Your retro gaming content is my favorite. Just like yourself, been into emulation and retro computing/gaming since the early days. We are in quite the renaissance now.
Thank you for bringing back wonderful memories. I remember running Wing Commander 2 after upgrading to a Sound Blaster 2.0 card and was amazed by the cut scenes. Wing Commander 3 was another reason I changed my PC to a Pentium 66, which was the fastest back in 1994 when others were still on the 486DX2-66.
Wing Commander was one of the first games I got for my 33mhz 386DX with 256 color VGA graphics!I kept my original box and "manual" for the original Wing Commander game, the manual is quite a fun read since its supposed to be the ships magazine and is packed with tons of world building. The graphics never bothered me at the time, and for sound all I had was PC speaker until 94 when I finally got a multimedia setup and found out there was music in the game.
That's so cool! I remember playing WC3 off the four CDs back in the day, and I remember lines like "you bore me monsieur! Disintegrate me so I may join my comrades" to this very day ;)
I've written a lot of game reviews in my life when I started to head down the path of doing that as a job. Wing Commander Prophecy was the first review I ever wrote and it always give me good feelings to see it
Got it posted somewhere? I just remembered I wrote a review of Wing Commander 3 way back in 1995 that I have now republished for the modern world to see. It was originally posted in the Trinity College online journal (I went to the neighboring University of Hartford) - lon.tv/wc3/
@@LonSeidman wow it's actually still out there www.gamespot.com/wing-commander-prophecy/user-reviews/2200-401337/ I'm glad my writing got a lot better, but reading old written content is as cringe worthy as old video content XD
Awesome video! Loved Wing Commander 3, you just reminded me that I need to replay it. Haven't played the other Wing Commanders, so I'll have to check them out too.
GBA is actually a proper 32bit hardware, but when it was active most developer ported 16bit style games for it, because GBA versions was just a side project, the console/pc versions was the main games released. When the first 3D engine for gba hits the market, more capable handhelds was also hit the market like n gage, DS, psp, so not many good 3D GBA games exist like crazy taxy, need for speed underground2, james bond nightfire, driver3, stuntman.
V-Rally 3 was an early 3D game for the GBA and it’s probably the 3D game that holds up the most on the GBA. Maybe the flat polygons of Lego Drone racers, Tony Hawk downhill Jam and Hotwheels stunts. The FPS games also aged OK, Doom, Doom 2 and Duke advance I think still look fun and definitely play well. The V-Rally 3 developers became a little too ambitious though. Asterix and Driv3r did a lot, but aren’t really fun. And the raylight rose engine 3D games like Street Syndicate and Smashing drive look like a hot mess. 16 bit ports were also a shame, because of the low resolution of the screen and lack of backlight, the games all look like a downgrade playing today. The games that shine best are the ones that were designed around it, like Mario Kart, the Sonic Advance trilogy, and Street Fighter Alpha 3 was a good port. Even though the characters lack detail compared to the SNES version of Street Foghter Alpha 2, it just plays so well.
Wing Commander... Good Old Days 😭😭😭 Miss those days... when I had only 20MB HDD and could install ONE game on my PC. I saved up to get a VGA card to enjoy Wing Commander. Memories!!!
It may be surprising to some just how big Wing Commander was, there was even a 90s cartoon I didnt know about and of course the movie, the space fighter genre was slowly fading away by 97-99, changing tastes, technology, costs, demographics killed the market for it, but it did come back thanks to Steam. Its a shame EA have done nothing with Wing Commander.
The company that made wing commander, made Star Lancer for PC and Dreamcast. Feels a lot like Prophecy to me. They got bought out and then made Free Lancer then shuttered.
The GBA has a larger 3d library than the 32x and Jaguar combined. The best games usually use a mix of polygons and scaling 2d sprites or flat background layers to improve the performance and aesthetic. Check out *V-Rally 3* (pre-rendered car, detailed map, low draw distance and severe texture warping) vs *Colin Macrae 2.0* (nearly all the processing power went to the car model and physics.) vs. *Hot Wheels: Stunt Track Challenge* (pre-rendered car, and background textures sacrificed for more polygons without a hit to performance.) Or *Street Racing Syndicate* (DS quality graphics, text adventure quality frame rates!) vs. *Varooom 3d* (Fully 3d, 60fps homebrew racer. There were sacrifices...)
