Two legendary Wing Commander games just got a serious modern PC refresh

Wing Commander still has one foot firmly planted in 1990. Its cockpit, chunky ships and mission briefings come from an era of DOS PCs, Sound Blaster cards and processor speeds measured in tens of megahertz. Put the original game on a much faster machine and some of those old assumptions start causing problems. Wing Commander A.T., better known as WCAT, takes a direct approach. It changes the original game code rather than relying purely on emulator settings, fixing timing issues, controls, bugs and configuration problems along the way. Version 1.0 makes a bigger move too. Wing Commander II now gets the same treatment, turning WCAT into a technical overhaul covering both of Origin Systems’ early space combat games. It’s a fairly substantial list of changes.

Two Wing Commander games now sit under one project

The first Wing Commander arrived for MS-DOS in 1990, mixing first-person space combat with mission briefings, character scenes and a campaign capable of changing direction depending on mission results. Players flew from the TCS Tiger’s Claw during the Terran Confederation’s war with the Kilrathi, taking different fighters into combat alongside computer-controlled wingmen.

Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi followed in 1991. Combat stayed familiar, but the sequel pushed its storyline much harder, with longer animated sequences, new ships and extra combat systems.

Capital ships became more involved targets, for example, with torpedoes playing a larger role against heavily defended vessels. Speech support became another major part of the PC version for players with suitable hardware.

The new update now covers both releases. Wing Commander II support reaches feature parity with the work already completed for the first game, so players aren’t dealing with two very different sets of fixes and options.

Speed problems get fixed inside the games

Processor timing sits near the centre of WCAT. Parts of the original Wing Commander relied heavily on machine speed. Put those routines on hardware far faster than anything available in 1990 and scenes can run incorrectly. Some sections need different timing fixes from others, so a single CPU-speed setting doesn’t solve every problem cleanly.

WCAT uses machine-independent speed limiting and patches relevant parts of the code. Wing Commander II already contained its own speed-limiting routines, but WCAT reworks areas where the original approach still causes trouble.

This is one of the bigger distinctions between WCAT and a basic DOSBox configuration. The project isn’t trying to pick one magic emulated processor speed and call it finished. It modifies game behaviour where necessary.

Version 1.0 fixes an ending freeze in the first Wing Commander too, plus problems affecting three-axis joystick setups. Players can change the intensity of the blue space background from the launcher.

Old bugs get a fairly long repair list

WCAT goes much further than timing fixes. The first Wing Commander receives corrections for its incorrectly awarded five-sortie ribbon, transfer-program overflow errors, Secret Missions 2 copy-protection leftovers and several AdLib audio problems. Wing Commander II gets its own repairs, including the random portrait bug found in Special Operations 1.

There are smaller visual corrections across the games too. Helmet names have been corrected, stray portrait pixels cleaned up, broken loss sequences repaired and script errors adjusted. Missing uniform details return in places where assets were incomplete. Lip synchronisation gets extra work, including scenes from the Secret Missions campaigns. The Hornet launch sequence now uses the transparent canopy treatment seen on other ships.

None of this turns Wing Commander into a new game. Missions, ships and the basic presentation remain rooted in the original releases. WCAT concentrates on code errors, inconsistent assets and technical behaviour.

Joystick and mouse controls get more attention

Controls receive some of the most practical changes. WCAT replaces the original joystick routines with support for up to four axes and four buttons, matching the capabilities of a conventional analogue gameport setup. Calibration moves into the launcher, so players don’t have to keep repeating the original process.

Keyboard users can switch on smooth auto-centring. Release a directional key and the virtual stick moves to centre in a more controlled fashion. Mouse input gets a fine-control mode with a smaller dead zone. Asteroid fields have a reduced-difficulty option too, changing routines capable of spawning fast hazards around areas outside the player’s view. These aren’t dramatic additions, but they’re the sort of changes players notice within minutes.

A DOS launcher handles saves and settings

WCAT includes its own DOS launcher for configuration, joystick calibration and save management. The original games offered eight save slots. WCAT adds more save-management options and includes basic tools for creating or editing saves. Wing Commander players can manage transfers between the Vega campaign and both Secret Missions expansions without hitting the old series-overflow problem. Wing Commander II’s dynamic difficulty system can be switched off from here as well.

For modern Windows PCs, WCAT comes in versions built around DOSBox-Staging, including an installer capable of finding an existing game installation and copying the required files. ZIP packages cover regular DOSBox setups, real DOS machines and more customised configurations. You still need your own Wing Commander or Wing Commander II game files. WCAT doesn’t contain the commercial game data.

Version 1.0 leaves the original games at the centre of the package. What changes is everything around their rougher technical edges: timing, input, saves, configuration and a sizeable collection of long-standing bugs. For anyone running the DOS releases on newer hardware, WCAT is less a remake and more a deep repair job carried out directly inside the games.