Wing Commander | Code Like It's 198x

In 1991 Computer Gaming World gave its game of the year to a program that, it said, had “singlehandedly encouraged more readers to upgrade their current computer systems than any other product we can remember”. That was Wing Commander, Chris Roberts’s space combat game for Origin Systems. Its starfighters were detailed pictures, not wireframes, and they grew and turned as they flew at you. Its music changed with the fight. Between missions you sat in the bar of the carrier Tiger’s Claw, heard the gossip, and were briefed, promoted or dressed down by characters who remembered how you had flown. To see all of it at its best you needed a fast PC, lots of memory, a hard disk and a sound card, and a lot of people went out and bought them.

Fast facts

Designer: Chris Roberts; music by George Sanger and Dave Govett.
Publisher: Origin Systems, Austin, Texas; Mindscape in Britain.
Released: MS-DOS, September 1990, at $69.95.
Working titles: Squadron, then Wingleader.
Conversions: Amiga (Mindscape, 1992), Super Nintendo (Mindscape, 1992–93), Amiga CD32 and Sega Mega-CD.
Sequels: Wing Commander II (1991), Privateer (1993), Wing Commander III (1994), IV (1996), Prophecy (1997).

Squadron, Wingleader, Wing Commander

Roberts was 24 when The One profiled him in 1992: born in America, he had grown up in Britain and written games for the BBC Micro before joining Origin, where his first games were Times of Lore and Bad Blood. His first ideas for a space battle game, the magazine said, went under the provisional title Squadron, and were partly inspired by Lucasfilm’s Battlehawks 1942. By the summer of 1990 the game was Wingleader, and ACE called it “the hottest game on display” at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago. Shortly before release it became Wing Commander. Computer Gaming World reported that the change was made to avoid confusion with Nova Games’ Wingleader.

ACE recorded that the game took 77 person-months of work: Roberts and four other programmers, four artists, a sound-effects specialist and three writers.

How it played

You are a rookie pilot on the Tiger’s Claw, a carrier of the Terran Confederation in the 27th century, at war with the Kilrathi, a race of warlike cats. Each mission starts with a briefing, sends you out with a wingman, and ends with a debriefing, a medal or a reprimand. Your record moves the campaign across a star map of the Vega sector: fly well and the Confederation advances, fly badly and the story takes a losing branch, without ending the game. Computer Gaming World’s reviewer, Dennis Owens, liked the way the game hid its machinery inside its story. You practise on a simulator in the bar, and you save the game by clicking on one of eight bunks in the barracks, the foot of the bed to sleep and save, the head to wake and restore. He urged players not to reload after every bad mission, since that was how they would miss “the extraordinary depth designed into this game”.

In the cockpit, the enemy was not made of lines. Roberts wrote, in ACE’s words, “a unique system for moving bit-mapped objects through 3D space”: the ships were detailed pictures that the program scaled and turned as they closed in and peeled away. The One described the cost: “shifting complex ray-traced bitmapped images about the screen AND rotating and scaling them in real time takes a lot out of a computer”. Origin’s own advice, it said, was a 16MHz 386 or faster. Computer Gaming World found the action “smooth and responsive” at 16MHz and above, and some touches, such as the pilot’s hand moving the joystick, appeared only on machines with expanded memory.

The sound was built the same way. George Sanger, “The Fat Man”, wrote a film-style score in which, ACE explained, the program picked music to fit the battle: the dogfight theme grew faster as the action rose, a crescendo marked a wingman’s death and a dirge followed your own. Owens called it “a truly innovative feature” and credited Sanger and Dave Govett.

Reception and sales

The British press saw a beta test in the autumn of 1990, and ACE called Wing Commander “one of the most exciting games ever released”. In December Computer Gaming World called it “innovative, intense, graphically lovely”, and in November 1991 made it its overall game of the year; ACE went on to count Wing Commander as one reason Origin looked like the software house of 1990.

Origin sold copies direct as well as in shops. A Special Edition, “available ONLY direct from ORIGIN”, came with a Secret Missions disk of extra missions, a flight cap and Roberts’s signature, for the normal $69.95.

Richard Garriott said in 1999 that a Wing Commander game sold on average about twice as many copies as an Ultima, which he put at about 250,000. Origin’s own figures, quoted in the Wing Commander Universe Bible of 1995, gave the first game 290,000 copies by February of that year.

