Since I forgot last time, happy new year! Now that Christmas is out of the way, I’ll see if I can’t get back to posting a little more often on here. I’m sure I still have at least another year of Origin blogging left in me and I’m not short of games to play on here. I think the main gaming focus this year is going to be Ultima ports and remakes as I have a stack of them lined up and it’s been too long since I played anything except the original trilogy.

In the meanwhile, I’m far too occupied with Rocksmith so I’ll carry on working through magazine articles. Next up is a review from the February 1998 PC Gamer of Wing Commander Prophecy. The review lives up the tagline and is yet another mauling of the series:-

Elsewhere on the Wing Commander front, I see I’ve been nominated for website of the year on the WC CIC which is something of a surprise, this not being an entirely Wing Commander site and all that. I did play Wing Commander 1 a ridiculous number of times last year mind you. If you feel inclined, pop over there and give me a helping hand toward the fame and glory that awaits the winner.

I thought it was about time I posted something on here so I had a search through a few cover CD’s looking for an Ultima Online 2 demo video I remember seeing. I didn’t find it but did spot a disk with some early Wing Commander Prophecy screenshots (most of which are pre-rendered). These come from the September 1997 PC Gaming World which should date them to about 5-6 months before WCP was released. It’s a pity they aren’t larger but these were probably hosted on the Origin website originally and would no doubt have been considered high-resolution back then:-

I went shopping for a frame for my certificate at the weekend. While I was out I found a shop selling them in all sizes unbelievably cheaply, so I thought I might as well buy several and geek out the games room a bit (not that it needed it). The biggest frame I bought was for a nifty Wing Commander Prophecy poster, done in the style of a movie promo with the credits at the bottom. These were only ever available at trade shows and to the developers so they aren’t all that common. Some similar posters were also produced in larger quantities in Germany which don’t have the credits. I didn’t actually have enough wall space in my games room for this so it’s hanging in the hall outside, mercifully hiding some of the wallpaper:-

I’ve also got this developer version of the map poster that came with Prophecy. A decent photo proved impossible but the poster is exactly the same as the regular version as far as I can tell. The only difference is that unlike the ones in the box, it’s not been folded. I only have the room for so many giant Wing Commander posters on the wall so this one is going back to being rolled up for now:-