While forgotten by newer players, the Wing Commander series was a major affair for ‘90s PC gaming. Spanning five entries, a dozen expansions, an ambitious Super Nintendo port, novelizations, an animated series and a steamy Freddy Prinze Jr. vehicle, the space flight sim has remained more or less untouched since the millennium. Now it seems like something finally stirs amongst the stars’ citizens, as an EA producer announced an upcoming remaster of Wing Commander’s most revered entry.

At the massive Portland Retro Gaming Expo, a retrospective panel delivered some shocking good news to Wing Commander fans. Not only had longtime EA producer Jim Vessella unearthed master tapes from Wing Commander 3: Heart of the Tiger’s production, but they will apparently be put to work. Vessella told the crowd that a 30th anniversary remaster is in the pipeline. On top of brushing off the video compression, the game itself will run at 60FPS, implement post-release community enhancements and include “the Kilrathi Saga,” suggesting it will include all three of the initial trilogy.

We're getting WING COMMANDER FMVs, gang!!! Jim Vessella found over 600 source tapes in the EA archives and have been restoring them

In the brutal space war between humans and the Klingons-but-big-kitties Kilrathi Empire, you play as pilot Christopher Blair. Now infamous in both battalions, you’ve been transferred to the TCS Victory, an older vessel almost as crusty as its captain. With news of environmental instability on the Kilrathi homeworld, and intel that former squeeze Angel has been captured, you spearhead a secret campaign to fatally wound your alien enemies.

Source link