The Wing Commander remasters now selling on Steam and GOG began with an unexpected discovery in a cluttered storage room at EA’s Redwood Shores campus, according to a detailed account from a senior producer at the publisher. Jim Vessella, who had previously worked on the Command & Conquer: Remastered Collection in 2019, described in a blog post how a neglected archive of physical media turned into a restoration project spanning more than two dozen games.
A storage room full of unlabeled history
Vessella wrote that he learned about a room at the Redwood Shores campus holding a large collection of physical media from earlier eras, much of it poorly labeled or sorted. In his spare time, with help from colleagues, he started cataloging the material. Among the finds was what amounted to virtually all of the original masters for the full-motion-video cutscenes in Wing Commander III and Wing Commander IV.
That discovery set off a larger effort. A small team of contractors was assembled, and the footage was examined around the clock in swing shifts—roughly 17 hours a day—to label and digitize it. The team also coordinated with key community members, especially Matt Wells, who had already created enhancement patches for some Wing Commander titles.
What the remasters change
The centerpiece of the Wing Commander remasters is significantly higher-quality full-motion video than had ever been available before. Other improvements include gameplay at 60 frames per second, a range of newly accessible .INI tweaks, and full controller support. Vessella’s post did not claim the controller support was flawless; discussions on the Steam forums suggest some players have run into trouble with it.
Seven titles received the deeper remaster treatment: Wing Commander I through IV, Wing Commander Prophecy, Privateer 2: The Darkening, and Road Rash. The broader re-release collection includes twenty-five games from EA’s 1990s catalog, among them nearly the entire Ultima series, Wing Commander: Privateer, Wing Commander: Academy, Wing Commander: Armada, Strike Commander, Theme Hospital, Crusader: No Remorse, and Crusader: No Regret.
Privateer 2 and a director's attic tapes
For Privateer 2, the team could not locate high-quality original masters of the FMV scenes. They contacted the game’s original cinematics director, Steve Hilliker, who had kept the tapes in his attic. Hilliker had long wanted to do a new color-grading pass, and he completed one while also remastering and upscaling all of the cutscenes. Wing Commander Prophecy received similar updates, and the blog post also covered GOG’s role in restoring and remastering Prophecy and Road Rash.
For Road Rash, EA re-licensed the entire original soundtrack for the re-release.
Pricing and availability
The collection is currently on sale on GOG and Steam. No game costs more than $5. Players who already owned the older versions on GOG or the EA storefront receive the remasters at no additional charge.
The project was not entirely a corporate undertaking. Much of the work was done on a volunteer basis outside normal working hours, though EA committed some resources as the effort progressed. The remasters are not perfect, but they represent a preservation success at a time when the publisher has drawn criticism on other fronts.