Still the 3d support from the GBA hardware is not even at 32x level. How do they draw the single pixel stars in Wing Commander? On the GBA you either have a single buffer and need to run at full fps. Or you can only draw two pixel at once: Either in the same color or with two 8 bit colors. This is okay for spans, but lines and points ( stars ) or slivers of polygons are pretty expensive. Or maybe draw those into sprites? I guess for the background one could sort the stars and detect if two of them form a pair. The texture warping is also due to unexperienced developers. Multiplication on the CPU still only takes 4 cycles. Balance this with the effort put into pixel filling and warping is minimal. So you have to draw in spans. Wolfenstein3d walls need sprite rotation. Doom did a division per scanline per polygon. ARM TDMI has no division instruction like the original gameboy. So you have to do it like on PSX: Lookup Table and then two multiplications (Newton-Raphson division). The multiplication is an iterative approach. So you can subdivide a span (and an edge) and use the multiplication to correct the linearly interpolated values at you binary tree nodes. You need two more multiplications between U and W , and V and W. Subdivision is adaptive depending on the depth spanned by an edge or span.
@@ArneChristianRosenfeldt Those stars in Wing Commander aren't the smoothest running things ever. Even the 2600 did better. The genius of them isn't that they exist, it's that the developer knows when it's okay to make them a low priority. I wonder if they update on the regular in the most intense scenes, when you're not paying attention to them at all?
15-20 fps on a handheld that has half the clock speed of the PS1 is pretty good. The Resident Evil trilogy would probably do just as well cause of the fixed camera angles.
I'm not that surprised that the GBA has some 3D games on it (not counting unofficial ports or copies), after all the GBA is technically a 32-bit handheld (it even said that on the original gba designs' boxes) with some basic 3D capabilities, just need to use some specialized software or whatnot.
Your retro gaming content is my favorite. Just like yourself, been into emulation and retro computing/gaming since the early days. We are in quite the renaissance now.
You absolutely need to check pixel thing retro. Only content creator so far I've donated money to.
@@jothain good call, thanks! I subbed!
Thank you for bringing back wonderful memories. I remember running Wing Commander 2 after upgrading to a Sound Blaster 2.0 card and was amazed by the cut scenes. Wing Commander 3 was another reason I changed my PC to a Pentium 66, which was the fastest back in 1994 when others were still on the 486DX2-66.
Wing Commander was one of the first games I got for my 33mhz 386DX with 256 color VGA graphics!I kept my original box and "manual" for the original Wing Commander game, the manual is quite a fun read since its supposed to be the ships magazine and is packed with tons of world building. The graphics never bothered me at the time, and for sound all I had was PC speaker until 94 when I finally got a multimedia setup and found out there was music in the game.
Those graphics were in fact really high quality for its era.
That's so cool! I remember playing WC3 off the four CDs back in the day, and I remember lines like "you bore me monsieur! Disintegrate me so I may join my comrades" to this very day ;)
I am playing through it this week! Still holds up!
Great video Lon! I always enjoy your retro tech focused content, especially when you share personal experiences.
I've written a lot of game reviews in my life when I started to head down the path of doing that as a job. Wing Commander Prophecy was the first review I ever wrote and it always give me good feelings to see it
Got it posted somewhere? I just remembered I wrote a review of Wing Commander 3 way back in 1995 that I have now republished for the modern world to see. It was originally posted in the Trinity College online journal (I went to the neighboring University of Hartford) - lon.tv/wc3/
@@LonSeidman wow it's actually still out there www.gamespot.com/wing-commander-prophecy/user-reviews/2200-401337/ I'm glad my writing got a lot better, but reading old written content is as cringe worthy as old video content XD
Awesome video! Loved Wing Commander 3, you just reminded me that I need to replay it. Haven't played the other Wing Commanders, so I'll have to check them out too.
Love your MiSTer updates! Great work!
I had forgotten about this game, but it is indeed impressive for the GBA hardware.
wow I'm still finding games on GBAs library and just so happened you made a new video! Just got an Everdrive for my GBA, def gonna give this a try!
Wow this really brings back the memories
AWESOME video!!
GBA is actually a proper 32bit hardware, but when it was active most developer ported 16bit style games for it, because GBA versions was just a side project, the console/pc versions was the main games released.
When the first 3D engine for gba hits the market, more capable handhelds was also hit the market like n gage, DS, psp, so not many good 3D GBA games exist like crazy taxy, need for speed underground2, james bond nightfire, driver3, stuntman.
V-Rally 3 was an early 3D game for the GBA and it’s probably the 3D game that holds up the most on the GBA. Maybe the flat polygons of Lego Drone racers, Tony Hawk downhill Jam and Hotwheels stunts. The FPS games also aged OK, Doom, Doom 2 and Duke advance I think still look fun and definitely play well.
The V-Rally 3 developers became a little too ambitious though. Asterix and Driv3r did a lot, but aren’t really fun. And the raylight rose engine 3D games like Street Syndicate and Smashing drive look like a hot mess.
16 bit ports were also a shame, because of the low resolution of the screen and lack of backlight, the games all look like a downgrade playing today.
