I played this game as a kid, the audio problems you speak of aren't a thing I experienced at all, it was flawless from that perspective, I would have to believe its a modern hardware compatibility issue if anything.

Always loved the Arrow and used it a LOT too, and Tom Wilson really impressed me as Todd Marshall - to the point that I've always been felt a bit sad that he didn't have more an acting career.

The original CD's had a "behind the scenes" featurette. Tom Wilson is absolutely hysterical. He kept making jokes during takes, cracking up the crew. Chris Roberts even "awarded" him a $3 bottle of wine for being such a delight to work with.

It's amazing that the Kilrathi look better in the game's FMV sequences than they do in the actual movie adaptation.

Privateer got me into the Wing Commander universe and remains my favourite, but I really enjoyed the main line games back in the day. I'd enjoy a remake or return to this universe.

Disclaimer: I have never played Wing Commander and I know their lore is deep and cherished by many. I respect everyone's opinion on the matter. That being said, I actually love the movie. I think it silly, fun, adventurous, DIVERSE, and shows a future that is imperfect but still going on. It doesn't show a world full of Americans but a universe full of different populations and cultures cohabitating the universe.

I know I probably said this in a comment on the original video (so it's more for the benefit of other people who read this) but a few years ago George Oldzey did an orchestral recording of several tracks from WC3, WC4 and Prophecy and they all sound great and the album can be bought on his website. It sounds so great that it's a damn shame that Hollywood didn't poach him like Michael Giacchino.

The 3DO version was flawless, but you have to remember that these games were designed to be played on an analog TV 240p equivalent. There is a reason why you remember 8 bit Nintendo games looked better at the time, it was because they actually looked better on TVs than on emulators on modern digital displays.

My guess is that the stuttering is coming from buffering issues. The example shown in the video shows that they happen in cut scenes - so the CD-ROM buffer or cpu speed may be misconfigured (DOSBox?) for this game. That happened on original hardware as well when the CD-ROM was too slow (I remember playing Rebel Assault II with my double speed CD-ROM (300 kb/s) on my 486 and it stuttered at times as well)

Curious about your thoughts on Descent: Freespace and the sequel, Freespace 2. While they lack the FMV, they are probably the ultimate expression of the space fighter game of that era, and are some of my favourite games of all time.

I still have Wing Command III! Disk, booklet and all. I just haven't played the game in YEARS. And I STILL have yet to beat the game properly. Still love the cuts scenes, regardless of the quality. Might replay the game someday after seeing this retrospective. As for the game itself, it's a good RPG game, and the ship designs were kinda neat for the time. The Arrow always had this A-Wing feel to it, so it was a heavy favorite.

The Command & Conquer games also got the FMV thing right. Kane is so iconic

I wonder if it's possible to get remasters of Wing Commander III and IV. Would be cool if they managed to get the original filmed scenes and get everything up to, or close to todays standard

The Wing Commander FMV series were phenomenal and choosing your own adventure through your interactions were revolutionary for the time and still a high bar for story telling games even today one could argue. Remaking the series from the onset of the war in the first game would be absolutely amazing so long as Disney didn’t have a hand in writing it!

If the game is 27 years old and a year older than you are, then you sound much more mature than a 20-something. For narration, that's a good thing!

I played this endlessly throughout the 90s and never had any technical issues. It was a flawless game. And it looked amazing, you just have to remember the monitors were 640x480 so nothing looked as pixelated as they do now on much higher res displays. Also you absolutely have to have a joystick for it. This came out in the golden age of joystick gaming when it was almost a given anyone planning to game would get a joystick for their PC. Also to avoid being upside down you need to roll by holding down a button on your joystick while turning.

Awesome video. This, and the starfleet and klingon academy games, share a special place in my heart. Looking forward to IV.

I loved both Wing Commander III and IV. I remember how crazy the system requirements seemed when III came out. No one I knew had a system that could run it at first. There was definitely some jankiness with some of the video, but that was just kind of common with games like that at the time. I still feel a little nostalgic thinking about inserting my boot disk to start the game, and then working my way through all the CD-Roms as I played the campaign. It was kind of an event when you advanced to the next disk. I still have my copies of both games. I even have my old boot disks in their boxes. I think I might even still have the strategy guides as well. I really miss this series.

The title was so small on my phone 📱... I thought it said Wine Commander 😂😂😂😂 sounded interesting 🤔😂

George O's soundtrack was awesome and is available remastered using a full orchestra. He put a kickstart for it a few years back. If you're interested, you can google for his dedicated website where it's offered.

