 When it was first released for DOS in 1990, Wing Commander was huge, it combined space flight simulation with combat, along with a huge sweeping story. The game introduced a whole new level of production value to the gaming industry, and it paid off big time, the game was a gigantic success. To give you an idea of what kind of stature this game has earned, the source code was anonymously given by a former developer to a Wing Commander fan community for the sake of long-term preservation to ensure that the game will stay accessible and playable for future generations. Now that is really cool. Of course any PC game that received any kind of success back then got a gazillion ports to other systems, and sure enough in the years that followed when commanders showed up on Amiga, Amiga CD32, Sega CD, 3DO, PlayStation, Game Boy Advance, and FM Towns. But one of the first ports to be made was for the Super Nintendo in 1992, and surprisingly it's not that bad of a port. Okay, it's clearly not going to match what the PC version was offering, but still it was a perfectly okay game. Is it worth playing today? Eh, well, it's complicated. The game structure of the Super Nintendo game remains the same as the original for the most part. You start out in a bar, hey this is my kind of game, why bother with this whole mission-based space combat simulator stuff, how about getting to work on this bar simulator, huh? Anyway, you talk to people here to get some background on what's going on, and it's surprisingly well done, I actually kind of like the art style here, and I really like that you start in such a casual setting that's kinda sorta open-ended, so you can do stuff at your own pace. There's even a practice mode you can access from here. Eventually, you're given a mission briefing, and you're often to space fighting bad guys. Complete one mission, and it's off to the next. Some missions are simply seek and destroy, but others are escort missions, and some are just boss fights. The combat here, of course, is pretty dang limited by today's standards, or hell, even by the standards back then, since you're using a D-pad to aim a cursor, that's never fun. And you can't mess around for too long, or else you'll run out of fuel, so you gotta worry about that too. I should take a moment real quickly to mention that no, unfortunately, Wing Commander is not compatible with the SNES mouse or the Super Scope. You gotta use the controller. You have four ships to choose from, unlocking one at a time with promotions, depending on how you progress through the game. I really like that each of the four cockpits in each ship has its own layout and design. It's a small and simple detail, but it goes a long way toward making this a palatable playthrough, since, you know, all the combat takes place here, and you don't want to be staring at the same interface for 75% of the game. Of course, the inherent problem with this layout is that you get such a small viewing area due to technical limitations, which is a bummer, and yeah, the combat itself is kinda wonky, it can be tough to track down ships at times, and the enemy AI tends to just go haywire every once in a while, veering off into the middle of nowhere, but still the basics still hold up just barely good enough for it to be playable today. What helps with the combat is the control scheme, there's quite a few button combos available to you that let you do a myriad of different things. To start with, B fires your main weapon, A fires missiles, the X button brings up a navigation screen so you can determine where to go, R accelerates, and Y fires your afterburners, but beyond that, you can press select and X at the same time to send a message to your wingman to tell them what to do, and that's really important to use during escort missions. Also once you're finished with one part of your mission, you can press select and Y at the same time, which kinda skips over to the next mission. Wing Commander is a case where it really helps to use the instruction book, there's a bunch of shortcuts that make the game more user-friendly. And another nice touch, you have co-pilots that fly along with you. Some are great and actually shoot down enemies, and some suck and are like this game's equivalent of Slippy from Star Fox. What's crazy is that if your co-pilot dies, they are dead. I mean, dead as a doornail. They have a friggin' funeral service for them and everything. What's even weirder is that there's friendly fire here, and if you accidentally blow up their ship, there's no melodramatic death scene or anything, they're just gone. And you get radio silence and you just kinda sit there awkwardly like, uh, did I just do something I shouldn't have? And it really adds a sense of urgency to the game. Now if the combat doesn't interest you, then maybe the story structure might. You play as some guy aboard the TCS Tigers Claw outpost fighting the evil cat people of Kilrathi. What I really like here is that the game's story progresses based on how you perform as a pilot. If you perform admirably and defeat the enemy and get all sorts of medals and whatnot, you'll be chosen to lead a strike on the enemy's highest command starbase. If you suck and get your co-pilots killed, the missions you get will be more and more defensive in nature, and eventually you'll be forced to retreat. See, you're not just the chosen one from the get-go, you're part of a team and you gotta earn your way to the top. But the thing is, is that it's not all or nothing. You don't have to succeed at every single mission. Sometimes you gotta stomach a loss, and that's okay. If it doesn't doom you to the bad ending, you just gotta grit your teeth and keep moving along. And I really like that about this game, especially growing up in an era where defeat was an automatic game over. In this format, defeat is just part of the story. After singing Wing Commander's praises, I gotta point out some obvious flaws. And yes, for a 3D space simulation, this game is painfully outdated in certain aspects, and unfortunately there's a bit of that early Super Nintendo slowdown present, so you gotta deal with that as well. Also the difficulty spikes here get a little out of control and it throws the pacing of the game way off. For instance, it can take forever to shoot down enemies, but once you're finally done with that, you're flying through asteroid fields just barely dodging stuff. The game goes from 0 to 100 miles an hour too quickly. So yeah, is Wing Commander for Super Nintendo worth playing today? The easy answer is no, simply because it's outdated in so many different ways. But I do admit the simple gameplay element of locking onto a target before it locks onto you, works perfectly okay. Plus the mission layout and the story structure is pretty cool, and the fact that you have partners that fly alongside you that can get killed really adds a lot. I should also mention that if you like this game, the Super Nintendo received a follow-up Wing Commander secret missions about a year later, and it's more Wing Commander with more missions all within the same format, as simple as that. Not to go off on too much of a tangent, but a good chunk of the audience that watches these videos only wants to know if a game that they played as a kid was as good as they remember it to be. And from that standpoint, I would say yes, there's a strong chance you'll still like Wing Commander for Super Nintendo because it's got a ton of personality and lots of little touches that stand out, and the basic combat still barely works well enough. However, if you've never played this or any incarnation of the first Wing Commander game before, and you're looking for something new to try out, then you'll likely find it slow, tedious, and extremely limited. See, this is why I can't do a rating system or a thumbs up or thumbs down or whatever because it's not that simple. Wing Commander is one of those cases where it straddles the middle of the road where it has just enough going for it that it can be fun if you already have a passing familiarity with it. But if you're brand new to the series or these types of games, this is not that great of a starting point. And I want to thank you for watching and I hope you have a great rest of your day.