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Napoleon famously said that "a soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon" and he was most likely thinking of the original Wing Commander. In addition to its famous medal system, Wing Commander I has something not seen in any of the later games: an accompanying achievement-style system that awards players those bits of colored ribbons for specific in-game achievements like scoring five kills or flying ten missions. We decided to take a closer look at this system… and we were surprised by what we discovered!
Many of Wing Commander's ribbons have been mislabeled online for decades for two very good reasons: difficulties and errors in labeling in Claw Marks and a bug that has been with the game since its original version. Wing Commander I has twelve different ribbons that are awarded throughout the game. Two of them are story-related and have actually been given to you before you fly your first missions. The others are earned, some very quickly, for your in-game accomplishments: 5 and 25 kills, 5, 10 and 15 missions and flying each type of fighter (plus a Vega Sector campaign participation ribbon that you earn on your first mission.) And we'll get one thing out of the way straight off: the original game's developers (perhaps somewhat charmingly) seem to not know what the ribbons you see on the chests military uniforms actually are. In real life they typically represent medals like the ones earned using Wing Commander I's medal system and are not a separate type of badge representing something else. But that's not how it is in the Confederation, anyway!
Wing Commander I has three types of ribbons. Fighter Qualification ribbons are awarded the first time you fly a particular ship. That's the Hornet, Scimitar, Raptor and Rapier; there's no extra ribbon for the Dralthi. Performance Service ribbons are the closest to Xbox achievements: Ace and Ace of Aces are awarded for five and twenty five kills, respectively and then the 5-, 10- and 15-Mission ribbons are self-explanatory. The final ribbon type is Graduation Service Ribbons which is more of a classic Chris Roberts immersive touch. Two of these are actually assigned from the very start of the game, Academy Graduate and Flight Training. The third, Vega Sector Campaign, is given as soon as you fly your first mission. There are no additional campaign ribbons added in the mission disks. The correct order on the uniform is the reverse of how they are displayed in Claw Marks: Graduation Service then Fighter Qualification and then Performance Service.
Now about that bug: Wing Commander I assigns the 5-Mission ribbon after your first mission. This might seem like a small thing, but the fact that it consistently appears in the wrong place and indicates to players that it might be the Hornet, Vega Sector or Ace ribbon (all of which are typically awarded after the first mission) has led to no end of confusion resulting in incorrect identification charts in both Claw Marks and the Super Famicom manuals! This bug was actually fixed for the first time with AllTinker's recent patch. An apparent result of this bug is that only one of the ribbons on the identification charts in Claw Marks is correct, the Vega Sector Campaign ribbon. Wondering how you can even tell? Claw Marks represents the colors of the ribbons with hatching, a system that has existed since the middle ages to represent colors of heraldic emblems in black and white! Here's what colors the hatching represents:
And here's a programmer-artfully colored version of the Claw Marks artwork:
The result is that the Claw Marks charts are catastrophically useless. The Flight Training and Academy Graduate are swapped, the Hornet is the Ace of Aces, the Ace is the Hornet, the Ace of Aces is the Rapier, the 5-, 10- and 15-Mission ribbons are the Scimitar, Raptor and Rapier and then the Raptor, Scimitar and Ace are the 5-Mission, 10-Mission and 15-Mission ribbons. Whew! Here's what it would look like if the Claw Marks medals were corrected:
The Super Famicom manual version of the ribbons is particularly interesting. The port's lower resolution and reduced colors have been interpreted as distinctive 'checkerboard' patterns by the Japanese manual artist! Their presentation also seems to have been impacted by the general confusion over which ribbon is which. Here the Rapier and Ace and the Hornet and Vega Sector ribbons have been swapped.
Interestingly, the artist behind the Mega CD manual seems to have done their homework. All the colors are correct here and all of the ribbons are correctly labeled!
Finally, Super Wing Commander doesn't drop the ribbon system but it does reduce their visibility by removing any mention of them from the manual. The coloring of the ribbons themselves are also close to indistinct. A sad end to a neat feature!
Appendix: Other Origin FX Appearances
Wing Commander I also shows us Colonel Halcyon's ribbons in a variety of smaller scales. Make what you will of them!
The SFC manual even has a drawing of Halcyon with ribbons visible!
Wing Commander II has ribbons on Blair and Jazz's dress uniforms and on Tolwyn's normal outfit. Blair and Jazz have the same ribbons! These graphics are stored twice in the game because the ribbons prevent them from being mirrored (which is how most of Wing Commander II's portraits work).
Finally, Privateer has ribbons worn by Admiral Terrell and Captain Goodin… best visible when you see their full image when being offered a mission.
Next time: We're going to be taking a very in-depth look at the ribbons that appear in the FMV games! There's no fun game mechanic but there are some pretty interesting things to learn about them. Special thanks to ATMcashpoint for explaining the heraldic hatching system used in Claw Marks!
