I scanned this in a couple of weeks back with the aim of posting it while I was away. That never happened but it’s finally making its way on here, a preview of Crusader No Regret from the November 1996 PC Format. It’s positive on the whole but takes the obligatory swipe at Wing Commander near the end:-
And from the same magazine a double-page Privateer 2 advert:-
I’m not entirely sure I’m supposed to talk about it, but it’s common knowledge that there was an alpha test some months back for Ultima Forever where a lucky few were invited to give the forthcoming game a spin and provide feedback. This was an extremely brief affair but I’d set aside an evening for it which ended up coinciding with my town getting flooded and me being without power until the next day when the alpha had finished. Missing out on this still bugs me but I got off extremely lightly compared to others around here so I should hardly complain about not being able to play a video game.
None of those taking part were expecting anything but packages have been arriving over the last couple of weeks and near enough anyone reading this has probably seen the photos already. I wasn’t sure I’d be getting one of these under the circumstances but look what arrived today:-
Extremely cool and the letter is a nice touch also, (the talking demon doll by the way is part of the Reincarnation Kickstarter awards which also just showed up). I feel kind of guilty getting these having not actually taken part in the alpha but many thanks to the U4E team for coming through anyway, I’ll give them a good home and promise to make up for lost time with a voluminous amount of feedback when the beta rolls around.
As far as I know, this is the only non-English official Wing Commander guide which wasn’t a straight translation of the regular versions. I can’t tell you who the author was but it was published by Locus in 1996 and generously supplied by Loaf for scanning:-
It’s the usual story with these Japanese guides in that I can’t say too much else about it, but it’s well presented and looks to be fairly thorough with wingmen details, ship/weapon stats, mission guides and everything else you would expect. It doesn’t have the interviews that were in the regular English guide but does have the bonus of being in full colour throughout. It’s now scanned and available to download for anyone who wants a look.
I made it safely back home and have a couple of jobs to do around here. First on the list, a patch was released while I was away which fixes the earthquake and white noise effects in Ultima 7 on Dosbox. I’ve added support for this to the Ultima Patcher.
I can report that my luggage also made it back safely which was something of a concern as I was carrying 3 glass items, one of which was a serious lump. Airport security initially took some offence to that particular collectible but let me keep it in the end. I have the perfect occasion to post about that coming up next year so I’ll hold onto it until then. The other two were a nifty short glass gifted from the WC CIC and better still an Origin beer glass. Along with the WC3 prop glass, I think my drinking needs are pretty well covered although I wouldn’t say no to an Origin-themed shot glass if there is such a thing:-
It’s not likely I’ll ever be able to return the favour for the CIC glass with any merchandise of my own but I did send off the Wing Commander 4 35mm movie trailer to be converted to HD digital today and should hopefully have that to share sometime next month.
My time in Austin is up and I’m heading back for England and real life. This has been one crazy week especially Thursday when we got a Portalarium tour + questions with Richard Garriott, then went out later for margaritas and dinner with Chris Roberts. This isn’t the sort of schedule I’m used to.
I have things to write up but it can wait until I’m not just using my phone. So instead to keep me occupied while I wait for my first flight here are 10 things I learned this week:-
1. You need to have a flexible itinerary to work for a game company that is running a funding campaign.
2. Hardly anyone out here knew about this site except for Chris Roberts who uses it to check out things about his own games. I guess I can settle for that.
3. Texans apparently shop for guns like other people shop for grocery.
4. The long missing Wing Commander 2 for SNES probably exists in Richard Garriott’s archives but it could be a year before he has time to look for it. He isn’t at all confident about having The Lost Vale though which he didn’t think ever got finished.
5. The margaritas on sixth street are a whole lot better than the food.
6. Contrary to what I had heard, Garriott was well aware of Escape From Mt. Drash and agreed to the Ultima branding to help out the author as Sierra wouldn’t have published the game otherwise. The downside here is this makes it official enough for me to want a copy now.
7. The WC CIC team put a whole more effort into their site than I do mine.
8. Space Rogue wasn’t in fact the inspiration for Wing Commander but Chris Roberts did get some advice on 3D programming from Paul Neurath. Roberts already had a 2D sprite based prototype running prior to this and it definitely wasn’t a fantasy game.
9. The Ultima anime series is a myth and never existed.
10. This is how to pack a suitcase:-
Huge thanks to all the crew from the WC CIC for letting me tag along all this week.