Wing Commander

I've Been Told that whenever I do Retro Zone, I just talk about old adventure games. Well they are the best games ever, but I'm always willing to compromise, so here's the best space combat game ever made: Wing Commander.

I can't be doing with your X-Wings and TIE Fighters, just give me a lantern-jawed, blue-haired hero fighting some big cats in space, and I'm as happy as a porcine covered in excrement. It just combines all the best elements of gung-ho space operas with an exciting (even now) combat model.

Did you know the commander of the legendary TCS Tiger's Claw was called Colonel Halcyon? I only just realised that when playing it again for this piece. What a guy he was! Doling out the medals like anything just for killing five Kilrathi on a routine patrol mission. Just a pity he got wiped out when the old Claw got blown to bits by cloaked fighters. Worst thing was you got the blame, leading to your re-emergence as the best fighter in the galaxy after a number of years at a piss-ant space station in the Gwynedd system in Wing Commander 2: Vengeance of the Kilrathi.

The first two games of the series are the most fondly remembered. Both followed the same format - starting off in a bar or locker room, you could catch on gossip from other fighters in WC1, or advance the story through a cutscene in WC2. Once you'd done that, perhaps having a glance at the kill board as well, you'd enter the mission bit and get your briefing on.

After being assigned your objectives, you'd then see the most iconic moment: the rush to your spacecraft with sirens blaring. Fired out into space, you then proceeded along your course blasting Dralthi, Salthi and anything else ending in -thi along the way. There were also annoying asteroid belts and mine fields to traverse, plus bastard hard defend the transport/capital ship missions. There was even a branching plotline, with your performance determining how the war against the Kilrathi went. Great games that, sadly, we'll probably never see the likes of again... or will we?