Music #15

Wing Commander.

For DOS.

1990.

Let me repeat that.

1990.

An honest assessment of the top five games that changed how games were made, Wing Commander would definitely be on it. Today, it doesn’t look like much. Sure, there are cutscenes and very cinematic flair to the game. But you must understand that Wing Commander didn’t just use cinematic gameplay. It invented it.

Warren Spector would later remark how he just stood back in sheer amazement at what was being done with Wing Commander. The game had a true cinematic feel that had never really been done before in games.

However, unlike the Wing Commander sequels and every other ‘cinematic’ game that has been released, Wing Commander wasn’t exactly a linear narrative. The story’s progress depended on what you did. If you let your wingman die, they would not appear anymore and would be missing at the bar. If you did poorly on missions (interesting that you didn’t have to fully complete your missions in order for the story to go further), or if you just kept ejecting like I did for fun, the ‘war’ would go for the worse. Depending on how well you did was where the carrier was sent. So the game had constant re-playability. It also had two expansion packs.

But it is the music of the game that has to be mentioned. Remember, this is 1990. The game came on this type of disk:

At the time, the Sound Blaster just came out, and Wing Commander made full use of the Sound Blaster. You could even buy a ‘speech pack’ to hear the Kilirathi and your wingmen talk to you.

Despite the high quality of music, it was dynamic. The music changed depending on how you played. If your ship was being beat up, the music’s tone would change. It would change when enemies appeared, when enemies were destroyed, and kept shifting depending on your circumstance. As game companies boast about such a feature now, Wing Commander was doing it in 1990.

Games like Wing Commander also popularized the ‘blockbuster’ model for making games.

Only those alive at the time can attest to the sheer awe that Wing Commander invoked when it came out. No one could believe games could sound and look so good. It was like you were playing a movie!

EA says they are going to revisit the Wing Commander franchise. Hopefully, this does not mean bad actors. I’d prefer a remake of the original Wing Commander. Keep the same exact branching game design. The lack of 3d makes Wing Commander 1 and 2 unplayable (which is a damn shame. They are some of the best classics). However, the music still remains eternal.

It is safe to say the music is still as exciting to listen to as it was 19 years ago (God damn I’m old!).