I get my final mission from Cross which is to go and explore another system attached to the last one I explored. Theres something funny going on here as I can’t make that many jumps and get back again.

Flying out to the system is not a major problem, a few random encounters and when I get there it just has the one nav point. Of most interest is an unidentified ship floating in space.

This thing is huge and when I get nearer its clearly not in the best of shape.

When I get close enough I land and have a look about.

There is only one thing to do here and thats examining an ancient fighter and remove one of its guns.

I’d have thought I’d need to get someone to fit it but when I launch one of my guns is now green and does a lot more damage.

The major downside to this is that I’m now being chased by that glowing green ship that we last saw in the games introduction. This thing is impossible to shake off and I can’t damage it. The best I can do is afterburn until it hovers 5000m from me. This leaves me afterburning across whole systems to try to get to the nav point. The asteroids don’t help here but worse still there is a bug in the game where if you enter a nav area not in autopilot, half the time your shields go down to nothing for no reason. This leaves me fighting through asteroids with no shields and an unstoppable ship on my tail. Not to mention the hits I take jumping out. To make this worse as soon as I jump out I have to fight 4 pirates in an asteroid belt. After a few attempts I limp through then hang around to repair before I leave for the next nav. I keep running into the drone but at least there are no more asteroids.

Cross doesn’t give me anything to go on so I’m just left to explore for a bit.

There is a naval base I come across but there is nothing new to do here. The alien ship is still following me around and I can’t shake the thing off.

I finally run into a woman who seems to think I’m testing weapons for the Kilrathi and wants me to go to the Perry naval base (where I just came from!) and talk to the admiral. I don’t seem to have a choice about this.

On the way there some retros take offense about my new gun. I burn past them and jump out before they have finished talking.

This time at the base I get let in to the admirals quarters.

They still think this alien is a Kilrathi weapon and want me to lure it into an ambush where they will destroy it. Sounds easy enough assuming their weapons have more effect than mine did.

Before I get to the ambush I run into another alien ship.

It seems all the myths about the aliens were true. The alien powers up my weapon and tells me I will now be able to use it to destroy the drone. I fly out to the ambush and the final battle is surprisingly easy after having such a hard time with some of the other missions. As soon as I blow up the drone a cutscene kicks in.

The drone explodes, the alien removes the derelict ship and I get to keep the nice new gun. The game itself isnt quite over yet. I go back to see the admiral.

I get a medal (but no ceremony) and get to keep being a Privateer. If I go back to talk to the admiral again I get a strange conversation introducing the credits for the game.

I’ve definitely enjoyed Privateer more than any game for a while. I went in with high expectations and its pretty much lived up to them. I’m glad the missions got harder near the end as I would have been complaining about the story campaign being too short and easy but in the end they got it about right. The presentation of the game was better than I’d hoped for also and it still looked and sounded amazing for 1993 but unfortunately not on the hardware most of us were using back then which is why its taken this long for me to play it again. 

It has to be said that there isn’t really anything original about Privateer. Looking at other Origin games, it is little more more than Autoduel in space or Space Rogue with the Wing Commander engine. There are obvious comparisons to Elite also. It does however combine these elements in a way we haven’t seen before and does with style. It took Wing Commander and turned it into an RPG and I won’t be sorry to revisit it when I play its add-on pack.

There is a hidden extra in Privateer. One of the files in the game folder is named tabtne.vda – if you reverse it to advent.bat it creates a batch file which you can run to create a mini text adventure game (all working from dos batch files). This doesn’t work in dosbox or the XP command prompt though so I’ll have to leave trying it out for now. 

Next: Bad Blood

I make my way to the frontier of space and sign on to map new systems. For my first mission, I have to fly out to an unmapped system that has already accounted for 3 ships which never returned. The system is teeming with pirates, not to mention asteroids but its not too hard.

Next is another system attached to the last one I explored. There is a lost pilot I have to look out for out here.

I find the lost pilot but hes gone nuts for some unexplained reason.

Next mission is yet another new system attached to the last one. This is where things get much more tricky.

Apart from having to go through 4 fighters at every nav point on the way and endless asteroids, the system itself is chock full of Kilrathi who I can’t afterburn away from.

I even encounter my first cap ship although its doesn’t seem to have much firepower. I just park on its tail and keep shooting. I’ve struggled a lot with this mission. I finally cleared out the system and mapped every point then managed to press J instead of L after I’d jumped out and jumped straight back again thereby running out of fuel so I couldn’t get home. At this point I gave in and called it a night. I think I know what I’m doing with this mission now but the numbers of enemy on this one are just ludicrous. If I took out every one, going both ways I’d have to kill over 40.

I was expecting to finish this game tonight but that mission has put the brakes on. It should only take a couple of gos now I’ve sorted my tactics out tommorow, I just hope there isn’t anything much harder than this one to come.

I don’t manage to get far with Lynch’s cousin before confed pick me up. In my usual style, I hit the afterburners and run away.

When I get back to Lynch he tells me to find an employee of his who would be able to find out information about the artifact at Oxford library.

Before I get there, Lynchs bouncers (who was suspiciously absent earlier) attempts to get the artifact for Lynch by force. I shoot him down but the mission turns out to be a fake. There is no one to pick up and when I go back to find Lynch he has done a runner as well.

The obvious thing to do is head for Oxford and try to research this thing myself.