You definitely should check out Descent: Freespace and Freespace 2. It’s been upgraded to modern standards by fans and has one of the best sci-fi stories of any game.

With a movie, and a good animated t.v. show I am truly surprised at how multi media this IP was.

Aah, Ginger Lynn. I remember buying this on release and being totally obsessed. I was a huge Privateer fan so it was a no brainer to get it. :)

I loved this game, along with Rebel Assault 1 and 2. Wing Commander is awesome.

Eeeeeeeee! Wing Commander is my favorite game series of all time. Thank you for this.

And now retrospective of the Wing Commander movie... thank you! ;) Btw. I always thought that the games had better cast than the movie :)

Your assessment of this game is everything I remember it to be. even though I haven't played it in over 20 years. I always found the arrow to be too fragile, you're correct on the Hellcat it's just the best general purpose fighter in the game. the Thunderbolt your correct as a tank. the Longbow same thing couldn't turn to save its life

Adored this game! How many stories give you the chance to hang out with luke skywalker, a space lion and a porn actress?

I played this on OG hardware, and I can vouch, your experience was almost completely normal. The fuzzy artifacting and audio pops were all part of the experience, sadly. Just a side effect of pushing hardware to its limits, at the time. Although I never had that problem with the mouse cursor, which might be a DOSBox goof. Otherwise, I think WC3 and 4 worked as well as they did because Chris Roberts had always treated the series as "interactive movies." Like, the usage of cutscenes in WC2 is basically identical to later games - just with sprites rather than FMV. So the move to CD didn't change the formula. And yeah, along with that, the games have always had plotting that feels like a TV series. It's totally deliberate. (That's also how its branching mission system works. Each star system is a self-contained plot arc or episode, and the player bounces through a tree of these episodes/systems based on on their performance. It's a clever way of making game progress dynamic.)

It was fantastic in the day. One of those games I completed first go around, (that's not a brag) but didn't replay it, too much going on back then. I have it from GOG and will be playing it again some time.

I liked the "episodic" feel of the story. I felt like playing a 1990s sci-fi series like Deep Space 9 or Space Above and Beyond

Gotta love the auto slide, raining fire sideways cruising through a cap ships hanger

I remember getting this when it came out. It was like 8 CD roms lol. Every time you wanted to go somewhere it asked you to load a new CD rom... thats my biggest memory about it lol changing the cd all the time and it would take like 3 minutes to load. The cast and quality of the sets and creatures was truly special though. It was a AAA game of the time.

2:45 oh you're so young. It was this game that made me go buy a new computer to play it in the 90s.

I loved playing this game when it came out. Thanks for the trip down memory lane. I also played the first two, so when three came out it was mind blowing for me and my friends.

I only played Wing Commander *Prophecy* as a Kid and LOVED it!

Don't forget to also review Wing Commander: Phophosy too. That came out after Wing Commander 4: The Price of Freedom. 😃

I remember this thing when it came out and loved seeing Hamill and Wilson in more roles than Luke and Biff. I think I remember the pops and fizzes in the audio, but back then dunt remember caring. This was HOT back then!!!

Given what the resolution of our screens was back then it looked brilliant.

I am surprised you didn’t mention the option of getting drunk before one of the missions and the having to deal with simulated drunk controls. Or the hidden Star Wars joke cut scene after the credits.

On my 1990s dedicated Soundblaster soundcard this game sounded great

Ok, you avoided the joke about Luke protecting the planet killer BUT you missed the joke about the giant kitty-man nicknamed "Hobbes."

I grew up playing Wing Commander: Prophecy, which was Blairs swansong (and death). Never did play 3 or 4 though.

As kid I played Wing Commander: Armada and it had the same problem of crashing before leaving the carrier. Having to go autopilot to avoid crashing seems to be a recurring problem. (This was back in the 90s with a right of the shelf cd I might even still have in a box somewhere)

You know what? That vid vagy pretty funny. I mean FUNNY funny. I got used to quality videos from you, but your dry humor is something of a gem. Would you make more game reviews for the main channel? Star trek games needs similar reviews. I watched you side adventure channel as well, but I skipped most video.

I wish I received an 'ultra thanks' from someone. it sounds fantastic

You are the best- I have watched all your shows u review an played all your games

I loved this game back in junior high. It's been forever, but I don't recall any sound jank or control issues back then with a joystick. The video was pixelated, to be sure, but everything from that era was. I knew they had some star power cast, didn't realize Josh Lucas was Flash until watching this.

