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Wing Commander III

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Re: Wing Commander III

#21

Post by prox »

elorant wrote: post #18
cgriswald wrote: post #6

I've lost something. When I was a kid, buying a new game was nearly impossible; If I was lucky, I'd get one for a birthday present or a Christmas gift. Occasionally a cool friend would lend me a copy of something. For a very short time, I lived about a mile away from a video game rental store and I'd sometimes be able to convince an adult I was responsible enough to return the game and spend my own money renting a ga…

Games lasted longer twenty years ago. It was easier to immerse in the game for this reason. Nowadays, blockbuster action games give you twenty hours of gameplay give or take. Even RPG games are shorter these days. Baldur's Gate took me weeks to finish. I can't remember the last time I played a contemporary game that lasted that long.

They are still there : Rimworld, Space Engineers... Factorio is a fan favorite on HN. You can also count Minecraft and Skyrim as long enduring successes.

Re: Wing Commander III

#22

Post by allenu »

cgriswald wrote: post #6

I've lost something. When I was a kid, buying a new game was nearly impossible; If I was lucky, I'd get one for a birthday present or a Christmas gift. Occasionally a cool friend would lend me a copy of something. For a very short time, I lived about a mile away from a video game rental store and I'd sometimes be able to convince an adult I was responsible enough to return the game and spend my own money renting a ga…

I think there's a lot going on here. Some of it is just general maturity and experience. Things that were novel when you were a child wear off when you're older. Those achievements that you aimed for as a child (having 'perfect' gameplay) may seem less meaningful when you're an adult, especially in the context of other real world achievements.

The loss of "novelty", to me, one of the most challenging things about aging. You can't feel the excitement of certain things again as you did when you did them for the first time. I think this is why it's important to try new hobbies.

Re: Wing Commander III

#23

Post by datameta »

tibbydudeza wrote: post #15
bentcorner wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privateer was a lot of fun. I remember playing it and the sequel. I'd be interested to see more behind-the-scenes of Privateer 2. It also had FMV and (from what I recall) had this sort of campy sci-fi TV movie feel. Great game, although I'm hesitant to look at it without the lens of nostalgia.

Well Chris Roberts is back with Star Citizen , 500 million dollars for an eternal beta of nostalgia.

I... did not know Chris Roberts was behind the WC series... It totally captivated me as a kid, but I sure as heck didn't know who was responsible for its creation. It just sort of existed as a different realm without much thought of the behind-the-scenes

Re: Wing Commander III

#24

Post by ekianjo »

I think the article kind of fails to capture how amazing the game was when it came out. Amazing, as in jaw-dropping. There was nothing like that at the time with the same kind of production values: it was certainly an expensive game to make, and it showed in every aspect of it. It was also the first game to use SVGA which was a revolution in itself in VGA land. I still have fond memories of WC3, and I don't think it has aged that badly at all, compared to many other games that came out around the same time.

Re: Wing Commander III

#25

Post by allenu »

Wing Commander II is quite memorable to me because as a child I could never get it to work properly and it introduced me to the world of autoexec.bat and HIMEM.SYS. No matter what I did, I could never get both the in-game speech and the mouse working at the same time, it was either one or the other.

Re: Wing Commander III

#27

Post by thom »

Loved this game, and it’s a permanent fixture in DOSBox on every machine I own. I was lucky that my dad had a machine that could run it properly, and an expensive analogue joystick to boot. I really don’t have any negative memories of either the story or the gameplay, so the review makes me a little sad. I still have nightmares about chasing cloaked torpedoes down before they can hit my base.

Re: Wing Commander III

#28

Post by sandworm101 »

elorant wrote: post #18
cgriswald wrote: post #6

I've lost something. When I was a kid, buying a new game was nearly impossible; If I was lucky, I'd get one for a birthday present or a Christmas gift. Occasionally a cool friend would lend me a copy of something. For a very short time, I lived about a mile away from a video game rental store and I'd sometimes be able to convince an adult I was responsible enough to return the game and spend my own money renting a ga…

Games lasted longer twenty years ago. It was easier to immerse in the game for this reason. Nowadays, blockbuster action games give you twenty hours of gameplay give or take. Even RPG games are shorter these days. Baldur's Gate took me weeks to finish. I can't remember the last time I played a contemporary game that lasted that long.

>> Baldur's Gate took me weeks to finish.

The great games have no "finish". Where is the finish line in SimCity? Factorio never really stops, just getting bigger each time you play. I don't like SeaOfThieves but I appreciate that it is about playing rather than winning. And I cannot be the only one who has never bothered to kill the ender dragon.

Re: Wing Commander III

#29

Post by otachack »

I played this on the PlayStation 1. It was the biggest pain since you had to swap discs constantly but it paid off as it felt like playing a movie. It also didn't click in my head that Mark Hamil was the lead until some time later.

I love the author's write ups but honestly I need to set aside time to read them thoroughly since they're so dense. Thanks so much for these!

Re: Wing Commander III

#30

Post by plussed_reader »

skohan wrote: post #19
sandworm101 wrote: post #3

Owned it. It was campy fun even then but WCII and WC:Privateer were far and away the better games. III was one of many attempts at a game-movie crossover that never really worked imho. Privateer is the basis of EVE online, Star Citizen and countless other modern titles. In terms of influence it is up there with SimCity and Civilization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wing_Commander:_Privateer

I believe it was WCII which had a framerate which was dependent on the speed of the processor. I remember trying to play it some years after it came out, and you literally couldn't understand what was happening on screen because it was too fast.

dosbox has a setting to lock the clock rate at a chosen rate for those older games that are timing dependent like that.
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