Display MorePC Gamer was one of the most popular computer gaming magazines in the United States in the late 1990s, arriving just in time to catalog the multimedia gaming revolution. The first issue was May-June 1994 and it was appropriately chock full of Origin-related content... including, I was surprised to discover, a pair of fascinating uncataloged Wing Commander Armada pre-release screenshots!
- The ship selection screen is completely different from the one in the final game. The Kilrathi heavy fighters are not listed and the order of the fighters (seemingly indicating their classes) shown does not match the final game.
- The Dralthi model used here is the one from Wing Commander III rather than the one that would end up in Armada. That's because the Arrow and the Dralthi IV were the first Wing Commander III fighter models implemented and so they were present when Armada forked from that game.
- The specifications visible in the background for the Dralthi seem to be different. The length, not displayed in the final game, is given as either 12M or 18M... much more reasonable than the 28M listed in Voices of War. The speed seems to be 690 kps instead of 745 kps.
- The visible Gladius is using the original Privateer/Super Wing Commander textures. The wing stripes are red instead of Armada's blue.
- The left VDU shows a Wraith with Kilrathi missiles!
- The right VDU shows a ship which does not appear in the final game. It looks like a Ferret... or an X-Wing!
Wing Commander Armada
Origin's latest addition to the Wing Commander line adds head-to-head modem play — and even more.
Fans of Origin's Wing Commander series of games (and hey, that's most of us, right?) have a treat in store this summer. Wing Commander Armada features ten ships to fly (five Confederate and five Kilrathi), and eight of them are brand-new.
But the big news is that Armada offers assorted head-to-head modes, ranging from a split-screen perspective for two players competing on one computer, to a modem option enabling up to four players to fly at once.
We're not talking about a simple update of Wing Commander II, either. Besides the eight ships designed specifically for Wing Commander Armada, Origin has incorporated the Strike Commander engine, achieving an impressive 18-26 frames per second on a 486/66MHz. Ship graphics are greatly improved, while new shields and souped-up controls (the much-talked about "Wing Commander Slide" is now much easier to perform, for instance) crank the fun factor up a few notches more.
Perhaps the best feature of all is the new Armada mode, which is a little like a high-tech version of the classic pen-and-paper game Battleships. You play in a randomly generated sector of between 22 and 46 planets, and you must deploy your one carrier and assorted fighters across the sector, buying new ships as you make money through trade, until you come across the inevitable Kilrathi forces doing exactly the same thing — at which point all hell breaks loose, and yob go straight into classic Wing Commander dogfighting mode. The difference here is that how you've placed your troops at the time of first contact can mean all the difference between winning and losing. An Extended Campaign mode offers a much larger-scale version of the same thing, for real strategy buffs.
Considering the popularity of the Wing Commander series, Armada may be one of the year's biggest hits; at PCG, it's already one of the most anticipated!
Caption: Imagine flying this Kilrathi fighter against your friends.
Caption: Wing Commander Armada — better than ever.You can also see a neat preview of Wings of Glory above on the same page, then sporting the subtitle "1917-18". Wings of Glory was ultimately delayed for a major retooling so these are very early images (the Zeppelin one feels like a bullshot)!
The magazine's cover story is about the making of Origin's Bioforge. It includes a great look at the game's revolutionary 'flock of birds' technology that prototyped the sort of motion capture that is used extensively in all types of productions today. But most interesting to Wing Commander fans is probably a sidebar with Richard Garriott justifying the labeling of Bioforge as an "interactive movie" by detailing exactly what Origin conisiders that to mean:
- An Interactive Movie employs the conventions of film to tell a story, including the use of synthetic or video-based actors, cinematic camera and editing techiniques, action-sensitive musical scores, and digitzed speech and sound efffects.
- In an Interactive Movie, the evolution of the story--including the temp with which it unfolds--is directed by the game designer, sweeping the player along with it.
- Interactive Movies strive to deliver a seamless integration of the passive and interactive portions of the game, and require a high degree of player interaction to advance the story.
- An Interactive Movie totally immerses the player in the story and provides an emotional context for game play.
And a small bonus for Wing Commander fans, there are multiple screenshots of the interior of the Super Wing Commander shuttle that the game reused as an assault ship!
There's also a solid preview of Origin's System Shock, which began life as a Wing Commander game. Origin ran an ad for System Shock, too; seems like the game's branding style hadn't quite been locked down yet.
And Ultima VII: Pagan gets one of PC Gamer's first reviews... a respectable 78% for a game that would soon get quite a bit of bad press. Many have revisited Pagan today, though, and found a game worth playing.
Finally, the cover and index copy repeatedly promises to talk about a horror game from "the creator of Strike Commander". No, they're not looking through a crystal ball... they're talking about Future Vision's Harvester which was created by former Origin writer G.P. Austin. Austin scripted Wing Commander II, Privateer and, yes, Strike Commander... though it would be a stretch to call anyone but Chris Roberts that game's "creator".
