EA Re-releases The Wing Commander Series After 30 Years

Does anyone remember Chris Roberts writing in a Letter from the Chairman how he didn't want the release of Squadron 42 to compete with the release of Grand Theft Auto VI? Perhaps the real reason was he didn't want to complete with the Chris Roberts of 30-35 years ago. That's right, yesterday Electronic Arts released nine Wing Commander games, including the four Chris Roberts worked on while at Origin Systems.

I have to admit something. I've covered the Star Citizen project for over a decade now and one of my biggest questions was why so many people were willing to throw money at Chris Roberts. His games were so old I couldn't play them so I figured I'd need to purchase Squadron 42 in order to find out.

Yes, I bought the package

Playing Squadron 42 was not an attractive prospect. I do not like first-person shooters and SQ42 is an FPS game with spaceships thrown in. But the Wing Commander games focus on the kind of gameplay I like, namely spaceships. No handheld weapons needed!

I don't want to say CIG has worked on its games for far too long without publishing a game that has a viable minimum product. I think the fact EA just published 30th and 35th anniversary editions of the Wing Commander series games says it for everyone. This is also a reminder that Chris Roberts has not published a video game (Wing Commander IV) in over 30 years. The only newer game Roberts has published was Starlancer which was published by Digital Anvil in 2000. I should note that Chris was the CEO of the studio and the producer was his brother Erin working at Warthog Games. All other games Chris Roberts worked on since 1997 Chris was kicked off the projects.

Which is why I purchased the package. I really want to see the games Chris Roberts worked on in his prime. Now I get to play them. I still probably will purchase Squadron 42 just to see if my computer can run the game at an acceptable level of performance. But now I have less of an incentive to buy the game on day 1. I can wait for CIG to fix all the release day bugs first.