that you had to modify the upper memory, have proper sound drivers (best with a Sound Blaster card) and use the CD ROM accelerator, all in MSDOS, to be able to play the game in full detail. Later with WIN95 and what came after, this did not work that well anymore ... I never played with a mouse, normally with a Joystick and Keyboard, or Keyboard only ... The manual was not for people that do not like reading books ;) I loved Wing Commander 3+4 so much ... My brother and I always had the Stereo system connected to the SoundBlaster card ... great times
I remember jumping from the sega genesis to a game that started out as a MOVIE!! This game was AMAZING! Love wing commander on the PC, then seeing mark Hamill and cut scenes with real actors, it was a treat. Loved how you had 2 choices in a conversation. I did like that choosing one girl had consequences in game. (Btw, I couldn't choose one of the girls so I ended up ignoring them both till they eventually disappeared from the bar. Poor Blair went back to earth all alone.)
One of my biggest wishes for a remaster. I'd love WC1-5 Prophecy. But, I know I'll never see it. I don't even need/want a remake. Just a modern update with resolutions, bugs, better audio and video quality etc.
Replay the game with a joystick. Please. Mice were never meant to fly! :D Also, FWIW, I found this to be an excellent game to play with someone else acting as the RIO. You take the stick, they take the keyboard. More fun that way and allows someone else to manage power distribution to maximize auto-repair and then punch the guns back up, etc..
I literally replayed and beat this game this week, actually did the final t bomb mission today lol I remember buying this game from future shop that we could came out not knowing anything about it and I have probably replayed this game 50 times in my life. I initially played it on an old ( new ) at the time PowerMac lol it was mind blowing! I love the with the Thunderbolt and the Longbow you can go into rear view mode and shoot out your ass. The game universe just feels so real and lived in! This and IV are absolutely 9/10 games for me, also they are long games which is nice tons of branching missions if you win or lose.
Future Shop, now that's a blast from the past. Roughly the same time when I used to go to a game-store in my local mall called something like Egghead Software.
How have I not heard of this channel before?!
One of the better solutions for unclear dialogue options I've encountered is Dragon Age: Inquisition's use of symbols to indicate the tone of your response at key moments
Spotted the GenZ: no tutorials, its repetitive, iiierks...i can see pixels! ;)
Great video, thanks for the trip down memory expansion pack.
Best version of WC3: Panasonic 3DO.
Polished, hires video, best sound and performance.
Haha! I was just about to post this! I will not play WC 3 except on the 3DO. It's honestly worth getting the system for this game alone.
GOG has these games readily available. Definitely a must pick up if you want to relive the entire series.
I remember well when this game was released. me and a friend had been playing the hell outta the first two Wing Commanders.
This was a gamechanger, pardon the pun. It was so hightech and the next level we where gobsmacked . So at the time it was top of the line , also there was nothing called "HD" or "widescreen" exept for in the movie theatre. We played this on a 17" 4:3 CRT screen and it was amazing. now almost 30 years of gaming evolution later , well.. not the highest quality and all that. But damn at the time, we had a blast.
Great job on this retrospective. I was 19 when WC3 came out. If you had the rig to run it, it was an industry-changing title. It was incredibly immersive compared to any other title out there to date, and in retrospect the stable of actors they put together was pretty darn amazing. Glad to see this title is still appreciated today. And how anyone could not choose Ginger Lynn Allen as their love interest in this game baffles me. If you're a child of the 80's, you know she could do things to you that the other two girls couldn't dream of.
If u send ur wingmen home one by one on the final mission they don't get killed. Can't remember if you and flint get to be together in last scene or not tho
One of my most favorite games of all time! At that time it was a milestone, at least in my experience. I had played a couple of WW2 flight simulators before. One was Pacific Strikes, which was from Origin too and it was very very similar to Wing Commander 3. You were an american pilot on an aircraft carrier and had to fly missions in the pacific. Between the missions you had the opportunity to talk to your wingmans and other personel on board, already with different choices for the answers. I really wish somebody would make a new version of Pacific Strikes!!!
However, the story of Wing Commander was great and I enjoed it a lot. I also read 4 of the books which were written before Wing Commander 3 was released. I am still disappointed that they made the movie Wing Commander without the licenses from the games, the Kilrathi in the games were looking awesome (you have to keep in mind, as other already stated, for that time the game and its costumes etc. were great!). In the movie they were terrible! The whole movie was terrible!
We had similar problems regarding the sound and the cutscenes in the beginning. Then we played a bit with some boot disks to free up some additional virtual memory and it worked. I remember we later got a new and faster PC and there it worked out of the box fine and smoothly.
The gameplay makes most sense with a joystick, not mouse or keyboard (for steering - you still use keyboard for specific commands). The whole sideways and upside down thing is a result of mouse movements being lateral, but the actual dynamic is one of banking into turns: you roll to one side or the other and pull up, not just laterally turn sideways. The other trick - which applies to most flight sims - is that while the temptation is to shoot ahead of the enemy, it is far more accurate to aim behind. Not to shoot behind, but if you fly to where the enemy was, then you gradually end up behind the enemy, which in turn allows you to shoot them pretty easily.
