Category Archives: Origin Related

Terra Nova Review – PC Format

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One more Terra Nova review, this time from the May 1996 PC Format:-

PC Format - Terra Nova Review Page 1 PC Format - Terra Nova Review Page 2

While Wing Commander 4 was getting pummelled by the British press, Terra Nova appears to have been universally praised. It’s curious when they strike me as being similar in so many ways.

On the subject of WC4, the WC CIC has been running some of my magazine scans recently and today made it onto the Wing Commander 4 reviews. The question was posed in the forums, was WC4 really that unpopular in the UK back then? Most of the rest of the WC4 reviews are no doubt going to make it look that way, although I did find one decent review. I was going to enlist a couple more scans to answer the question myself which I’ll post here first. Both of these come from the April 96 PC Gamer, one month after their WC4 review. First a letter from a reader:-

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I’m shocked to read this from a Wing Commander fan of the time. It sounds like one of his problems is that his PC isn’t fast enough to play the game properly. I do think Origin suffered to a degree in the UK because of this. PC’s over here were way more expensive than in the USA and the average spec suffered as a consequence. On the other hand, how anyone can prefer the WC3 movies and story to WC4 is beyond me.

To actually answer the question of whether Wing Commander was really that unpopular, the games chart for that month (where WC4 had only been on sale for a week) speaks volumes:-

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Terra Nova Review – PC Gamer

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As promised here’s another article on Terra Nova. This one comes from the pages of the April 1996 PC Gamer where Terra Nova was the cover game and managed to scoop their game of the month award:-

PC Gamer - Terra Nova Cover

PC Gamer - Terra Nova Review Page 1 PC Gamer - Terra Nova Review Page 2

PC Gamer - Terra Nova Review Page 3 PC Gamer - Terra Nova Review Page 4

The game prompted a two page look at the history of exoskeletons including the anatomy of a Terra Nova PBA which in true Swiss army style has a gadget to extract stones from horses hooves:-

PC Gamer - Terra Nova Review Page 5 PC Gamer - Terra Nova Review Page 6

G4TV Icons – Richard Garriott & Warren Spector

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I expect this is one of those things that everyone except me already knew about but I discovered this G4TV show from 2002 on Richard Garriott today. It’s a biography including loads of interviews with him and other relevant (and not so relevant) figures from the industry. The majority of the show concentrates on the Ultima games and there wasn’t too much new but I liked the story about the reaction RG got in England when appearing in his Lord British persona.

I imagine LB still went over better with British audiences than the guy doing the voiceover for this show who was getting on my nerves within the first couple of minutes. Between him and all the quick cut editing, 20 minutes of this is a bit of an endurance test:-

Finding that led onto another programme with Warren Spector from a couple of years later. It’s a brief biography up to Deus Ex 2 which a strong emphasis on Origin and Looking Glass. The presentation is the same but it’s still worth a look:-

I finished the site move last night, if anything still doesn’t work let me know and I’ll fix it. The new host appears to be faster than the old one and the admin tools are better so I’m more than happy so far.

The Fat Man Sings – Game Developer Magazine

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fatmansings

I found this 5 page interview with George Sanger yesterday in the June 1994 Game Developer Magazine. There are plenty of references to Wing Commander which according to this had its soundtrack subcontracted out to Dave Govett although I’d always thought that it was more of a team effort. There is also a passing reference to Nino’s Interactive Music (NIM) which was a similar system to Lucasart’s iMuse which was used in numerous Origin games in the 90’s.