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A favorite Wing Commander legend is currently making the rounds again: the claim that a programmer hex edited a memory manager's crash message with 'Thank you for playing Wing Commander!' so it wouldn't be visible when quitting the game to DOS. The story is not completely true -- the hack happened during development but the bug was fixed before the game shipped -- and we have previously published an in-depth look. But why do people remember 'thank you for playing Wing Commander' so clearly when the game didn't actually say that?
To answer that question, we thought it would be beneficial to conduct a survey that would list out EVERY English-language quit message displayed by a Wing Commander game in MS-DOS. None of these are the result of memory errors, they are simply the executables telling DOS to print text upon exit. Before Privateer, games only displayed a message when they were quit through the UI (ie, selecting an airlock) but from 1993 on quit messages displayed when the player quit through alt-x.
Wing Commander demo: Wing Commander, at a software store near you...
Wing Commander: You step out of the airlock and into...
The Secret Missions 2: You step out of the airlock and into...
Wing Commander II demo: {nothing}
Wing Commander II: Leaving Wing Commander 2...
Special Operations 1: Leaving Wing Commander 2...
Special Operations 2: Leaving Wing Commander 2...
Wing Commander Academy: Thank you for Playing Wing Commander Academy!
Privateer: Thanks for playing Privateer. / JEMM unloaded.
Righteous Fire: Thanks for playing Righteous Fire. / JEMM unloaded.
Wing Commander Armada: Thank you for playing Wing Armada
Proving Grounds: Thank you for playing Wing Commander Armada::Proving Grounds
Wing Commander III demo: {nothing}
Wing Commander III: While you sleep, they'll be waiting . . .
Wing Commander IV demo: You stop that! You scare my chickens!
Wing Commander IV: You stop that! You scare my chickens!
Privateer 2 demo: {nothing}
Privateer 2: {nothing}Ever wonder about the 'You stop that! You scare my chickens!' line from Wing Commander IV? According to a February 1996 issue of Point of Origin, it's an in-joke for the team rather than a reference to anything else. The Employee of the Month article about Pete Shelus notes that "those crunch dinners [on WC4] are particularly memorable for him, especially the free-association session that led to the infamous quote, 'You stop that! You scare my chickens!'"
