RE: We chat about videogames and videogame accessories.
12-30-2013, 08:02 AM
(This post was last modified: 12-30-2013, 08:14 AM by BRPXQZME.)
So tod—yesterday, I tried out Wing Commander for the first time (when it came out we were still running an 8086 and I was like two or three, so I just never got the chance). Not only is it still plenty fresh and exciting, it’s... er, too difficult for me. I invariably don’t survive the first attempt at a mission. And I’m only on the fifth one. I guess not wanting to bother with setting up all the controls doesn’t help, but it’s simply not an easy game and I’m not particularly good at it.
But the presentation is pretty nice. There are some nice cinematics, even if they are used over and over again. And the sprite-based 3D made it look a cut above pure polygons, although the low resolution with nearest-neighbor sampling kind of kills it (well, to my modern eyes; I recall this sort of stuff looked great back when this was all the resolution you got).
*gasp* what’s this? Branching mission structure depending on how well you do?
![[Image: xXiUT9W.png]](https://i.imgur.com/xXiUT9W.png)
Warren Spector was around for this one; this smells like him. Or maybe he smells like it.
Music’s great, too (The Fat Man). The GOG version is the original DOS release, so no CD audio or anything like that for now (there were other releases, which I probably won’t investigate too thoroughly, but one was a CD re-release that supposedly has appreciable but not quite vital improvements). The music is dynamically looped, best I can tell; you get things like a few bars for a little victory cadence during tense fight music when you take out an enemy, for instance. And while it took a little doing, the Sound Blaster emulation in DOSBox sounded wrong enough* that I went and looked into it; turns out if you have an MT-32, you’re in for a treat. Not just for the music, but also the sound effects. PC Speaker is supported but absolutely a bad idea.
Despite what I said about the Sound Blaster sound, this game apparently helped make it the de facto standard sound card practically overnight, because ain’t nobody can afford an MT-32 after buying a computer beefy enough to run this behemoth.
* wait for the fireworks to hear what I mean
But the presentation is pretty nice. There are some nice cinematics, even if they are used over and over again. And the sprite-based 3D made it look a cut above pure polygons, although the low resolution with nearest-neighbor sampling kind of kills it (well, to my modern eyes; I recall this sort of stuff looked great back when this was all the resolution you got).
*gasp* what’s this? Branching mission structure depending on how well you do?
Warren Spector was around for this one; this smells like him. Or maybe he smells like it.
Music’s great, too (The Fat Man). The GOG version is the original DOS release, so no CD audio or anything like that for now (there were other releases, which I probably won’t investigate too thoroughly, but one was a CD re-release that supposedly has appreciable but not quite vital improvements). The music is dynamically looped, best I can tell; you get things like a few bars for a little victory cadence during tense fight music when you take out an enemy, for instance. And while it took a little doing, the Sound Blaster emulation in DOSBox sounded wrong enough* that I went and looked into it; turns out if you have an MT-32, you’re in for a treat. Not just for the music, but also the sound effects. PC Speaker is supported but absolutely a bad idea.
Despite what I said about the Sound Blaster sound, this game apparently helped make it the de facto standard sound card practically overnight, because ain’t nobody can afford an MT-32 after buying a computer beefy enough to run this behemoth.
* wait for the fireworks to hear what I mean
sea had swallowed all. A lazy curtain of dust was wafting out to sea