SNES Wing Commander 2: The Lost Prototype

[Gunstar Green]

Of all the holy grail prototypes out there, one I don't hear mentioned often is Wing Commander 2 for the SNES. Which to me is a shame, because Wing Commander 2 is one of my favorite games of all time and when it released for PC in 1991 it was one of the first truly cinematic video game experiences.

More than just an alpha, the game was apparently finished, review copies were shipped and it was cancelled at the last moment in 1994 due to cost concerns with the cartridge size. Unlike the previous releases of Wing Commander and Secret Missions, this game was developed in-house by Origin themselves, leaving us to wonder how the gameplay would have differed to past attempts to bring Wing Commander to the SNES.

Despite being voraciously hunted by the Wing Commander CIC fan page, none of these prototypes has ever turned up.

You can read more about the history of this lost SNES title here: http://www.wcnews.com/wcpedia/Wing_Commander_II:_Vengeance_of_the_Kilrathi_(SNES), complete with screenshots.

[ExedExes]

Srsly? Now that's a damn shame. The first 2 SNES ports were pretty decent.

[Gunstar Green]

They had some weird rough edges, the worst being that you could only have one enemy ship up close at a time and a lot of the sprites for different angles were removed, but it managed to capture the spirit of the game mostly. There were a bunch of lousy ports of Wing Commander outside of the PC and the SNES version ends up being one of the more playable ones, even with its funny Nintendo censorships (The Rostov Hairball goes from being a cocktail to a disgusting sounding dessert).

Secret Missions had a really cool Mode 7 launch sequence and an introduction that wasn't in the original game. The SNES game also does the music really well.

Since Origin built the SNES sequel from scratch the experience may have been totally different. I hope one surfaces someday, I'd love to play it.

[Ack]

That's really cool, I was unaware of this. I own one of the Wing Commander's for the SNES but never really spent much time with it, as I had originally played the series on PC with a joystick and wasn't sure the console could give the same experience. Maybe I'll sit down with it some time.

[Gunstar Green]

The PC version is of course the way to go, especially with a joystick, but the SNES games are a pretty good effort and some of the differences are interesting.

For instance it's impossible to afterburn through an asteroid field on the SNES because only 1 asteroid at a time is a real asteroid with the rest being part of the background. The game decides to always make that asteroid appear directly in front of you so you have to keep dodging back and forth. From what I can tell it plays this same trick with background layer in regards to the enemy fighters. This keeps the amount of actual sprites on the screen low enough for the SNES to handle things while still replicating the Wing Commander experience decently enough.

I particularly like the music on the SNES.