The conversions

Converting the game to the Amiga was widely thought impossible. It fell to Nick Pelling, the author of the BBC Micro game Frak!, with Justin Garvanovic; The One reported that PC owners had laughed at the idea. Amiga Power reviewed it in January 1993 at £34.99. The Amiga showed 32 colours instead of the PC’s 256, but “in the 3D space sections the reduction from 256 to 32 colours is hardly noticeable”, and “programmer Nick Pelling has performed minor miracles in getting this stuff on the Amiga at all.” By March it had entered the Amiga chart at number four, and Mindscape’s James Morris said its sales proved “that what many said couldn’t be done is achievable”. A CD32 version followed; in 1994 some shops gave it away with the console.

The Super Nintendo version, also from Mindscape, went down less well. Nintendo Magazine System reviewed it in December 1992 and found the space battles “extremely repetitive”: it “strives to be the first Super NES ‘interactive movie’ but it ultimately fails”. Nintendo Power listed it for February 1993 in America, at $69.95. A version for Sega’s Mega-CD followed in 1994, and an enhanced remake, Super Wing Commander, for the 3DO.

The series

Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi (1991) opened ten years on, with the hero blamed for the loss of the Tiger’s Claw, and added spoken dialogue through a separate speech module. Computer Gaming World totted up the cost: 583K of free memory just to start, expanded memory for the extras, and about 21MB of hard disk with speech installed. Origin’s president Robert Garriott put a note in the box asking players to invest in CD-ROM.

Privateer (1993) turned the series into a trading game in the manner of Elite: a freelance pilot in the frontier Gemini sector, free to trade, hunt pirates or become one.

Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger (1994) replaced the drawn characters with filmed actors. Mark Hamill played the hero, Colonel Blair, with Malcolm McDowell as Admiral Tolwyn and John Rhys-Davies as Paladin, on four CDs. At the New York launch Roberts explained his idea of an interactive story to reporters from Forbes, Time and USA Today: “the game shouldn’t make decisions about what happens next. You should make the decisions.” Accounts of the budget differ. In September 1994 Computer Gaming World reported it nearing $3 million, with Origin needing sales of about 80,000 floppy-disk, 200,000 CD-ROM and 60,000 3DO copies to break even; PC Player reported $4 million in 1995, and its history of Origin in 1999 about $18 million, which it said ended in a small loss. The same history gave Wing Commander III and IV about half a million sales each.

Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom (1996) went further. Computer and Video Games reported a budget “reputedly nearing $10 million” and noted that it was shot on 35mm film on real sets. It needed a Pentium to run well.

By mid-1997 Roberts had left Origin, then owned by Electronic Arts, to co-found Digital Anvil in Texas with his brother Erin. He told Edge that at EA he “could get any amount of money for another Wing Commander, but not something new”. Origin carried on without him: Computer Gaming World found Wing Commander: Prophecy (1997), directed by Adam Foshko, better than expected, and thought it had returned the series to its gameplay after Roberts’s “newfound filmmaking aspirations”.

The film

Roberts directed the film himself. Computer Gaming World reported a $30 million budget in 1998, and the film opened in American cinemas in the spring of 1999, a couple of months ahead of Star Wars: Episode I. The magazine’s verdict was that it was not “even rental-worthy”. PC Zone reported in February 2001 that Microsoft had bought Digital Anvil and that Roberts had decided to leave it.

Star Citizen and Squadron 42

Roberts came back to space combat in 2012 with Cloud Imperium Games and Star Citizen, whose Kickstarter raised $2.1 million against a $500,000 goal. Its crowdfunding passed $1 billion on 24 May 2026, with the game still in development. Its single-player campaign, Squadron 42, features Mark Hamill among a large cast, and Roberts calls it his “spiritual successor to Wing Commander”. In August 2026 its release was put back to the second quarter of 2027.

