See, it's funny because the first game was also available on Sega CD. No? Well, so much for that icebreaker. Wing Commander 2 was the second PC game we ever owned (the first, for those curious, was Terminator). It was, however, the first time I was so utterly enthralled by a computer game that I would stare into the monitor, one hand clutching a joystick while the other fingered the keyboard, holding the post for hours on end with only the spasmodic twitches necessary to control the onscreen action. The amazing things about Wing Commander, as a series: hectic yet tactical space dogfights, engaging stories, cinematic presentation, crisp graphics, compelling characters, badass ships and moral grey areas before they were the hip, new thing. Wing Commander 1, in particular, was notable because it offered a branching campaign, with different paths and endings depending on one's degree of success or failure in various missions, but, while Wing Commander 2 did away with most of the story's malleability, the second game is where the plot really came home to roost. The degree to which you empathize with your character will vary depending on how such things affect you, personally, but you will doubtless find his situation galvanizing and the enemy, the cat-like Kilrathi, fascinating and terrifying. In particular, I remember playing what must have been one of the final dogfights in Wing Commander 2. I don't want to spoil the encounter in any detail, just relate that the combat was so heated and intense that, after what felt like an eternity of bobbing and weaving to avoid each others' fire, our poor 486 gave up the ghost and crashed, demanding a hard reset. That's right: this game was so intense it crashed the computer I was playing it on. That's hardcore. Later space sims would add new layers of complexity to the formula, like the X-Wing series with adjustable energy, shields and engine output. Freespace would outdo it on scale alone, though Wing Commander 2 had some of the tensest bombing runs on capital ships I've ever undertaken in a game. In the end, however, it's the sheer simplicity of these games that wins out. They distill the joy of space dogfighting down to its core elements, eschewing excessive bells and whistles in return for a tight, polished experience that holds up even today. I really can't recommend a title more highly than I recommend these two (seriously, $6 for both? I paid twice that to get the original on floppy a few years back!)