Oxford is a university planet and a bit of a change from anything I’ve seen before. The ship dealer even has wood floors.

I can’t get into the library without being and endowment sponsor. However they agree for me to fly four missions on the cheap instead.

The first of these is an escort mission, to escort the author of a book the Brotherhood of Man consider heretical back to Oxford. This guy looks suspiciously like Salman Rushdie which is probably intentional.

As soon as I finish talking to him the retro’s attack in force. This is by far the largest number of ships I’ve had to take out but two missiles take care of every one.

Next mission is to destroy some data pirates. Again I have to take on about 7 or 8 ships on my own to win the mission. The dual missile launcher is invaluable again.

Its back to escort duty next in what is near enough a repeat of the first mission.

And the final mission of the four is another escort mission. They get progressively harder but there isn’t a huge variety in these missions. They don’t really feel like proper escort missions – the ship I’m looking after just stays where it is and I have to keep it alive. Afterwards I autopilot off and leave it behind.

I get the mission done anyway and get access to the library.

I select a terminal…

and scan my artifact.

This brings up a page from a book mentioning an archaeologist who can currently be found on Palon so that must be the next place to go.

There are a host of enemies on the way into the planet but I afterburn past and conveniently the doctor is waiting in the bar.

He wants leave the planet but first I have to break the blockade of ships outside. He sends me to the nearby refinery base to find out more.

Breaking back out of the blockade is a lot harder than getting in as the ships follow me all the way through an asteroid field to the base. In the bar there I run into Lynn who is organising the resistance to the blockade. She tells me this is all being caused by two rival firms, one of which has blocked the planet to get a competitive advantage.

My first mission is to destroy some reinforcements being sent to the blockade.

The next mission is pretty much the same, just with a much harder set of fighters to destroy. I have to take down a wing of Centurions in this mission.

After this we get to destroy the blockade itself. I get a bit of help for this mission and its quite a bit easier than its predecessor.

Back on Palan, the doctor get me to fly him to Basra in return for a bit of cash and information on the artifact.

Its less than a surprise, when as soon as we take off we are attacked by some Kilrathi who want to get there hands on the doctor. This is the hardest mission of the game so far but still only needs the one attempt.

On arrival at Basra, the doctor comes up with the goods and then some. He has a similar artifact which when combined with mine makes some sort of interstellar map. Unfortunately the location of the X is in an unexplored system so my next job will be to sign on with the mapping company on the frontier.

He also tells me about an alien race called the Steltek, more advanced than our own whos empire spanned the galaxy millenia ago. This artifiact is allegedly something to do with them and he expects me to find a colony at the X. If this could be the key to super-advanced technology it would explain why everyone wanted it so badly. He mentions a myth that the Stelrek now live out a quiet existance at the center of the galaxy – I know there are aliens around from the intro if nothing else so I guess this is probably correct.

The plot of this game is definitely proving more interesting than any of the Wing Commanders so far. It’s not exactly complex but it good enough to make me want to push on and find out where its going. I’m curious to see what I’ll find at the X as I really can’t remember anything about the plot from 15 years back.

I spent about 40 minutes building up my money then finally made the plunge to buy a Centurion. I couldn’t quite kit it out with everything but its good enough to get back to the plot missions.

The view is better than the other ships although still pretty restricted in all honesty – I can only assume this was done for performance reasons to speed the game up.

I complete the drugs run to Hector and get a snippet more info from Tayla who then sends me on another run to New Constantinople.

I get attacked by confed along the way but just afterburn to the jump and get out of there asap.

I have to fight through a wave of pirates on my way back every time but Tayla sets me up with an identical mission flying back to New Constantinople again. This time I get a secret compartment to hide the contraband.

When I take off some guy called Riordian takes offense to me for taking his job from Tayla and ends up attacking me. With my new ship this fight is no trouble.

There and back again and Tayla still doesn’t have anything to tell me except to send me to a guy called Roman Lynch back on New Constantinople where I’ve just been…. twice.

Nothing comes for free in this game and I now have to fly missions for Mr Lynch. The first one involves flying back to Pentonville again where I’ve just come from. Theres a whole sector to explore and these missions are sending me backwards and forwards between the same two places. I have to deliver a message to a man called Seelig that Mr Lynch is disappointed in him

Predictably enough he attacks after I give the message. Since hes only flying a Talon and hes on his own he doesn’t stand a chance and I fly back to give Lynch the news.

Lynch is running into obstacles researching the artifact and requires another mission as payment. This time running a shipment but at least its to a new system.

An englishman who I’ve heard one of the bartenders talking about tries to talk me into ejecting my cargo on the way. Lynch warned me about him already and it comes as no surprise when he attacks. This is a pretty tough fight in an asteroid field but my dual missile launchers help a lot here.

Lynch has a little information for me although I pretty much knew the artifact was alien already. In the meanwhile he gives me a nicely paying mission to escort a relative of his who is supposed to be appearing in a murder trial off world.

 Now that I’ve got a decent ship I feel like I’m really racing through all these missions. I’ve completed each one first time and they haven’t been too difficult at least so far. I’m hoping to see a bit more variety in some of these missions later in the game. It would be nice to get some escort missions or maybe work with some wingmen.

I’m slightly disappointed with the Centurion. Its main asset seems to be the ability to outrun anything so I can afterburn away from pretty much all the random encounters. The 4 gun mounts at the front are pretty nice though. I guess I wouldn’t want it to be too easy.