After my brief sidetrip, it’s back to the final (and unique) campaign in Super Wing Commander. The new missions start off with some of the pilots in the bar sounding a little weary after the Thor’s Hammer campaign. I learn that Bossman has a one year old daughter and that Spirit’s fiance is off on secret operations somewhere, but even she isn’t allowed to know where.

Mission 1 is to go and kill a Fralthi, to make the area safe for either our shore leave or the as yet undisclosed mission we are here for. Secret Missions 1 was absolutely rock hard, even the early missions but this is easier and I get to fly a Rapier rather than having to work my way up from the worst ship again.

When I get back Angel says everyone encounted warships but there is support from TCS Austin if we need it. Shotglass tells me how the Kilrathi have run from Vega Prime without putting up a fight which looks highly suspicious as if they had somewhere to go.

Mission 2 starts differently from any other mission in the game so far in that I’m called into the Commanders office for a solo briefing. A Kilrathi Colonel wants to defect so I have to fly out and guide back his Dralthi.

When I bring him back the defector is introduced as Colonel Ralgha so it’s presumably supposed to be Hobbes although this doesn’t fit in so well with what I know from Wing Commander 2. I only get to see him from this rear angle and he never speaks.  In the bar after the mission, people are asking what is going on but I’m not allowed to tell anyone about these missions so I have to keep quiet.

In mission 3 we are pulling out of the system to regroup and strike a large fleet that is heading our way. I’m flying with Maniac for the first time on this mission and have to escort a capship. Maniac proves to be the best wingman I’ve had so far and the mission is nice and easy again. The difficulty level of the game has plummeted since I started these missions. If it carries on it will mean I finish them fairly quickly, but it will be a lot more fun in the meanwhile. After the mission, Jazz is in the bar from the Austin and I also learn that Spirits fiance has been captured by the Kilrathi.

I’m back in the Commanders office again for mission 4. I have to fly our captured Dralthi to get information on what the Kilrathi are up to. The Commander talks about communicating with the capships but it amounts to flying round some nav points.

It’s nice to get a new ship to fly anyway and I watch the launch sequence for the first time in about 20 missions.

The mission is a simple affair and I just fly past everything and never fire my guns. The Snakeir at the nav point spots me and starts shooting when I get close but I just afterburn away.

Jazz is wanting to know what is going on when I get back to the bar, in an overly suspicious manner. No doubt setting things up for WC2.

Mission 5 is a basic 3 point patrol. The only thing of note about this mission is that I’m attacked by more than one fighter type at each nav point at the same time, and I’m not convinced that’s happened in any other mission. When I get back Bossman is dead after he and Angel ran into trouble. The good news is that Jazz and Doomsday (who hasn’t even been mentioned up to this point) will be staying on to help out. Angel is blaming herself for Bossman’s death and doesn’t want to talk to anyone.

Mission 6 is another covert op in the Dralthi. It’s exactly like last time except with 2 nav points instead of 1. Again, I just fly through without ever firing my guns.

In the mission 7 briefing I’m told that we are gearing up for a major offensive. This means that we have to escort a troop ship. I’m flying with Doomsday for the first time and despite all his pessimism (he uses all the same lines as in WC2), he is easily the best copilot I’ve had so far and the mission is an easy one. After the mission, I learn the Drayman we escorted was carrying a Vice Admiral.

In the mission 8 briefing we are told that the Kilrathi have figured out why we are here which means a defensive patrol mission to protect the Claw. There are loads of ships to take out on this one, and it’s quite a lot harder than whats come before but I just about make it back first time, minus a gun or two.

Jazz and Doomsday are in the bar and it’s looking like their transfer might be permanent. Shotglass thinks we are going after a research base which might be where the dreadnought that destroyed Goddard was made. They are now supposedly working on stealth technology.

I stop here for now. I have no idea how many missions are in this final campaign but I’m assuming that I’m around half way by now, if not a little further. I’m breezing through these missions so far but I expect they will get much harder before long. The storyline for this is not what I expected as it’s contradicting both Secret Missions 2 and Wing Commander 2. For instance no one believes me about stealth technology in WC2’s intro, yet Shotglass is telling me it’s being researched here. I should be meeting Jazz and Doomsday in SM2 but I’m meeting them here instead. I also should have no idea about Hobbes at this stage, and I seem to recall that he was supposed to have defected when he rescued Doomsday or some other pilot as a child. Maybe it would all have been sorted out in Super Wing Commander 2 if there was ever going to be such a game. If the extra campaign was to appeal to WC veterans. it’s a problem when it’s contradicting the other games stories rather than complimenting them.

