25th anniversary of Strike Commander

On April 23rd, 1993 Origin has released Strike Commander - a mix a flight action and adventure which was groundbreaking and essentially a "Crisis" of its time - it pushed then high-end hardware to its limits with Gouraud shading textured 3d polygonal graphics. Even today it is fun to play this old gem. It's hard to belive a quarter of century has passed since its release ...

I still have that one, speech pack included

I even got my forum name from one of the pilots you had to team up with for some missions. Kodiak.

And yes, hard to believe it is already 25 years ago, but what a joy to play it was, loved it!

Good memories from that title.
Think it was my first MiG21 kill in that simgame.
Flying using keyboard was a true skill

For a time my cousin was the only one who had a PC. He had this game and I loved it so much. Every time I'd go visit him and stay over I asked to play it. I'd like to pick it up on GOG eventually. I think it may have been my first pc-based flight sim/game that I played.

My effectively most expensive game ever. Had a 486 DX 33 at the time (which was still well above average at a time when most of my PC co-owners were on 386-25s), and everything was fine with maxed out details until I ran into the missions over downtown San Francisco, so I ultimately plunked down 1200 Deutschmarks for that DX/2-66. Ouch. But man, it played just fine after that...

I still have the manual.

And I think that from a game perspective Strike Commander did a lot of things better than combat flight sims that came after it, namely being accessible and delivering a decent story combined with a - at that time - solid, but not overly complicated model of flight dynamics and avionics. Flight sims ever since drifted more and more into technical simulation while neglecting what drew in people that were primarily interested in a good game, until they entirely lost that connection. I understand of course why this happened, and I'm somewhat complicit in that trend (if not for flight, but land combat simulation), but I still wouldn't call it a good trend.

Purchased from GOG, one of the most anticipated games in my queue (right behind Tie Fighter). I'm not even looking at games right now, but later this year when I return to my hobby, it's going to feel like Christmas...1993!

Great game! I loved the story.

Yeah, the game was great for its time, a good remake would be awesome. There was one guy trying to reverse engineer the code and mod the game giving it better graphics and even VR capability, but I think he gave up. Here's his site if anyone is interested: http://fabiensanglard.net/reverse_engineering_strike_commander/index.php

A remake would be awesome... indeed!

I loaded it up from CD and used DOSBOX to get it running about a year ago. Not very successfully

Graphics looked FAR Worse than I remembered and I couldn't get the controls working well with my COUGAR.. Always meant to go back and try again...but it seemed better to cherish the memories...

Was it that long ago? Wow. I bought it (and later the speech pack) but I remember having problems making room for it all on my tiny hard disc. I think it was 40MB coupled with a 386 DX40. Happy days

Good memory Chucky, the first floppy release with the speech pack weighs around 40MB. Fortunately for me when I first played it (around 1995/6) on our first PC after we sold our trusty Amiga 500 it was Pentium 75 MHz with 8MB RAM and whooping 850MB HDD which I still have (the only part from that PC that survived). The game was a part of a CD compilation with Wing Commander 2, Ultima VIII Pagan and Syndicate. I still have that CD and the minimalistic manual (the cool "Sudden Death" magazine part was cut, sadly).

Even though I don't like this kind of polygonal graphics (lack of perspective correction makes textures very weird), I have to admit it indeed looks very impressive for 1993.

Just to imagine this game with War Thunder/DCS 2.5 graphics today would be an instant buy... along with a remake of Red Baron 3D, Microprose F117, EAW, Aces over...., and Tornado with a 2018 graphic engine.

It'd be great if a developer would perhaps license an existing engine from someone like Gajiin an do the proper, old school narrative treatment to it with all the immersion details like briefing/debriefing screens. I wouldn't even mind seeing some good ol' fashioned full motion capture video but certainly there are even better and cheaper? software tools available today for creating cinematics. I'd also like to see more voiced wingman/RIO audio and more immersive comms. I'd love a remake or sequel to Top Gun: Fire at Will and Crimson Skies along with a spiritual successor to U.S. Navy Fighters.

I would love an update/remake of F-19 Stealth Fighter and F-117 Stealth Fighter 2.0.