Re-releases of Wing Commander, Ultima titles hit Steam and GOG

Many people are not big fans of game publisher EA right now for good reason, but for those who remember a better time in the 1990s, there’s a little good news. Twenty-five classic games from that EA era have been lightly remastered and updated, then placed for sale on Steam and GOG, including several Wing Commander games and nearly the entire Ultima series.

Below is the full list of remastered or re-released games:

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

The story behind seven remasters

In a lengthy blog post published this week, Jim Vessella, a senior producer at EA, described the efforts that went into remastering Wing Commander I-IV and Prophecy, Privateer 2, and Road Rash.

It’s a long, detailed story that’s worth reading yourself, but here’s a top-level summary. After working on the mostly widely acclaimed Command & Conquer: Remastered Collection in 2019, Vessella writes that he learned about and visited a room at EA’s Redwood Shores campus that contained a large archive of poorly labeled or sorted physical media from ages past.

In his free time, and with the help of others, he began cataloging this archive and discovered, among other things, that it contained virtually the entirety of the original masters of Wing Commander III and Wing Commander IV‘s full-motion-video cutscenes.

The story that ensues involves building a small team of contractors, poring through the footage 17 hours a day on swing shifts to label and digitize it, and then coordinating with several key community members—particularly Matt Wells, who has made community enhancement patches for some of the Wing Commander games—to put together remasters of those games.

The flagship offering of those remasters is much, much higher-quality full-motion video sequences than have ever been available before, but other enhancements include 60 frames-per-second gameplay, a plethora of newly available .INI tweaks, and full controller support (though looking at the Steam forums for the games, some folks are having trouble with said controller support).

For Privateer 2—the little-remembered sequel to Wing Commander: Privateer—the crew couldn’t find the original, high-quality remasters of the FMV scenes, and ended up getting in touch with the game’s original cinematics director, Steve Hilliker, who had the tapes in his attic. Hilliker had always wanted to take a new color-grading pass, and he did just that, while also remastering and upscaling all of the cutscenes.

Similar updates were given to Wing Commander Prophecy. The blog post also details GOG’s involvement in restoring and remastering Prophecy and Road Rash. For the latter, EA re-licensed the entire original soundtrack for re-release.

The e collection is on sale on GOG and Steam right now; previous owners of the old versions of the games on GOG and the EA storefront get these remasters for free. None of the games cost more than $5 each.

One good story doesn’t undo a lot of bad news and questionable decisions from EA, but this shows that a few passionate people can do something remarkable for game preservation, even if some of the work was done on a volunteer basis outside normal working hours. (EA committed some resources to the restorations as the project progressed, though.)

While the remasters aren’t perfect, the gaming industry could use news like this. It’s worth reading the full story in the blog post for a journey down memory lane and a look at how involved a restoration process like this can be.

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