Austin's Wing Commander Info

Austin's List of All Wing Commander Games and Novels

Wing Commander (1990)

Campaign tree .Notice how it's possible to get onto the winning track from almost everywhere.The player begins his tour of duty as a young officer on the carrier TCS Tiger's Claw. Through his heroic efforts the Confederation is able to destroy the Kilrathi's sector headquarters and drive them from the Vega sector.

Through the course of the Vega campaign, the player can gain numerous promotions and medals and fly in various squadrons, each featuring a different fighter. The game was notable for its innovative and seldom-repeated campaign tree structure, whereby the path you took on the way to the end would be determined by your performance on preceding missions. However, in an infamous design decision, Roberts included an incredibly hard mission along the victory track which required you to protect a captured Kilrathi destroyer from four Gratha heavy fighters. Even though it is possible to win that mission, it is incredibly difficult. Since that mission was a critical victory condition for that system, the player would almost always wind up on the losing path after, although the game gives one last chance to return to the winning path afterwards. Consistent victory in that mission (Kurosawa 2) is often taken as a mark of an excellent player in this game. Since the missions in the following Rostov sequence are relatively easy (that is to say, difficult but quite winnable), this is not particularly problematic for any player who has penetrated this far into the game.

The game was originally to be called Wingleader, but trademark issues forced a name change to Wing Commander. The dev team's nickname for the otherwise-unnamed protagonist was Bluehair, an accurate description. Perhaps in a nod to this little in-joke, when the character was given an actual name in later installments, Origin chose Blair, a shortened version of the old nickname.

Wing Commander was ported to the SNES, Sega CD, Macintosh. 3DO, Amiga, and FM Towns systems, the most ports of any Wing Commander game.

In 1991, Wing Commander won the Origins Award for Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Computer Game of 1990.

1. Wing Commander(1990)

1.1 The Secret Missions(1991 expansion)

WARNING!!!SOME INFO CONTANINS SPOILERS WHICH
CAN MAKE GAME LESS FUN.READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!

1.2 The Secret Missions 2: The Crusades(1991 expansion)

1.3 Speech Pack

1.4 Super Wing Commander(1994)

2. Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi(1991)

2.1 Special Operations 1(1991 expansion)

2.2 Special Operations 2(1992 expansion)

3. Wing Commander III: The Heart of the Tiger(1994)

4. Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom(1996)

5. Wing Commander: Prophecy(1997)

6. Wing Commander: Secret Ops(1998)

7. Wing Commander: Academy(1993)

8. Wing Commander: Armada(1994)

8.1 Proving Grounds(1994 expansion)

9. The Kilrathi Saga(1996 recompilation)

10. Wing Commander: Privateer(1993)

Here is a fantastic website, daily Wing Commander news, and everything WC-related!
Wing Commander CIC
wcnews.com

10.1. Righteous Fire(1993 expansion)

11. Privateer 2: The Darkening(1996)

Note: False Colors was ment to be a trilogy, but fantastic author Andrew Keith died before he could make the rwo other novels. Also, Freedom Flight was meant to have a sequel, titled Freedom Run, but too, authors Mercedes Lackey and Ellen Guon didn't decide to make it. So, in all, there was MEANT to be 13 Wing Commander novels, but only nine were published.

Novels: Wing Commander, Wing Commander: Freedom Flight,Wing Commander: End Run ,Wing Commander:Fleet Action,Wing Commander:The Heart of the Tiger,Wing Commander:The Price of Freedom,Wing Commander:False Colors,Wing Commander:Action Stations,Wing Commander:Pilgrim Stars, also, never realesed, Pilgrim Truth

The Secret Missions (1991 expansion)
A new Kilrathi secret weapon destroys an entire human colony (Goddard) with only one blast. The Tiger's Claw must follow the Kilrathi deep into their own territory and destroy their new dreadnought. The Secret Missions is historically important, being one of the first (if not the first) expansion packs ever released for a computer game.

The Secret Missions 2: Crusade (1991 expansion)
When the Confederation is just celebrating a new alliance with the bird-like native species of the planet Firekka, they learn that entire fleets of Kilrathi ships are leaving from other sectors and heading towards the Firekka system.

Puzzled, the Confederation ships must retreat, but they soon learn from a Kilrathi defector that Firekka has been chosen as the place for a holy Kilrathi ceremony. The Confederation soon develops a plan to disrupt that ceremony to deliver a blow to enemy morale and it's up to the Tiger's Claw's pilots to ensure the success of that plan.

