Last month we got news that Wing Commander 3, the FMV space-combat sim with perhaps the highest concentration of Mark Hamill in any videogame, would be getting a remaster. Producer Jim Vessella is heading up the project, and revealed it during a presentation at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo.
What he did not reveal, it turns out, is that five other Wing Commander games—plus Road Rash—would be getting their own dolled-up re-releases, and that they’d all be dropping on Steam, GOG, and the EA App today as part of a larger bundle of 25 “EA Classics”. No, I don’t know why you’d buy them on the EA App either. It takes all sorts to make a world.
Here’s the full list of games that are dropping. Anything labelled “Anniversary Edition” is an updated, remastered version of the original game. Anything not labelled that is simply a re-release.
Road Rash: 30th Anniversary Edition
Wing Commander: 35th Anniversary Edition
Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi: 35th Anniversary Edition
Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger: 30th Anniversary Edition
Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom: 30th Anniversary Edition
Wing Commander Prophecy: 30th Anniversary Edition
Privateer 2: The Darkening: 30th Anniversary Edition
Wing Commander: Privateer
Wing Commander: Academy
Wing Commander: Armada
Strike Commander
Theme Hospital
Crusader: No Remorse
Crusader: No Regret
Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness
Ultima II : The Revenge of the Enchantress
Ultima III: Exodus
Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar
Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny
Ultima VI: The False Prophet
Ultima VII: The Complete Edition
Ultima VIII: Gold Edition
Ultima IX: Ascension
Ultima Underworld I
Ultima Underworld II
If you’re a GOG user, the only new things on that storefront will be the remasters—GOG’s had all the other classic games for yonks now, but on Steam it’s a veritable deluge of hearty, classic stuff. Personally, I’ll just be glad to have a copy of Theme Hospital where all my other games are. And if someone fancies turning on Workshop support for it and integrating CorsixTH, they won’t hear any objections from me.
On the remaster front, EA pinky promises it hasn’t mucked the games up. “Each Anniversary Edition preserves the original look, feel and creative intent of the game, with quality-of-life updates to support modern systems, controls, improve performance and make the titles more approachable without compromising their authenticity.”
You know what? I’m inclined to believe it. Vessella, who’s more or less become the face of EA’s old-game preservation and restoration efforts, also had a big hand in the work on the Command and Conquer Remastered Collection, and that was rather excellent even without access to the source footage of those games’ FMV cutscenes, which seems to not be an issue here.
EA says the remasters are the fruit of “the discovery of a physical media vault containing thousands of Betacam, VHS, and D1 tapes alongside other media assets”, while “the digitization process recovered the supposedly lost Master FMV sequences for these seven legendary titles, which were meticulously re-edited to restore the over 1,500 cinematic scenes across these games”.
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