There is a lot to be said on the first two Wing Commander games. They were the first games to be treated as a hollywood production by their makers. They also were the first games with budgets on an entirely different level. But the most important thing was that Wing Commander was probably the first game which made gamers want to buy a x86 based PC. And the main reason for that was that the game at the time of its release was exclusive to x86 MS-DOS. Sure it was ported to other systems later but that was much later. This is an epic peace of PC gaming history. This game proved to people why the MS DOS PC can be and still is a valid gaming machine, by giving them an experience they cannot find anywhere else. Up until that point the closest thing to Wing Commander (called Wing Leader during early production) was Wings, from which Wing Commander borrows a lot. But instead of copying Cinemaware, Origin just took a look at their cinematic design playbook and improved on it immensely. A must buy, even if you are not interested in space combat sims.