As a fellow Scot, when talking about the stealth fighter at around 10:00, I really felt every bit of your irritation lol. Hilarious 😂

The scam always reminded me a lot of the 90s cartoon exosquad. It's absolutely worth a watch if you haven't seen it

Great video as per usual, thanks Rowan!

Going by the combat mechanics and the varied cutscenes if you cock things up, i feel the Colony Wars franchise could be considered a spiritual successor to these games. OK, they didn't have the famous actors and FMV but they did feature some great pre-rendered cutscenes and music

I remember the game had very prohibitive specs requirements when it came out (Pentium cpu, CDRom, soundcard) when very basic 286/386/486 PCs were still the norm. Most gamers I knew played Tie Fighter instead.

Tip #1) Play retro games like this on a CRT monitor or high end CRT TV. ;) Looks amazing.

I love playing these 2 games on my PS1 copies of the game which means the controller has some great hotkeys designed for it using button combinations. Wing Commander 4 has an even better plot, especially the ending, which is a sequence that I ironically wanted to happen in Mass Effect.

I played Wing Commander 1 & 2 back in the day but never got to play 3 or 4. But in university I was introduced to Privateer 2 The Darkening which I loved. Also had video cut scenes with Clive Owen playing your main character and Matilda May voicing your ship computer. I have many fond memories playing this. Think Elite in the Wing Commander universe, I believe.

So I played this back in the day. The problem was that after I failed teh first mission and saw that the game carried on I believed that teh gameplay sections didn't matter (which was good for me because I couldn't have completed the missions even i knew that i had to). Because of this I was extremely disappointed and annoyed with the story ending with earth destroyed and everything being sad. It was years before i learned how badly i had misunderstood the game :)

One thing I remember WC3 for, it was the first time I got something with a PDF manual. Everything before that had come with a real manual in the box.

In Larry Niven's Ringworld you have the Kzin which I think was the inspiration for the story. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-Kzin_Wars I played it back in the day. I had the upside down bug back then too, you had a lot of crashing, stuttering. I still might have the CDs.

"Fookin invisible coots" 😂😂😂 Fantastic name.

I just checked and was apparently already subbed to Side Adventure (previously, Side Quest?)! Now I want to know what I've missed, besides this! 😉 😎🤘☮

Some of my fav games of all time here!

I played that back in the day was a lot of fun and I love Biff!

Now I need to revisit this. Loved the game as a kid and have replayed it since. The audio problems were not present in the original release btw. Other than that I can agree with most of your conclusions. Especially about the planetside mission. When WC3 came out I honestly feel the technology wasn't quite ready for that gameplay. Sometimes WC3 feels like a prototype for WC4. Which in my not so humble opinion is the best game in the series. Except for the spin off WC: Privateer. Nothing beats WC: Privateer.

16:05 -- RE: If It Ain't Broke....; Weirdest thing of all about the "Wing Commander" IP as a Franchise is how the characters *must* appear in all subsequent media. Chris Blair, "Paladin" Taggart, Admiral Tolwyn, "Maniac" Marshall, "Angel", the "Iceman", .to name a few, all appear in the film (1999) as well. And yet, one of the clear conclusions about Wing Commander III is that the storyline is arguably better than the film, so whatever the restrictions and limitations of production costs the execution is pretty damned good and thus the value impressively high.

This was a great game! I played it when it was new and it was so amazing! And the sound was always that way. I loved this game so much

Some strange this game always brings up nostalgic memories os Space Above and Beyond.

the journeyman project games were pretty cool too

This series needs some love and be redone

I like the touch that if you don't choose the mechanic as your love interest, she'll stop doing you ship load outs.

Great review

I played it after it was released. At the time, it had amazing graphics and sound. FMV’s were great and…… it had Mark Hamill!!! :) (used controller)

The story is basically a blend between Star Wars and the pacific theatre of WW2. The ending is both the trench run from Star Wars and basically nuking Japan at once.

I kinda miss the FMV cutscenes. I especially liked the ones for Dune 2000 and Emperor Battle for Dune

Loved this game as a kid/teen should have been the next Star Wars

That being said, I hope you look into a fan campaign created from mod makers using the Freespace 2 Open source code. After ten years, they created a wonderful game....of course it had none of the off duty interactions that the game had but the mission structure and the voice acting (EDIT: AND THE SCORE) really were top notch

I wish they did a remake/remaster of these games!

