Display MoreAnother wonderful Origin ad layout from 1993! What are the odds? I wonder if there's anything interesting in here...
Academy's stunning key art is by Chris Douglas (again!) and Jake Rodgers, another one of Origin's talented early 3D artists. It has two Return of the Jedi explosions, too! The oddest part is the ships which... aren't in the game at all, no "Dralthi MK VII" in Academy.
These ads started running late summer 1993 and continued through the end of the year. There was a pretty significant running change towards the end of the campaign that's worth comparing to the scan above:
The first one: "holodeck console" becomes "holographic simulator". I've worked in game marketing long enough to know EXACTLY how that conversation with legal went.
The other one is that "The Wave" becomes "The Gauntlet"... that's clearly a development change and it is a much better name!
The screenshots are fascinating. Sources for the lower two, which were distro'd on Origin's BBS, have survived! This one is not a bullshot but an alpha build: VDU for the Wraith hasn't been implemented, typo on "leech" and unique names for AI pilots were dropped.
But the wingman selection is certainly a bullshot, likely from an earlier design where they weren't reusing Wing Commander II character assets. Too bad, I'd love to meet Dingo! His VDU never appears anywhere. Also note the cursor changes colors! Look at the third icon on the bottom row, too... the Confederation space station was originally Deep Space Nine!
Tangential, but my remaining absolute Wing Commander collecting holy grail is a Wing Commander Academy team t-shirt. Featuring unique art by the great Paul Steed who was angry that the WC2 team shirts were so ugly! Would make a great tattoo, too.
