The game which started it all, the original Wing Commander revolutionised space combat on the PC in 1990 with incredible graphics (of the day), branching missions which rewarded or humbled the player according to his or her performance, and character interaction which drove the storyline forward.
Wing Commander is currently (since 25th August 2011) available from gog.com. Extensive background information for Wing Commander, Secret Missions 1, Secret Missions 2 and Super Wing Commander is available at the CIC.
The Wing Commander manual “Claw Marks” is presented as an in-universe magazine for pilots of the Tiger’s Claw. An on-line version is also available, made with TLC by TC. Reference cards for Secret Missions 1 and Secret Missions 2 are available from the CIC.
The Kilrathi Saga manual, presented as a scrapbook put together by Christopher Blair, the player character, includes background information from Wing Commander I, II and III.
When stuck on a mission, try the CIC’s very thorough game guide.
For a little extra fun after finishing the game, try this savegame editor by David Raley. The editor may also be needed during the Secret Missions to ‘resurrect’ wingmen who have mysteriously disappeared due to the infamous “Series Overflow Bug”. It also includes very detailed information on each mission, victory conditions, and more.
Wedge009’s interpretation of the dialogue from Wing Commander.
At the beginning of August 2007, George “The Fat Man” Sanger and Team Fat – the composers of Wing Commander I and II – released “Wing One”, a collection of music from the original Wing Commander game synthesised on a Roland MT-32, just as The Fat Man intended the music to be. The orignal publisher, Amie Street, ceased operation on 22nd September 2010, however, the album is currently available for purchase from VibeDeck, with 100% of proceeds going towards The Fat Man himself.
A collection of the MIDI extracted from the original Wing Commander game data, as well as MP3 renditions, are available from the CIC. This collection includes several of George Oldziey’s arrangements from the Kilrathi Saga version of Wing Commander, as well as music from more obscure releases such as the Origin Soundtrack CD. In addition, Scrap has made a nice acoustic guitar rendition of the music from the introduction.
Extracting the music from Kilrathi Saga is a simple matter with any audio editor which can read raw sound data – such as Audacity (download). Music is located in the STREAMS folder as STR files and stored as stereo 16-bits @ 22050 Hz.
Players of the Super Nintendo version of Wing Commander and The Secret Missions may be interested in its SPC music soundtrack. These soundtracks may be played using SNESamp or any other program capable or processing SPC700 memory dumps. Similarly, the music programmer for the Wing Commander Amiga conversion, Mark Knight, has made the original Amiga sound modules available for download.
Super Wing Commander was a version of Wing Commander made for the 3DO console and the Macintosh computer, featuring completely new graphics. High resolution pictures of the ships from Super Wing Commander can be found at the CIC – it is interesting to note that a number of ship models were reused in later Wing Commander games:
| Super Wing Commander | Wing Commander II |
|---|---|
| Kilrathi Jalthi Fighter | Kilrathi Jalkehi Fighter |
| Confederation Dilligent Transport | Kilrathi Dorkathi Transport |
| Kilrathi Dorkir Transport | Kilrathi Supply Depot |
| Super Wing Commander | Wing Commander Privateer |
|---|---|
| Kilrathi Dralthi Fighter | Kilrathi Dralthi VII |
| Kilrathi Gratha Fighter | Talon Fighter |
| Confederation Raptor Fighter | Civilian Gladius Fighter |
| Kilrathi Salthi Fighter | Kilrathi Salthi Fighter |
| Super Wing Commander | Wing Commander Armada |
|---|---|
| Confederation Raptor Fighter | Confederation Gladius Fighter (introduction only) |
| Confederation Scimitar Fighter | Confederation Banshee Fighter |
| Kilrathi Salthi Fighter | Kilrathi Shok’lar Fighter (introduction only) |
| Confederation Bengal Carrier | Confederation Lexington Carrier (introduction only) |
| Kilrathi Snakeir Carrier | Kilrathi Shiraak Carrier |
Super Wing Commander features all the missions from the original Wing Commander and the Secret Missions add-ons, as well as an extra set of missions taking place between the Secret Missions and Crusade. Often referred to as “Secret Missions 1.5”, the new missions detail how pilots from the TCS Tiger’s Claw find and destroy the shipyards where the Sivar dreadnought was built. The script of “Secret Missions 1.5” is available for viewing at the CIC, as well as movies from the first mission and a medley (track 12) of the music featured in Super Wing Commander.
In celebration of the CIC’s ninth birthday in August 2007, Kevin Caccamo released his remake of Wing Commander I, based on the Flight Commander engine, a space combat simulator written from scratch by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory employee Eddie Benowitz.
Apparently, the Kilrathi Saga version of the Secret Missions add-on suffers from a bug where the Kilrathi Snakier carrier was made completely defenceless! A patch from WC Revival was made to return the Snakier to its original DOS game statistics.
A fun little ship editor is available for examining in-game ship statistics.
