From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 3/5/2026 8:25 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Thu, 05 Mar 2026 07:14:54 -0500, Xocyll <Xocyll@gmx.com> said this
thing:

Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com> looked up from reading the entrails of
the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs say:

On 2/28/2026 10:34 AM, Xocyll wrote:

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> looked up from reading the >>>> entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

Let's just get these out of the way so I don't need to do separate
posts for each. Happy Thirtieth Birthday (give or take a few days) to: >>>>>
- Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom (February 9, 1996)
Wasn't that the guy from Star Wars?

Don't think I ever played this; 1, 2, 5, Privateer, Privateer2,
Starlancer and Freelancer were all I tried.

What?!?! No 3? That was my favorite. Armada and Privateer were up there >>> though.

Armada is too often overlooked in Wing Commander franchise. I found it
a surprisingly fun game, both for its combat and its strategy element.
And you could finally shoot down your buddies in multiplayer! Plus,
its visuals were a nice transition from the classic games to the
polygonal engine used in Wing Commander III (Armada was still sprite
based, but it used much higher-quality sprites than the first two
games).

I forgot about the multiplayer. Although I only played against friends
a couple times, it was quite fun. Unfortunately I was too good for them
and trounced them and they didn't want to play after that.

I do remember the missions were more varied than WC III, and without any
of that FMV.
--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
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\\
^'
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Fri, 6 Mar 2026 07:14:34 -0800, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
said this thing:

I forgot about the multiplayer. Although I only played against friends
a couple times, it was quite fun. Unfortunately I was too good for them
and trounced them and they didn't want to play after that.

We only managed a couple of times. I vaguely remember that it was a
bitch to get connected, and -after the initial excitement of being
able to fly multiplayer passed- it just wasn't very much fun. It
didn't help that this was an era before voice-chat, so if you wanted
to crow victory you had to trigger pre-recorded 'taunts' to do so.

I do remember the missions were more varied than WC III, and without any
of that FMV.

They weren't, really. The combat in Arena was very, very simple and
limited to only a few fighters on screen at once. At best, you might
face off against a few fighters and the carrier (the only capital ship
in the game). I think the engine limited you to four fighters
on-screen at once (you, an wing-man, and two enemies), with
reinformcents only spawning in when another fighter was killed. Each
combat was stand-alone (no patrolling the waypoints, no mines and no asteroids). It was just basic sparring against a limited variety of
enemy fighters.

The game made up for this lack with its 'strategy' mode, which many
people disliked but I enjoyed. It was just complex enough to add some
meat to the game without bogging things down so much that it forgot it
was an action game.


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