I had this, it would always crash about half way through the compaign (at the end of one particular mission, it would dump out to DOS with an error).
1- I think the Mass Effect series has a lot to owe to this franchise, even with that series being more about boots on the ground combat, the kernel of the theme of humans having to fight in the galaxy and interacting with you crew mates between missions makes it so much more of a story rather than just a simple coin op game where the objective is to kill the player fast enough they have to spend a bunch of quarters to get through the game fighting.
2-When the 3D0 home video game system was no longer the hot tech and PlayStation 1 took over the market, I purchased a used 3D0 for that game. I only saw a little bit about WC3 but was heavily intrigued by it. I found a few other gems for that system also, loved Road Rash and Twisted. While buying a high tech computer was beyond my ability with no job, justifying the low cost used system is something I never regretted, I still own it!
3- I have not play this on the 3D0 in so long that I cannot recall how the game handled. I do remember I loved that with no secret cheat code, nor any need to install mods, I could just go into the settings and turn on an invulnerable mode, this let me see the whole story even if I was not good enough to survive every mission!
Back in those days I had a PC that could BARELY play this game, I loved it so much that I didn't care. I always kept a book nearby to read while the game started up...and while it loaded (in the cockpit view) before every mission.
Freespace 2 blows all the WC games out of the water, but I still go back and play these games on occasion.
Because Flint died in your play through it seems you got the ending when you don't pick a love interest, and both realize you're still mourning Angel's death and keep working with you.
You have to realize the perspective of those of us who played it at the time. #1 We were kids. And #2 this was OUR 'Mass Effect".....this game was TOP OF THE LINE in our day. There had never been anything like it. ONe of the things I STILL love about is that you can LOSE missions and the story KEEPS GOING with you, as you say, getting told how disappointing you've turned out to be.
The only thing about the game that upset me is I remember, as a kid, playing the 'final mission' where you LOSE as a kid so many times I actually BEAT IT......but nothing happens. I had gotten so good playing so many times I literally destroyed the kilrathy armdada and dreadnaught and flew back to base and simply....blew up. for no reason.
Oh, and keep in mind, this game came out in an era when.....don't quote me on the number....but maybe 20 or 40 video games came out a year. It was a whole different time.
They looked cool back then. We played on small 12 or 13 inch monitors so the picture worked ok.
I like to imagine that the Wing Commander video games and the Twilight Imperium board games are part of the same universe. :-)
The Strakha stealth fighters absolute bane was me flying a Thunderbolt. Get a feel for the direction they were flying when they engage their cloak and the pattern they unstealth (they try to get behind you, but it takes a few seconds to cloak and decloak). When you are rotating 180° the moment you hear the stealth decloacing sound or you are already trailing their last direction, they'll often end up right in your sights while still decloaking. And with the old Thud, all it takes is that one second to seal the poor bastards fate.
I often had a mental image of the overconfident Strakha-Pilot-Cats face the moment he realized he underestimated that lumbering heavy fighter and maneuvered himself directly into the sights of its 6 high powered energy canons. Pupils suddenly dilating, just enough time left to say "Oh shi...." and vanish in a flash of light.
Loved the old Wing Commander games! And FMV was so deliciously campy back then XD
My favorite game with FMV cutscenes is Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, I loved all the cutscene in that game.
I loved playing this game on the 3DO back when it came out and I don`t remember any of the technical issues pointed out in the video. Maybe the PC Version was not a refined or very picky when it comes to PC configurations.
Never played this game on PC, but it was the first game i bought with my original Playstation, and I still have it, and I still play it. Never experienced the sound popping, but the FMV was not the greatest quality. Really involved story, great performances, definitely my favourite PS game.
This game definately pushed hardware sales, it forced people to upgrade to 8 MB Ram, which was a huge increase for private computers back then, and the price as well. I think Crysis did something similar for PC gaming later.Oh, and of course, CD-RIOM drive sales...
Huge fan of the WC series back in the day, but I can totally understand that a nearly 30 year old game doesn't hold up all that well. That said, for the record, the "episodic" storytelling with branching plotlines that respond to your performance has been a part of the series since the first game.
Oh, and if no one has mentioned: those pops and crackles in the audio have always been there.
Nice video!
I remember playing wing commander along with Privateer 2 and liking the later better
At 10:08, in Warthunder game vehicles that have similar attributes to the Longbow like the SU-25 Frogfoot and A10A Thunderbolt II are quite annoying to dealt with in certain occasions, especially when you killed a player, then they respawn in as those flying tanks to get revenge kill against you, ground attack role is probably the main priority of the Longbow spacecraft but you don't have much ground targets to kill in earlier missions in Wing Commander III.
The Longbow is a capital ship killer, not a dogfighter.
I loved the wing commander games . Freespace was also great. When I was young they were next gen