The games that shine best are the ones that were designed around it, like Mario Kart, the Sonic Advance trilogy, and Street Fighter Alpha 3 was a good port. Even though the characters lack detail compared to the SNES version of Street Foghter Alpha 2, it just plays so well.
VD Dev were always the kings of GBA 3D, they made Cop The Recruit on DS too.
I like stories like these. Reminds me of how I felt when I first played something unique and special.
Wing Commander III was one of the first games I bought for my Pentium 60 Packard Bell. My 1st PC ever good times
Me too! First game I bought when I finally had the power of the pentium!
You and I grew up alike…. I loved all those Wing Commander games… but every new game launch I also needed to upgrade my pc too!
They always pushed the limits !!
Wing Commander III for the 3do is awesome and so is Super Commander. I want to play now lol.
Wing Commander... Good Old Days 😭😭😭
Miss those days... when I had only 20MB HDD and could install ONE game on my PC. I saved up to get a VGA card to enjoy Wing Commander. Memories!!!
And hard drives were super expensive back then too!
It may be surprising to some just how big Wing Commander was, there was even a 90s cartoon I didnt know about and of course the movie, the space fighter genre was slowly fading away by 97-99, changing tastes, technology, costs, demographics killed the market for it, but it did come back thanks to Steam. Its a shame EA have done nothing with Wing Commander.
Looks cool Golden Sun also pushes the hardware too
Thank you very much for clarification I must try this
The company that made wing commander, made Star Lancer for PC and Dreamcast. Feels a lot like Prophecy to me.
They got bought out and then made Free Lancer then shuttered.
Played this to death ☠️ on the Amiga and the PC, totally loved it 😊.
Ps…..even liked the movie 🍿
Great Timetravel!
This is crazy... I remember my gba struggled hard just to play 3d opening cutscene of kingdom hearts chain of memories
That was a video file. Any issues were just compression or just a problem with your GBA reading your copy of the cartridge.
The GBA has a larger 3d library than the 32x and Jaguar combined.
The best games usually use a mix of polygons and scaling 2d sprites or flat background layers to improve the performance and aesthetic. Check out *V-Rally 3* (pre-rendered car, detailed map, low draw distance and severe texture warping) vs *Colin Macrae 2.0* (nearly all the processing power went to the car model and physics.) vs. *Hot Wheels: Stunt Track Challenge* (pre-rendered car, and background textures sacrificed for more polygons without a hit to performance.)
Or *Street Racing Syndicate* (DS quality graphics, text adventure quality frame rates!) vs. *Varooom 3d* (Fully 3d, 60fps homebrew racer. There were sacrifices...)
Still the 3d support from the GBA hardware is not even at 32x level. How do they draw the single pixel stars in Wing Commander? On the GBA you either have a single buffer and need to run at full fps. Or you can only draw two pixel at once: Either in the same color or with two 8 bit colors. This is okay for spans, but lines and points ( stars ) or slivers of polygons are pretty expensive. Or maybe draw those into sprites? I guess for the background one could sort the stars and detect if two of them form a pair.
The texture warping is also due to unexperienced developers. Multiplication on the CPU still only takes 4 cycles. Balance this with the effort put into pixel filling and warping is minimal.
So you have to draw in spans. Wolfenstein3d walls need sprite rotation. Doom did a division per scanline per polygon. ARM TDMI has no division instruction like the original gameboy. So you have to do it like on PSX: Lookup Table and then two multiplications (Newton-Raphson division). The multiplication is an iterative approach. So you can subdivide a span (and an edge) and use the multiplication to correct the linearly interpolated values at you binary tree nodes. You need two more multiplications between U and W , and V and W. Subdivision is adaptive depending on the depth spanned by an edge or span.
@@ArneChristianRosenfeldt
Those stars in Wing Commander aren't the smoothest running things ever. Even the 2600 did better.
The genius of them isn't that they exist, it's that the developer knows when it's okay to make them a low priority. I wonder if they update on the regular in the most intense scenes, when you're not paying attention to them at all?
15-20 fps on a handheld that has half the clock speed of the PS1 is pretty good. The Resident Evil trilogy would probably do just as well cause of the fixed camera angles.
Super.. good video 👍
I'm not that surprised that the GBA has some 3D games on it (not counting unofficial ports or copies), after all the GBA is technically a 32-bit handheld (it even said that on the original gba designs' boxes) with some basic 3D capabilities, just need to use some specialized software or whatnot.
I loved Wing Commander does anyone know if there are any modern games like it?
AW! Lon you didn’t say anything about the Movie! “Wing Commander” of course! LoL! Rick
Wing Commander 2 was the best game ever
Would that run on a DS?
Squadron 42 is coming.
More retro.