25 classic EA games, including Wing Commander and Ultima, re-released on Steam and GOG
Game publisher EA has lightly remastered 25 games from the 1990s and put them on sale on Steam and GOG, including several Wing Commander titles and nearly the whole Ultima series. EA senior producer Jim Vessella has described how seven of the remasters came about.
Game publisher EA (Electronic Arts) has lightly remastered and updated 25 classic PC games from the 1990s and put them on sale on the Steam and GOG digital stores. The lineup includes several Wing Commander games and nearly the entire Ultima series. EA has drawn plenty of criticism lately, but this release is aimed at players who remember the company's earlier era.
What is on the list
The re-released games include Road Rash: 30th Anniversary Edition, Wing Commander and its sequels, Privateer 2: The Darkening, Wing Commander: Privateer, Academy and Armada, Strike Commander, Theme Hospital and both Crusader games. Ultima I through IX and both Ultima Underworld titles are also available.
Behind the scenes of seven remasters
Jim Vessella, a senior producer at EA, published a lengthy blog post this week describing the work behind the remasters of Wing Commander I–IV, Wing Commander Prophecy, Privateer 2 and Road Rash.
After working on the 2019 Command & Conquer: Remastered Collection, he learned of a room at EA's Redwood Shores campus holding a large archive of poorly labeled and unsorted physical media. In his spare time and with help from others, he began cataloging it and found that it held virtually all of the original masters of the full-motion-video cutscenes for Wing Commander III and Wing Commander IV.
The effort that followed included assembling a small team of contractors who went through the footage 17 hours a day on swing shifts, labeling and digitizing it. The team also coordinated with several community members, notably Matt Wells, who has made community enhancement patches for some Wing Commander games, to put together the remasters.