Super Wing Commander (1994)
In 1994, at the same time as Wing Commander III, a revamped version of the original Wing Commander was released for the Macintosh, 3DO and systems. Instead of re-coding the original ship designs for 3d, however, the game reused already existing 3d models left-over from Wing Commander Armada and Wing Commander Privateer (mostly Armada). It is often erroneously believed that SWC predated either or both Armada or Privateer.

Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi (1991)

Campaign tree . Simpler than Wing Commander 1's.Shortly after the Firekka campaign, the Tiger's Claw attempts to attack the Kilrathi headquarters in the Enigma sector, but is ambushed by new Kilrathi Strakha stealth fighters and is lost. No one but Blair sees these fighters, so they are dismissed as an excuse to cover his cowardice. He is blamed for the loss of the Claw, is demoted and transferred to a backwater space station.

Ten years later, he is called back into action when he is able to save the Confederation's flagship, the TCS Concordia. Meeting many old friends there, he continues the fight against the Kilrathi, finally culminating in the destruction of their sector HQ, the clearing his name and the uncovering of a traitor on the Concordia's flight decks.

Wing Commander II was ported to the FM Towns. In 1992, it won the Origins Award for Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Computer Game of 1991.

Wing Commander Academy (1993)
A game where the player could build his own missions using ships from Wing Commander II.

Proving Grounds (1994 expansion)
This add-on for Armada added numerous new features such as a new arcade-mode with powerups, radar-obscuring asteroids, and several new multiplayer options, including IPX.

Wing Commander Armada (1994)
Armada featured both an action and a strategy game mode and several multiplayer options.

Armada was ported to the PC9821.

Wing Commander: Privateer (1993)
Set in the border regions of Confederation space, the player takes control of a privateer (in Wing Commander, a privateer is a mercenary spacer akin to Star Wars's smuggler, Han Solo) who may profit by trading, performing various missions, or pirating. Meanwhile, an ancient alien spaceship has been awakened and is on the loose, attacking ships at random, and the player-controlled privateer may be the Confederation's only hope in defeating it.

Some consider Privateer to be the best game in the Wing Commander series, while others consider it to be little more than Elite lite.

The Kilrathi Saga (1996 recompilation)
Kilrathi Saga was a retooling of the first three Wing Commander Games (Wing Commander, Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi, and Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger), fixing some bugs and adjusting the speed to run on the early Pentium processors of the time.

Kilrathi Saga also featured complete digital re-orchestrations of the original two soundtracks by George Oldziey.

The production run was quite limited, and today Kilrathi Sagas fetch exorbitant sums on eBay.

Righteous Fire (1993 expansion)
When the player's priceless Steltek Gun is stolen, he embarks on a quest that will bring him into conflict with the Luddite-like Church of Man and their shady leader, Mordechai Jones.

Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger (1994)
The war is going badly for the Confederation. Battles are lost on all fronts and the Concordia is destroyed. Colonel Christopher Blair (the player from the first games, now with a set name), is transferred to the TCS Victory, an old ship from the first days of the war.

In a last-ditch attempt to win the war, Confed has designed the TCS Behemoth, a doomsday weapon able to destroy an entire planet. It is Blair's mission to help end this war for good, by destroying the Kilrathi homeworld of Kilrah.

Unfortunately the Behemoth is destroyed by Kilrathi forces. The enemy fighters seemed to know exactly about the weakpoints of the weapon. Later on Blair must find out that his old friend Hobbes, a Kilrathi defector, turns out to be a sleeper agent and the traitor responsible for the Confeds losses.

The last hope of winning the war for the Confederation is a secret weapon, the temblor bomb, using the tectonic instability of Kilrah to destroy the planet. Blair is finally able to attack Kilrah, firing the bomb and destroy the Kilrathi homeworld. With the royal family of Kilrah killed and their homeworld lost, Melek, once attach� to the Kilrathi prince, surrenders before Blair.

Starring in the video sequences are well-known actors like Mark Hamill (as Blair), John Rhys-Davies, Thomas F. Wilson and Malcolm McDowell.

Wing Commander III was ported to the Sony PlayStation, Macintosh and 3DO.

Note:The 3DO verison of Wing Commander III is almost an entirely different game. It offers a different flight engine, new FMV sequences, and different mission layouts.

Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom (1996)
The war with the Kilrathi is over, but not all is well within in the Confederation. Skirmishes in the Border Worlds destroy ships regularly. Both Confed and the Union of Border Worlds assign blame to each other and the skirmishes threaten to lead to all-out war.

Blair is recalled to active duty and sent to the Border Worlds to confirm Confed's determination. But he must soon find out that a conspiracy of war-mongers with members in the highest Confed circles are responsible for the attacks. Defecting to the Border Worlds, Blair must expose the conspiracy to help restore the peace.

The Price of Freedom retained the storytelling-style of its predecessor, using live-action (filmed) cutscenes with an ensemble cast of actors. Many of the actors from Wing Commander III returned to reprise their roles. The story's final sequence was innovative in that dialogue choices made by the player affected the outcome of the hearing. However, only three endings were possible, and two of the outcomes depended on the earlier choices made by the player.

Wing Commander IV was ported to the Sony PlayStation and Macintosh. To owners of the original MS-DOS version, Origin made available a Windows95 DirectX port, free of charge.

Speech Pack
A seperate expansion to the Wing Commander series was the speech pack. This pack added speech for many of the cutscenes in the game. It was the first time that spoken audio was offered as a seperate product, this feature was later included in many computer and video games.

Special Operations 1 (1991 expansion)
Blair is transferred to the undercover Special Operations division, supporting Kilrathi colonies that are defecting from the Empire. But first he must solve the problem of a mutiny on a Confed cruiser.

Special Operations 2 (1992 expansion)
Jazz, the traitor from Wing Commander II, has fled imprisonment and the Mandarin (the society of traitors) are also able to steal some of the Confederation's newest top-secret fighters. Blair must hunt them down and face Jazz in one final showdown.

Television Series: Wing Commander Academy
Wing Commander Academy was a thirteen episode animated series which originally aired on the USA Network between September 21st and December 21st, 1996. The series is set around the events of the first game and features many familiar ships and characters, some anachronistically (such as the presence of the Longbow, a bomber which made its debut in Wing Commander III). The cast featured Mark Hamill, Tom Wilson and Malcolm McDowell reprising their Wing Commander game roles.

Wing Commander: Prophecy (1997)
Peace has finally come to the Confederation, or so it seems. Still remaining vigilant, they commission the new megacarrier TCS Midway, which is soon needed when Kilrathi worlds are attacked by an enemy whose coming was foretold in ancient Kilrathi prophecies.

The insectoid enemy, codenamed the Nephilim, soon begin attacking Confed space and the Midway is called in to stop their advance. As young hotshot pilot Lance Casey, the player must fight their organic ships to help destroy the wormhole they used to enter Kilrathi space, thereby halting the invasion, at least for a while.

Starring in the video sequences are actors like Mark Hamill (as Blair) and Thomas F. Wilson (as Maniac).

Prophecy was ported to the Game Boy Advance in 2003 by Raylight Studios.

Wing Commander: Secret Ops (1998)
The Nephilim return, this time much closer to Earth. Transferred to the cruiser TCS Cerberus, Casey and his wingmates must repel the invasion once again.

Secret Ops was an experiment in game distribution. It was at first only available as a free download. In regular intervals, new episodes were released, each featuring several new missions with the storyline told through in-game cutscenes. The game was later available in a collection together with Prophecy, and sold as Prophecy Gold. The storyline was left unfinished though, due to the closing of Origin by Electronic Arts.

Privateer 2: The Darkening (1996)
As Lev Arris, a man with amnesia, the player must take the life of a privateer in the Tri-System region of space, finding out about his past along the way.

The game takes place very far in the "future", in the year 2790. This is about one-hundred and ten years after Prophecy.

The cast includes Clive Owen, John Hurt, Christopher Walken, Brian Blessed, David Warner and J�rgen Prochnow (the latter two would appear again, this time in the Wing Commander movie).

All Wing Commander titles copyright of EA Games (former parent company of the now defunct Origin Systems).

Here's a good website. You can download most of these games listed for FREE! (of course, 100% legal)
the-underdogs.info

Also, I' m starting to make a collection of covers/images for the Wing Commander games and novels:

WC1 cover(below)

WC2cover

WC3cover

WC4cover

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Note: I have deleted the "Fan Projects" and "Characters from all novels/games/movie" section of this page to conserve room. I am hoping to put these sections back on the page soon.

Also, Joe Garriity, a die-hard Origin Systems/Wing Commander fan, has put a whole collection of Origin and WC memoribilia, just for you! (Maybe, but I don't know Joe.)