That gripe aside, I’m enjoying Super Wing Commander more now that I’m onto these missions than I have at any time previously.  With the exception of Doomsday, whose voice is ridiculous,  the acting has settled down a bit and the dialog feels at least a little more natural. When I go back and play it again, I do realise how limited the options for storytelling are in Wing Commander 1. The entire plot takes place in about 4 rooms with characters who never move. It still adds enormously to the game but Wing Commander 2 was so much better, and I can’t help but feel that it should have been improved upon in Super Wing Commander rather than actually being worse than the 1990 original. The missions themselves suffer in the same way, with endless variations of the same thing. I did at least get a new ship today although if I’m not going to have to dogfight in it, then I could have been flying anything.

I’ve now got as far as finishing off Secret Missions 1. I’d forgotten just how difficult these missions were but I got there in the end. The Sivar itself is very nondescript for all the effort of chasing it down through a dozen missions.

There is a medal ceremony when I get back, but the ceremony is just like any other. Again there have been no cutscenes throughout the game. They appear to be entirely missing from SWC. At least from here on out, it’s new missions all the way and I’ll write about them in the usual detail from here on.

Out of curiosity, I’ve been looking at some of the other versions of Wing Commander out there on Youtube. A video showing Super Wing Commander had the cockpit sliding around on screen when you turned which isn’t in the version I’m playing. I’m guessing this is a missing feature on the emulator but it could be that the Macintosh version was a little different either. There was also a Sega CD version of Wing Commander which I’d not seen before. This looks completely faithful to the original Wing Commander in terms of graphics but also has full speech. The speech is entirely re-recorded with different actors and sounded quite a lot better than this from the little I heard. It was developed by GameArts rather than Origin but it looked like the version to go for if you really want speech in your Wing Commander. One thing I didn’t like especially was the music in that version which was completely different and a little inappropriate in my opinion. I also had a quick look at the SNES versions which are surprisingly similar to the original also, but with some different cutscenes. They all look fairly good but I’ll be sticking with the original PC version any time I feel like digging Wing Commander out again.

That could be a while as I’m finding myself tiring a little of it after getting this far. I think it made more sense split into the 3 mission packs, as it’s all too similar when you have so many missions in one game like this. I’m going to have a quick break and see if I can get Origin FX running before I go back and finish this game off.

I didn’t have long to play this yesterday but I got as far as finishing the WC1 missions.

The final mission involves blowing up a Kilrathi superbase. The base is vaguely recognisable in the final mission but only in that it is roughly the same shape as the one I’m more familiar with. I wouldn’t say I’m finding the game easy (as can be evidenced by the state of my ship) but I’m making it through these missions without too much trouble and managing most of them like this on my first attempt. If I could use my joystick, I’d be breezing through them.

There were no more cutscenes during the rest of the game and only a brief going into hyperspace scene after this last mission. If I didn’t know it already, it wouldn’t be all that obvious that the mission I’d just played was different to any other. I’m missing the guys pushing up the giant flag we got at the end of WC1. Instead SWC continues straight into SM1 which I’ll attempt to play today. That means the infamous Gwynhaver mission, but I’ve thanfully got savestates to help me out.

I’ve read up a little on Super Wing Commander now. Apparently the team was not given access to any of the original artwork. However some of the models were later reused in other Wing Commander games which would explain why some of them look so familiar. What’s slightly strange is that some of the Kilrathi ships look far more like Terran ones and I’m sure that they were used for Terran ships in those later games. I would love to have seen the original models used, only in higher quality.

I’ve also learned that there is a new campaign after I finish the SM1 missions, set between SM1 and SM2. SM2 isn’t included but I’m fine with this as I’d much rather play something new. When I get that far I’ll start blogging the game in more detail. I’m glad to learn that there is something new, as it will make playing this a lot more worthwhile. So far I’d describe it as different but lacking a little of the excitement of the original. The pace of the FMV and speech is slowing the game down and the commander sounds positively bored and/or depressed as he drones on in his mission briefings. The FMV is far too slow and things like the launch sequence take forever. The one in WC1 was quite quick and built to a crescendo as you launched. The FMV here fails to build that sort of excitement and I’m finding that I preferred the layers of 2D artwork sliding around over each other.