Played when it was fresh. I stuck to the heavy unless you needed to kill capital ships. Then time to roll with the bomber. The issue is kilrathi use fast light ships, but weak ships. So getting a solid hit with heavy weaponry tended to be better than dumping endless rounds into a ship that still out maneuvered you. Capital ship hunting with a light fighter was near useless,

I think that a LOT of this game's success was just thanks to it's FORMAT, rather than it being any kind of 'good' game! In the early days of the 'CD-ROM' era all of the early adopters who invested a fortune on the hardware were DESPERATE for ANY software that justified the technology! When you finally got your first CD-R drive you didn't want the only benefit to be that you could get the same games, but now it's on 1 CD instead of a DOZEN Floppies! We wanted CD-R games featuring Bad Actors performing scenes of Choppy, Low Resolution FMV. Not just the addition of 'Red Book' music, and more spoken dialogue in our old point & click adventure games!

One of the most underrated sci-fi properties of all time, it’s like a mix of Battlestar Galactica and Pirates of the Caribbean… great space swashbuckling

I like that games allowed you to play right away and didn't force you into lengthy and unskippable tutorials. Graphics, including the FMV, were awesome for that time period. But yeah, they didn't age well. Today we have been used to playing in 4kp60 for over half a decade, and now the movie world is clearly lagging behind. 24fps, motion blur, lens flares, compression artefacts and aspect ratio optimised for smartphones.

Dude! You should play and review Descent: Freespace, the Great War and its sequel Freespace 2. Awesome flight simulator games from my childhood!

Here's a tip for the sound put one of your ears closer to the sound speaker 👍

Best advice I can give anyone who wants to play this classic, is try and get hold of the Kilrathi Saga version and play in compatibility mode. It's vastly superior to the DOSbox version from GOG in terms of sound.

@1:37: hercules monitor for live debugging

Wing Commander wasn’t a series I happened to buy so for me the gold standard of space sim/fmv has to be Klingon Academy. Also liked Tachyon The Fringe, no fmv but it did have Bruce Campbell so it didn’t lack for a performance!

I played wing Commander 3 on the 3DO when it came out, and yes I just dated myself. But it was an amazing game for the time

I enjoyed Wing Commander and Privateer series a lot.

I understand that the last installment of this franchise has the humans build a large planet destroying squirt bottle and they point it at the Killrathee and say loudly and firmly “NO!!! NO!!!”

The guy who cuts my hair gave me a copy of this game one time. I never played it but it looks kinda cool I guess.

I was on the “other side” of Origin’s worlds, the fantasy series Ultima. I’ve always been very familiar with the Win Commander series, but never played it as a kid. Ironically someone of the technical issues you mentioned at the beginning with stuttering was a regular occurrence for some games if your computer couldn’t handle loading data fast enough. Sometimes simply if your CD-ROM wasn’t up to the task (if developers left material on the disc). Obviously modern computers are exponentially more powerful, so I imagine it’s something else. Sorry I can’t be more help. Thanks for reviewing something I missed out on. Hopefully your play through of the fourth installment was a little ore seamless.

There is a Playstation 1 Version of WC3 and 4. I loved the games

Cool, I forgot about the Wing Commander series, did they stop making them? Thanks for making such great videos, since your on the topic of Wing Commander are you gonna take a look at the 1999 movie? I remember people would only pay for a ticket just to see the trailer for SW The Phantom Menace and then leave, lol, kinda funny.

I probably said the same thing two years ago but: Why is this game never on lists like "Greatest videogame betrayal/twist"?? I spent a third of the game defending Hobbes and him turning was an incredible shock. I still remember the choice between "Revenge or discretion" and I couldnt get into space fast enough. In fact I broke the game. I killed Hobbes in space (He got better) and it messed up the fact I got a teammate killed.

I always enjoyed Ginger Lynn's performances. 😉

I played this on the 3dO with a joystick. Picked the sexy brunette Flint to run off with on my first play through.

After experiencing the Kilrathi in this game I was sooo disapointed with how they were handled in the movie.

Rowan, do a retrospective of the never released canceled game screct of Vulcan fury. It's was going to be an epic.

To be fair, I liked that Hobbes became a traitor. It is one thing that he choose the terran side i a war for domninance and colonies. But when th ehumans showed up with a planet killer to vlow up the Kilrathy homeworld with a few Billion civilians the situation changes. I can feel with anyone who doesn't want to become the last of his kind. For the sudden capitulation of the Kilrathy: Somewhere in the 2nd half there is a cutscene where the monarch of the Kilrathy gives the order to call as many ships as possible back to the homeworld to refitt and repair. This is their planned final offensive to reach the earth since the terrans are on the defence and outnumbered everywhere. So when the homeworld goes boom, they loose most of their Military.

I wish there was a way to play my old Mac (before OSX) games like descent and buried in time/legacy of time.