ALL YOUR SPACE ARE BELONG TO KILRATHI
When I was a kid, I used to think Wing Commander was the first game that truly captured the spirit of Star Wars. True, there were earlier Star Wars titles, but most of them were arcade games: focused on moment-to-moment action while lacking the dramatic weight of the films. Wing Commander didn’t carry the license, yet it placed you at the heart of a different but equally earnest space opera—one about war, camaraderie, love, and death.
You become part of a resistance struggling against impossible odds, with your performance directly affecting the outcome of the war. Fail a mission and you don’t get to replay it. Instead, the campaign adapts. Momentum can shift from advancement to retreat, and missions grow increasingly desperate. If one of your wingmen dies, there’s a heartbreaking funeral in their honor—and they’re gone for good.
This lends real gravity to the missions. You might be escorting a transport ship full of human settlers when enemy fighters swarm the area. While you’re dodging laser fire and incoming missiles, your wingman may suddenly call out for help. Ignore him and he might be killed. Break off to assist, and the transport may be left defenseless. Who do you save: your friend or your mission objective?
Wing Commander excels at dropping you straight into the cramped cockpit, borrowing the framing of a flight simulator without inheriting its tedium. It cuts directly to action and split-second decision-making, where short-term survival must be weighed against long-term consequences. Emergent gameplay and authored narrative blend seamlessly, making this a game worth revisiting many times over the course of a lifetime.
Back in 1990, Wing Commander was a revelation. It expanded the perceived narrative possibilities of video games. The studio behind it, Origin Systems (1983–2004), was famous for going the extra mile in service of immersion. Their games came with lore-heavy manuals, expansive worlds, and stories that lingered long after play sessions ended.
Many of their titles received sequels that maintained consistent world-building, and long before it became standard practice, Origin released expansions and add-ons. Their slogan, “We create worlds,” wasn’t empty marketing. Numerous industry talents emerged from the studio, including Richard Garriott, Warren Spector, and John Romero. Wing Commander itself was created by Chris Roberts and eventually spawned eleven sequels and spin-offs—many of them excellent.
STORY
You play as a rookie pilot aboard the TCS Tiger’s Claw, part of a Terran strike force defending Earth against an invading race of proud, warlike felines known as the Kilrathi. Before your first mission, you enter your name and callsign in the onboard simulator, then head to the ship’s bar to meet your fellow pilots.
Perhaps reflecting humanity’s shaky foothold in the war, the Tiger’s Claw feels perpetually on the verge of falling apart. Leaking pipes drip into buckets, wall panels hang loose, and exposed wires spark behind them. The ship is a mess—but the crew is exceptional. Drawn from cultures across the globe, they are stereotypical yet charming, and full of personality.
There’s Spirit, the reserved Japanese pilot; Paladin, the friendly old Scotsman; and Iceman, the cool, Clint Eastwood–inspired American ace. Between missions, they share tactical advice, personal anecdotes, rumors, and war stories. Tensions simmer, alliances form, and nobody hesitates to voice their opinions—about the war or about each other.
SOME GRIPES ABOUT DOGFIGHTS
From the bar, you head to the briefing room to receive your mission and wingman assignment. Missions typically fall into three categories: patrols, attack runs, and escorts—the last being the most demanding due to the responsibility involved. Your ship is equipped with guns, missiles, mines, afterburners, and a comm system to issue orders. As you advance, you gain access to better ships and more capable wingmen.
As expected, missions grow more challenging. Some require strategies you wouldn’t consider unless you’ve read the manual or listened carefully to your crewmates. Without spoiling specifics, certain scenarios demand clever use of basic ship systems in unconventional ways—sometimes the only path to victory when you’re outnumbered, outgunned, and taunted by an enemy ace over the comms.
Unfortunately, Wing Commander is stronger in concept than execution. Performance issues plague the experience, and Origin’s engine—reused in Wing Commander II—never quite nails the controls. Mouse steering is overly sensitive, keyboard input imprecise. To achieve anything resembling precision, you really need an old flight stick—assuming you own one.
Even then, control never feels quite right. Fine adjustments rarely match your intentions, and aiming always feels slightly off, like your first attempt at eating with chopsticks.
Performance doesn’t help. On modern systems, the game runs far too fast, rendering it nearly unplayable. Through DOS emulation, you can slow the CPU cycles, but doing so causes severe slowdowns when the screen fills with objects. I never found a sweet spot. Asteroid fields, in particular, were such a nuisance that I actively avoided them whenever possible.
SUMMARY
Thankfully, Wing Commander is light on simulation complexity, which keeps its flaws from becoming deal-breakers. The controls are forgiving, designed to make you feel competent in the areas that matter—dogfighting—while leaving the tedious aspects, like takeoff and landing, to autopilot. Rather than feeling like a realistic pilot, you feel like the star of your own science-fiction movie.
It’s an effective compromise. Earlier flight sims prioritized realism over narrative, demanding hours of training and offering little story in return. Wing Commander flips that equation. Its groundbreaking dynamic soundtrack heightens the drama, adapting to your current situation and reinforcing the cinematic feel. Like a well-edited film, the story uses time efficiently, cutting away when needed to maintain momentum and deliver a satisfying conclusion.
I love the rhythm of the Wing Commander experience: tense combat missions punctuated by moments of rest and reflection. Every victory, medal ceremony, funeral, promotion, or reprimand personalizes your journey.
Occasionally, the game pulls back to show the wider war effort through cutscenes—updates that are themselves influenced by your performance. Save a transport, and ground forces might hold the line. Fail, and humanity retreats from the system.
In this way, Wing Commander never truly leaves you alone. Every decision, every success or failure, ripples outward into the larger conflict. The fate of the war rests in your hands. Just make sure those hands are wrapped around a flight stick—otherwise, leave humanity’s survival to someone better equipped.
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