Sources

ACE issue 35, August 1990, pp. 37–39: Rik Haynes, Wingleader preview (the Summer CES, the Kilrathi and the Tiger’s Claw, the cinematic sequences, George Sanger’s score and how it changes, the sound cards supported, Roberts’s system for “moving bit-mapped objects through 3D space”; Mindscape as UK distributor). Issue 38, November 1990, pp. 51–52: review (“then called Wingleader”, “one of the most exciting games ever released”). Issue 39, December 1990: Origin as software house of the year and the team of 77 person-months.
Computer Gaming World issue 75, October 1990: the change of name from WingLeader to avoid confusion with Nova Games’ Wingleader. Issue 76, November 1990: Origin’s Special Edition advertisement. Issue 77, December 1990, pp. 18–19: Dennis Owens, “The Claws of the Tiger”, review.
Computer Gaming World issue 88, November 1991: 1991 Games of the Year (“Game of the Year is: Wing Commander from Origin (Chris Roberts, designer)”); Wing Commander II review, p. 34.
The One issue 46, July 1992: “Work in Progress”, the Amiga conversion (Nick Pelling and Justin Garvanovic, the PC’s demands) and the box “All about Wing Commander” (Roberts’s background, Squadron and Battlehawks 1942, the recommended 16MHz 386).
Amiga Power issue 21, January 1993: Wing Commander review (Mindscape, £34.99, 32 colours). Issue 23, March 1993: Amiga chart and James Morris of Mindscape.
Amiga Format issue 65, November 1994: retailer’s CD32 advertisement including Wing Commander.
Nintendo Magazine System issue 3, December 1992, pp. 90 on: Super NES review. Nintendo Power issue 45, February 1993: Mindscape, $69.95, released February 1993.
Computer Gaming World issue 113, December 1993: Jeff James, “Trading Spaces”, Privateer review.
Computer Gaming World issue 122, September 1994: “Wing Commander $3 Million”, the budget and break-even estimates. Issue 125, December 1994: Charles Ardai, Wing Commander III launch and preview (the cast, the four CDs, Roberts’s quote).
PC Player (Germany), March 1995: Origin news (Wing Commander 3 made for $4 million). October 1999, pp. 170–176: Origin history, with Garriott’s account of sales (about 250,000 per Ultima, twice that per Wing Commander), Wing Commander 3’s cost of about $18 million, and sales of half a million each for 3 and 4.
Computer and Video Games issue 174, May 1996: Wing Commander IV review (budget, 35mm film, Pentium).
Edge issue 48, August 1997: Roberts on leaving Origin and EA, Digital Anvil with Erin Roberts.
Computer Gaming World issue 165, April 1998: Wing Commander: Prophecy review. Issue 167, June 1998: the film and its $30 million budget. Issue 179, June 1999: the film reviewed. PC Zone issue 75, April 1999: the film’s American opening. PC Zone issue 99, February 2001: Microsoft buys Digital Anvil and Roberts leaves.
Wikipedia, “Wing Commander (video game)” (accessed September 2026) (web, secondary): release on 26 September 1990; the Mega-CD version (1994) and Super Wing Commander; Prophecy’s release in 1997; sales of 290,000 by February 1995, citing “The Figures”, The Wing Commander Universe Bible, Origin Systems, 5 February 1995, pp. 8–9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wing_Commander_(video_game)
David Schroth, “Star Citizen crosses $1 billion in crowdfunding after 14 years”, The FPS Review, 26 May 2026 (web, secondary), and Byungho Kim, “A game that hasn’t even launched has raised $1 billion”, Inven Global, 25 May 2026 (web, secondary). https://www.thefpsreview.com/2026/05/26/star-citizen-crosses-1-billion-in-crowdfunding-after-14-years-still-has-no-release-date/ and https://www.invenglobal.com/articles/22190/a-game-that-hasnt-even-launched-has-raised-1-billion
Matt Sowinski, “Squadron 42 delayed to 2027”, CGMagazine, 28 August 2026 (web, secondary), and Kishalaya Kundu, “Star Citizen spinoff Squadron 42 delayed to Q2 2027”, TechSpot, 28 August 2026 (web, secondary): the delay, the cast and Roberts’s “spiritual successor to Wing Commander”. https://www.cgmagonline.com/news/squadron-42-star-citizen-spinoff-delayed-to-2027-because-of-grand-theft-auto-vi/ and https://www.techspot.com/news/113660-star-citizen-spinoff-squadron-42-delayed-q2-2027.html
Dean Takahashi, “Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts shows off Star Citizen”, GamesBeat, 16 June 2014 (web, secondary): Squadron 42 as a campaign in the Wing Commander tradition.