Strike Commander
| Strike Commander | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Studio |
 Origin Systems
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| Publisher |
Electronic Arts
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| Senior Developer | Chris Roberts | ||
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
1993 | ||
| platform | MS-DOS , FM Towns , PC-98 | ||
| Game engine | RealSpace | ||
| genre | Flight simulation | ||
| Game mode | Single player | ||
| control | Keyboard , mouse , joystick | ||
| system advantages preconditions |
Minimum 80386, 4 MB RAM, 27 MB hard disk space Recommended 80486DX2, 8 MB RAM, 35 MB hard disk space |
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| medium | Floppy disk , CD-ROM | ||
| language | English | ||
| Age rating |
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In Strike Commander is an action-packed flight simulation - computer game for the PC and other platforms, which in 1993 by the company Origin was developed and published.
action
Course of action
The action is set in 2011 . At this time the old world order no longer existed, both the CIS and the USA fell apart through several civil wars . The OPEC states gained more and more influence on the world market due to the oil shortage . Since the social changes in many countries led to the dissolution of the regular military forces, many former military personnel have formed mercenary groups. The Turkey , particularly Istanbul , has become a central place in the international mercenary trade.
The player takes on the role of a mercenary of the flying squadron "Wildcats". The leader of the Wildcats is James "Hawk" Stern. First of all, Stern is accompanied by the procurement of orders in a restaurant in Istanbul called “Selims”. There you get to know other characters outside of the Wildcats, such as B. the leader of the "Jackals", also an aviation squadron. After Stern dies on a mission in South America, the player takes on the role of squadron commodore.
Manual
The manual for Strike Commander is not limited to the description of the game, but also contains the alleged July issue of the fictional mercenary magazine "Sudden Death" from 2011, which is famous for its (sometimes very amusing and cynical) reports and the Exaggerated advertising for various weapon systems gives a multifaceted picture of this what-if future scenario. Biographies of the individual Wildcat characters and a live story in which a reporter accompanies the Wildcats on a mission are included.
There is also an interview with “Gule Gule”, the executor. This only has something to do indirectly with the entire story, but it clearly paints a picture of life at this time. Finally, there is a chronological sequence of the most important events between 1992 and 2011 (in particular the oil wars are in the foreground).
Planes
In the game, the Wildcats only use the F-16 Fighting Falcon , in later missions the F-22 Raptor is also used . However, it is already clear which aircraft will be used before each mission. The Wildcats also use a C-130 Hercules to transport their equipment , but this can only be seen in the cutscenes.
Gameplay
The entire game is structured like an interactive film. There is a framework in which all missions are embedded.
During the flight, the specially comes Strike Commander developed RealSpace storage engine used. This engine made it possible for the first time to display realistic-looking environments using Gouraud shading and texture mapping. However, these features made quite high hardware requirements for the time.
What was particularly interesting was that the player was fully integrated as part of the plot. You had to choose the missions (which was usually tantamount to a small campaign), determine the wingman and the armament for each operation. There was another fact: there was only as much ammunition as you had actually bought. Every wasted missile, every crashed plane meant a loss of capital. The integration of this simplified economic simulation was another aspect that met with positive criticism in many cases.
The “Speech Pack” was published as an extension at the same time as the main program. This added digital speech output to some important cutscenes (if a corresponding sound card was available). Towards the end of 1993, the mission disk “Tactical Operations” and a CD-ROM version appeared, which in addition to the mission disk also contained complete digital voice output and an additional intro.
history
Strike Commander was developed by Chris Roberts at Origin Systems . The development time was more than four years, with about a million man-hours of development work, and almost two years behind the original release date. Much of the material developed could not be used in the final version of the game, but it was partially used in subsequent projects such as Wing Commander or Privateer . In the game manual, Chris Roberts compared the experience of the game's long development time with the 1991 documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse , a film about the development history of the 1979 film classic Apocalypse Now .
Strike Commander was released in 1993 with a delay of approx. Two years, later a separate speech pack (on a floppy disk) was marketed which replaced some of the text dialogues with spoken texts. An expansion pack, called Strike Commander: Tactical Operations , followed on from the original story and continued it with additional missions and new aircraft.
A later CD-ROM edition of Strike Commander included the base game, expansion and additional audio content (with more content than in the original Speech Pack ).
In March 2013, Strike Commander was re- released in digital distribution via gog.com .
Since the original source code of Strike Commander was probably lost when EA took over Origin ( abandonware ), a reverse engineering project with a reconstructed version of the source code was made available by Fabien Sanglard on Github in 2013 .
Reviews
Overall, Strike Commander achieved the highest ratings in the trade press and retained them for several years due to the gripping story and gameplay.
Web link
- Strike Commander at MobyGames (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Strike Commander - simulation classic now published via GOG.com on Gamestar.de
- ↑ Fabien Sanglard: Reverse Engineering Strike Commander ( English ) January 22, 2014. Retrieved January 23, 2014: “ Most people assume the source codes and gold versions of all finished games were stored in a Vault somewhere at EA. But after getting in touch with people at Wing Commander CIC, it appeared that all the source code was lost when the company closed. [...] On his first day one developer managed to delete the full 900MB of Strike Commander source tree. "
- ↑ libRealSpace on github.com
- ↑ PC Player - dig it! Strike Commander Review 1/94