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Welcome to the new era of CD-ROM games! There’s an insane amount of space, so what to do with it? Oh I have an idea, let’s take top-tier actors (Mark Hamill, Jason Bernard, Thomas Wilson) throw them into the great Wing Commander universe, develop a new engine, write an even more epic story and voila: you have Wing Commander 3: Heart of the Tiger! We’ve added this classic title to GOG.com today, available for only $5.99!

You are Luke--er--I mean Col. Christopher "Maverick" Blair (played by Mark Hamill). After the destruction of Concordia, you are transferred to an old space ship carrier the TCS Victory, by the order of Admiral Tolwyn. Your mission is to destroy the catlike Kilrathi for good and ensure the survival of humanity. Without delving into spoilers, you are up for yet another episode of this epic struggle between two star nations battling for dominance--and survival. Enter into the life of Maverick, talk to your wingmen on the ship and in outer space, or pursue a romantic relationship with a fellow pilot dancing on the razor’s edge.

With the budget of an A-grade Hollywood movie, Wing Commander 3 incorporates FMVs on a whole new level, with more than 3 hours of cinematic storytelling. They’re not there only for your viewing pleasure: you get to live the life of a Confederation ace pilot in dynamic cinematic style. Time-constrained decisions, vast dialogue options, and plot-critical conversations all occur on film during your time aboard the TCS Victory. Apart from the flashy movies, Wing Commander 3 has a whole new space combat engine. Sprites are so early 90’s, and now it’s all about polygons. Behold the colossal battle ships in their full glory, you can even fly into a dreadnought hangar and shoot it from inside out!
Wing Commander 3: Heart of the Tiger flies up to a whole new orbital with new graphics, new FMVs and, one of the best epic war plots in the history of entertainment are the ingredients for space-sim success.

Special thanks for all the great goodies we managed to get with this release goes to Ben Lesnick from Wing Commander News. You're the man, Ben!
Wow! Totally unexpected goodness.
Wishlisted, but not sure how long I can hold out before buying this!
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Dju: Holy mother of... Instabuy

AND it has the Fleet Action novel included ?

Wow, just wow...
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deadfolk: Now, if they could only get the novels for SMAC, that would be tha shiznit. And I never use the word shiznit.

Edit: Or 'tha'.
Makes me glad I bought 'em when they were relatively new and off the presses. Actually they were solid slices of sci-fi reading, not the cringe-worthy hack-jobs you might have expected from a "video game novelization." Reusing author Michael Ely, who penned the episodic "Journey to Centauri" story leading up to SMAC's release, doubtless had something to do with it

This release is excellent. Another big game from my early teen-hood. I prefer WC III in the Kilrathi Saga so I can run it natively in Windows, but this is worth getting for the extras alone; my old "Gold Classics" edition had no such goodies!

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lugum: so is that mark hamill on the cover? barely recognize him.
he sure didnt age very well...
Heh. Filled out his face some, certainly, and he no longer has the golden fleece of Skywalker hair atop his head. Still, if you think he looks bad here, you should see a recent picture, since WC III's cinematics are now 17 (!) years old. Put in perspective, at the time of WC III's release, 17 years had passed after the original Star Wars.

Truth be told, I associate Mark Hamill as "Christopher Blair" much more strongly in my head than I ever have as "Luke Skywalker," since I'm not really a Star Wars fan and have played over the WC III & WC IV titles much more than watched the SW trilogy. I'm perhaps an odd exception with Hamill that way.

Actually my favorite Wing Commander is WC IV, since I think they really pressed the envelope plot, production, and casting-wise, and went as far as it's possible to go with the "interactive movie" genre. But WC III is right up there. McDowell, Rhys-Davies, Tom Wilson, and *sigh* Ginger Lynn Allen have already gotten shout-outs here, but how about the sterling work of some of the lesser-known cast?

WC III features Francois Chau as cardsharp "Vagabond," perhaps best known as "that Dharma Initiative Guy from Lost." He's a character actor who has floated around TV and hollywood in many small roles.

How about Jason Bernard as Captain Eisen? Another old TV veteran. Hell, I remember him from an old re-run of M*A*S*H of all things. His avuncular demeanor and no-nonsense approach made him the perfect TCS Victory captain.

Most interesting of all to me is a totally pre-fame Josh Lucas as cocky hotshot excaliber pilot "Flash." A few years after I originally played WC III and started seeing Lucas show up regularly in film roles I always said to myself: "Isn't that Flash? My, he's come a long way."

I was always disappointed that Jennifer MacDonald, who played the (sometime) love interest and pilot "Flint" didn't have much of a career, as I thought she had a certain warmth on the screen.
Post edited September 13, 2011 by MaridAudran
Windows 7 compatibility and tons of extras FTW! Great release GOG!
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Vagabond: There are many more EA games coming.
Now that's what I wanted to hear from you. :)

My guess is they're taking another break and start rolling out more EA games in a few months, just in time for Christmas.
Would've like to have seen the current batch of EA games finish on the remaining Ultima games. Still a little ticked that they teased so many releases and then had 3 Ultima packages yet didn't get to the end of the series.
Oh man, this is a fantastic release! A seminal game bundled with lots of awesome extras. This is what all EA releases should have looked like.

Mmm... this brings back some memories. I wanted to play this game so badly when I was a kid, but I didn't have a powerful enough computer. The game required an insane 8 MB of RAM and a Pentium processor to run fluently. I was so impressed by the graphics and the FMV technology, but since I couldn't play it I was stuck poring over gaming magazines, reading reviews and looking at the pictures.
Such a great game and lots of extras this time. If it uses the same engine as WC:Privateer(looks very similar when it comes to graphics) , I'm really going to enjoy this one...
EA, Gog, this is what a good release is like. Instabuy.
Wing Commander III: The reason I purchased a Pentium 100 MHz computer, when the game was originally released. So worth it.
in the immortal words of the Kool Aid man: "Oh Yeah!"
There was also a DVD-ROM release of this, with DVD quality video. The CD release (here) is the same game, but the video quality isn't as good.
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barleyguy: There was also a DVD-ROM release of this, with DVD quality video. The CD release (here) is the same game, but the video quality isn't as good.
I think this was the case for Wing Commander 4, not Wing Commander 3. This game was only released on CD-ROM as far as I know.
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mykpfsu: Would've like to have seen the current batch of EA games finish on the remaining Ultima games. Still a little ticked that they teased so many releases and then had 3 Ultima packages yet didn't get to the end of the series.
There are still more EA games coming (as Vagabond and many others will tell you). I believe GoG's just taking a break for now.
Post edited September 13, 2011 by tfishell
Awesome! Having played WC 1+2 I'd pretty much given up all hope of ever getting around to playing the third! Awesome price too, definately getting a buy when my pay comes in at week end!
Completely thrilled about this release! :D

Great work, GOG! The extras are top notch too. I may grab this for that reason alone.

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barleyguy: There was also a DVD-ROM release of this, with DVD quality video. The CD release (here) is the same game, but the video quality isn't as good.
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spindown: I think this was the case for Wing Commander 4, not Wing Commander 3. This game was only released on CD-ROM as far as I know.
Correct. WCIII was CD-ROM only.
Played and finished this on the old 3DO, great game with a great end sequence. Tempted with this, but probably difficult to get the game running now.