From: davereed@wam.umd.edu (Michael Robert Bromery)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: Wing Commander version A6.81E
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.games
Date: 22 Jan 1993 19:27:42 GMT
Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett
Distribution: world
Reply-To: davereed@wam.umd.edu (Michael Robert Bromery)
NNTP-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu
Keywords: game, simulation, 3D, flight, combat, interactive movie, commercial


PRODUCT NAME

	Wing Commander, version A6.81E


BRIEF DESCRIPTION

	A 3D space combat simulator and interactive movie.


AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION

	Name:		Origin/Mindscape
	Address:
		Origin:		PO Box 161750
				Austin, TX  78716
				USA
				(512) 328-0282

		Mindscape:	PO Box 51 Burgess Hill West
				Sussex RH15 9FH
				England
				(0444) 239600

LIST PRICE

	About $40 (US) in stores.


SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

	HARDWARE

		Any Amiga with at least 1 MB RAM.
		For hard drive systems, 1.5 MB RAM is recommended.

	SOFTWARE

		Compatible with AmigaDOS 2.0.


COPY PROTECTION

	None.

	The game installs pretty easily on a hard drive with the provided
	install utility, as long as you put DH0:, DH1: instead of HD0: given
	in the example of entries for the path.


MACHINES USED FOR TESTING

	A500, 1.2 ROMs, 2 Megs Fast RAM, 512K Chip RAM
	A500, 2.0 ROMs, 2.5 Megs Fast RAM, 512K Chip RAM, hard drive.

	I plan to test it also on:

	A3000, 2.0 ROMs, 2 Megs Chip RAM, 4 megs Fast RAM, hard drive.
	A4000, 3.0 ROMs, 2 Megs Chip RAM, 4 megs Fast RAM, hard drive.

OVERVIEW

	Wing Commander is a 3D space combat simulator / interactive movie.
You play the part of this pilot aboard a great space craft carrier called the
Tiger's Claw. You get to meet and talk with the people on board.  Some will
give you tips, others may throw you a curve, and some will just tell
stories.  It is hard to describe fully everything in this game in less than
what will seem a novel for a review.  Those of you who had played this game
on other systems know what I mean.  There are lots of animation sequences
between missions, and the game is fully scored to interactive music.  You get
to fly various missions, often with a wingman at your side who can take
orders.

	 The main story is about Man's discovery of a hostile alien race
named the Kilrathi. The Kilrathi are a cat-like humanoid race that will stop
at nothing until they vanquish all Terrans (Humans or Earthlings).  By the
time the game started, humans have already been fighting this race for over
20 years.  You happen to be a new and proud space jockey that is ready to
fight for the cause.  As you fight each mission, depending on how well you do
them, you will go on to bigger and better things; getting promotions and
flying different ships.  The game does everything to get the person to not
just PLAY Wing Commander, but LIVE it.  The complete musical score (with
mostly digitized orchestral instruments), cartoon animation, interactive
combat music that actually gets more excited and heated up depending on the
intensity of the combat, all contribute to this feeling.  The computer can
detect these different situations and will smoothly change the music
accordingly.  (Especially with a hard drive). 

GRAPHICS

	Well, the game is basically like the IBM original except with a
couple of little additions in this later version.  The graphics is the tricky
part.  When I did my tests on two Amiga 500s. My friend's computer had the
old 1.2 ROMs installed. On machines with 1.2 and 1.3 ROMs, you will see the
game play with a 16-color palette.  There is obvious dithering there, but
the graphics still aren't bad.  In fact, they do an excellent job of
dithering, but it can make the animation parts of the game look a bit
altered in comparison to the 32-color or original IBM versions.  You don't
choose the graphic set; the program does it automatically by detecting which
graphics.library you have in your ROM.

	Those of you with AmigaDOS 2.x or higher operating systems will at
least have 32 color screens that look extremely close to the 256 color
versions.  Note the version number I listed above:  all the ones that are
released to mail order companies should sell this version of the game, but
make sure.  If you are in flight, and you press the F10 key and you see a
number older than A6.81E, then you may not have the up-to-date version. 

	The 32 color version looks brilliant.  You even get nice smooth color
shading effects that give you that fine lighting effect people came to love
on 256 color machines (AGA for instance -- A1200's or A4000's).  After I test
the other machines I mentioned above, I'll be able to tell you if the game
upgrades again for 3.0 machines.  Note the fact that they only need one set
of graphics to support all formats.  Mindscape used an algorithm that
correctly and nicely adjusts the graphics, without losing much detail,
according to how well the graphics.library handles certain amounts of
bitplanes.  For example, a 2.0 system handles 32 color graphics as well and
as fast as a 1.2 system handles 16.

	OK, enough about OS versions.  This was made to be the first
bitmapped 3D combat simulator made for home computers.  In fact, it is
probably the first thing to use bitmaps where polygons were used in a 3D
game environment.  The effect gives you 3D shapes with much more pixel by
pixel detail.  The cartoon part is just cartoon stuff where all the words are
written in the basic color of the person speaking.  The mouths of the
characters seem to move according to the words printed.  (I guess for people
who can't read text but can only read lips.)  You get a full virtuality 3D
atmosphere and different cockpit layouts for every ship you fly in the game.
The animations always change; there seems to be an amazing amount of them
just within the first 6 or 7 missions.  I believe you will fly at least 20
missions, possibly more.  In the bar, you can talk to people or you can try
out the training simulator which functions as a video game that trains you
how to fight the real guys. See improvements below.....


