Wing Commander I

Wing Commander is the first game in Chris Roberts space flight simulation Wing Commander series by Origin Systems.

Development
Development started in early 1989. It was initially a proposal called Squadron.

Chris Roberts was initially thinking of more tactical top down bigger ship combat game, but he eventually decided to make something more visceral that would put you in the cockpit.

The first year of development was pretty much just Chris Roberts, with Paul Isaac coming towards the end and Denis Loubet doing most of the graphics early on, Glen Johnson and Bourbonnais joining as well. Then the team grew as Origin granted more funding and finally to get the game out in time for Christmas season. At the time games had to be boxed out and shipped to stores and couldn't just be downloaded.

The game was first released for MS-DOS on September 26, 1990.

Plot
Set in the year 2654 and characterized by Chris Roberts as "World War II in space", it features a multinational cast of pilots from the "Terran Confederation" flying missions against the predatory, aggressive Kilrathi, a feline warrior race.

Gameplay
Immersion was important, without the typical UI at the time showing lives and high score. If you wanted to save the game you’d go to the barracks and you’d clink on the bunk. If you want to exit, you’d click on the airlock.

There was no speech in games at the time, everything was subtitled.

Legacy
The game was considered a major step forward for space dogfight games, featuring graphics, audio, and a story campaign that invited comparison to the Star Wars films.

A lot of assets were created but there wasn't enough disc space for some of the ships so they had to be shelved. The Secret Missions add on was based and priced on the idea of D&D campaign modules for ships that didn't make it into the main game and ended up as a mission and story pack on sale thanks to the success of the main game.

There were space combat simulation games before Wing Commander, but it raised the bar for the whole industry in terms of production value and realistic simulation.

Trivia

 * During ininitial playtests, testers would fall out of their chairs trying to dodge incoming spaceships
 * The beds in the barracks fill up with people according to the number of saves.
 * It was one of the last Origin games that could be played directly from the floppy disks.
 * The funeral sequence inspires Star Citizen's death mechanic.