I can see why this never got a PC release as you would have a hard time justifiying buying this at full price if you already owned Wing Commander. The new look is as likely to alienate existing fans as to draw new ones to the series. Having said that, it would have been a more worthwhile release than Wing Commander Academy. SWC only makes sense to me as a port to a couple of new systems which targetted people who had never had the chance to play the PC games. I’m sure the new missions were put in there to give WC veterans an excuse to buy the game however, and I’m looking forward to playing them.

I got as far as mission 10 in my first real day of playing Super Wing Commander. I would have liked to have played for longer only my gamepad batteries ran out and I couldn’t find the spares so I’ve had to wait for them to recharge overnight. 10 missions is long enough for a write-up actually, as I’ve got a good feel for the game now. Rather than a full review, I’ll concentrate on the differences between this and WC1.

I’m probably about as comfortable as I’m going to get with using the gamepad. It works although it does feel cumbersome and unintuitive. To do some tasks, I have to go into a menu screen and navigate around this while the game is paused. This brings the action to a grinding halt every time I have to do it, but it’s usually only at the start of the mission to alter my gun setup and at the very end to request permission to land. As far as I can tell this screen is also the only way to swap missile types, which is putting me off missiles altogether. If I was playing this on the PC, I’d sometimes swap quickly to a dumbfire or a heat seeker depending on the situation and I’m just not prepared to spend the time it takes to do this on here. I’ve not figured out how to lock onto a target either but this isn’t actually all that important. The controls in the manual didn’t make much sense to me first time around, given that it was referring to buttons in completely different positions to those on my joystick but I’ll go back to it and see if I can make sense of it now I’m using a gamepad with a more similar layout.

Aside from the communications menu, there are shortcuts to order my wingman around. Things like bottom-left trigger + up to order them to either break and attack or attack my target (depending on whether a target is selected). This works ok but it does mean I can’t steer and order them around at the same time. Speaking of the wingmen, it’s possible that they are a little more useful in this game than WC1. They are certainly getting more kills, although that could be because I’m not able to fly to the usual standards with a gamepad.

I’ve only seen them in my communications screen but the Kilrathi look very different to WC1. They are best described as talking lions and look like they should be in a Disney cartoon. Their speech sounds like slowed down womens voices and remind me of scenes of people getting possessed in old horror films like Legend Of Hell House (great film by the way). Its hardly the voice I would expect from a giant cat and I prefer the growled Kilrathi voices I know from WC2.

All the ships I’ve flown in this game have the small floating crosshair showing me where to aim, which definitely wasn’t the case in WC1. The snag is that having played the game for a while, I’ve decided that this crosshair is completely useless. I’d swear that it’s on completely the wrong side of the ship at times. I’m certainly finding the game easier now that I’m ignoring it. I doubt this is an emulation issue and it’s poor if it was like this on a real 3DO.

I seem to remember that you got a little cutscene on a planet every 5 missions or so in WC1. So far I’ve only had the one cutscene showing a failed attack on one of our capships after 8 missions. I was looking forward to seeing the new cutscenes, hoping they would tie in with the originals but this was actually quite disappointing. I suppose it’s a lot easier to render ships flying around in space in 3D than a load of people on a planet. Maybe some of the later ones will be more interesting. Simple as they were, these scenes provided the reward for successfully completing a section of WC1 and I’d like to see something a bit more impressive.

I’ve left the speech on, although I’m still not too happy with it. It’s of a similar standard to the CD version of games like Strike Commander and just like Strike Commander it’s worse than reading the text on the floppy disk version. All the “actors” seem determined to read the lines slightly more slowly that is really necessary and it does try my patience at times. It’s not helping that I know what’s coming all the time.

I am enjoying playing this, but I’d still prefer to be playing the PC version of WC1. By far the biggest obstacle is the controls but I assume that the game worked reasonably well with an analog joystick on it’s original hardware so I shouldn’t hold this against it. If you happen to have a 3DO and never played the PC version this could even be the version to go for. I’m not convinced that it’s actually an improvement overall, but it certainly isn’t worse. For anyone with any nostalgia whatsoever for the PC version, they would be better off playing that in Dosbox and I very much doubt I’ll ever come back to Super Wing Commander once I finish it.

The box claims that Super Wing Commander has 72 missions. That sounds like at least enough for it to include both Secret Missions expansions. Even then, it almost sounds like too many so I’m wondering if there might be an original mission or two later on. I certainly hope this is the case as it would mean this offers something above and beyond WC1 but I’m not really expecting it. I’m going to attempt to play to the end of the Wing Commander 1 missions when I get in tonight anyway which shouldn’t take too long, and then time allowing get started on Secret Missions 1 over the weekend.