SOUND

	 This is the part where the game excels the most.  The graphics are
hard contenders to the pit orchestra that seems continuous through the whole
game.  To choose sound over graphics is hard for they both seem to push with
the same glorious luster.  You get real french horns, drums, tympani,
digitized flutes, pianos, with the addition of the very nice sounding
electronic instruments.  Clarinet and bassoon lovers are not left out of the
cold:  you'll even hear some lead parts lead by those instruments.  The
music is always changing depending on the situation.  This is a beautifully
scored game that could have a CD collection made of it for the soundtrack.
There aren't many truly scored games out there, and this is one of the few.
In combat, the music pushes you on, and when things get intense, the
computer knows and will make the music more intense.  (Yes, you can still
hear sound effects while this happens in a very good use of track design by
Mark Knight -- the person in charge of the musical conversion). 

	 The game consists of many songs and background mood setters.  You
know when things get exciting when you hear a lot of brass hits and cymbals
crashing, and then a tympani roll followed by military snare rolls behind
string chords.  Often, you will hear the title screen melody repeated in
different keys and different type songs in a way a true score will.  These
are new samples, so this was the first I can mention in the IMPROVEMENTS
section.  The original IBM version used some FM synthesized sounds from a
particular sound card, but that doesn't generate true sampled instrument
sounds.


GAMEPLAY

	In terms of gameplay, the game plays beautifully on any amiga in my 
opinion, but you won't get quite the super cool frame rate until you have it
accelerated to at least a 14mhz 68000.  A stock system will play it at a
comfortable level and definitely fast enough to drag you into leaning left
and right in your seat, but if you have an accelerator an AGA system or
an A3000 or better, you are really flying....

	Since this is a review of an Amiga game, I will be reluctant to
mention other computer ports much as to make a comparison.  Those of you who
have played the original IBM versions of the game will find out how amazingly
fast a stock 500 can play this game.  (Those of you who have played the
original versions on systems with CPUs other than the latest CPU out on that
system).

	The flight is very comfortable.  It never seems to jump around or
skip.  You get a whole array of interior and exterior views in flight.  You
can use communication on your on-board computer to talk to other pilots,
enemy ships, or bases.  You even get to see people who talk to you via an
on-board video camera that is intentionally in monochrome.  This is the only
other version of Wing Commander out that uses what the company calls "3Space
algorithms" for realistic 3D environment, so it still uses CPU math.  You
will see the fastest graphics done with all system friendly programming
commands. This thing is the most compatible game I've ever seen run.  It
will run out of Workbench even if your Chip RAM is only 512K max, and you
have a 16 color Workbench in 2.0 with a nice sized picture as the
background.  The only limitation of this game seems to be that it doesn't
like screen blankers, especially machine language-hacked screen blankers.
If you turn those off, it will run fine.


IMPROVEMENTS OVER THE IBM VERSION
 
	 There are mainly two major types of improvements in this game over
the original IBM version.  There may be other enhancements, but they are not
as obvious.

	1. The sound quality. The fact that french horns are now truly french
	horns is a refreshing thought. As you can see, the french horns were
	one of my favorite instruments in the game. The very beginning of
	the game hints at the sound by having the orchestra there to kick
	off the Origin Graphics and Sound FX system. The music pushes your
	emotions in this game and gets you involved and feeling just like
	Han Solo, Indiana Jones, or the Last Starfighter in your own
	personal movie.

	2. They absolutely made this version have the best version of the
	training simulator. When you go to choose the ships you are to fight
	against, you don't just see outlines of the ships; you see the
	actual ships in 3D form rotate around so you can choose the ship by
	clicking on the various motion graphics. When you do choose it, part
	of the simulator will do circular lights while the ship that you
	chose will move to the center and zoom up. While that ship does its
	stuff, the other ships will zoom away into the background until they
	disappear. Then all sorts of statistics about the ship get listed
	while another window shows the old outline (weapon, armor) graphics
	schematic of the ship. All other parts of it are the same.


COMPLAINTS
  
	Well, for the first time for a game, this section will be very small.
Apparently, I can only find one complaint about this game:  you can't seem to
exit the game from anywhere except from the bunkers. The manual states that
ALT-X allows you to exit the game, but I haven't gotten that to work yet.
I've run into this problem before on other games, but it was usually
resolved because they just wrote the wrong combination in the manual and I
figured out the right one. Here, I haven't found out what the real
combination is, and until I do, this one complaint still stands. On another
note, I'd hate to tell the company about this since absolutely everything
else seems so perfect.


PRAISES

	Well, I can write another 6 full type-written pages on this one, but
I think I've mentioned enough here. Other than the exit game puzzle, I would
give this game the award for absolute best port. This exceeds the quality of
about all other ports by far.  (Maxis is right around here too in terms of
quality lost or gained in ports to Amiga.)  This game does in an OS-friendly
environment what so many hardware hackers thought couldn't be done.  Fully
compatible with every Amiga, has features such as those I mentioned above,
and improves on accelerators -- not crashes them.  It has a great choice of
color palettes and looks marvelous in 32 color mode.


CONCLUSIONS
  
	 All that is left to say is whether I think this game is worth every
penny to jump out and buy it. In my opinion, I definitely believe this is a
game EVERY Amiga game player should buy.  Worth every penny in all respects.
I believe Mindscape and Origin deserve to get lots of money on sales for this
port alone. This game has done so much that I am actually willing to write
letters of appraisal to the companies themselves for it. So fellow Amiga
game players and designers, you won't be sorry for buying this game.

   ------ Don't just play. Live the experience of Wing Commander Amiga ------
                   ----- Version A6.81E for yourself -----

Michael Robert Bromery
davereed@wam.umd.edu
---

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