Electronic Arts has re-released 25 classic titles on Steam and GOG, including foundational entries in the Wing Commander and Ultima series. The project involved the discovery of a significant physical media archive and a multi-year effort to restore and re-license the games for modern platforms.
EA Senior Producer Jim Vessella described the process, which began after he rediscovered a trove of archival assets, including Betacam tapes and CD-ROMs, at the company's Redwood Shores campus. A small team was formed to catalog and digitize these materials, eventually leading to a business case for re-releasing some of the rediscovered games.
Seven titles received enhanced releases with improvements, including:
- Road Rash: 30th Anniversary Edition
- Wing Commander: 35th Anniversary Edition
- Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi: 35th Anniversary Edition
- Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger: 30th Anniversary Edition
- Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom: 30th Anniversary Edition
- Wing Commander Prophecy: 30th Anniversary Edition
- Privateer 2: The Darkening.
An additional 18 titles were ported to bring the original experiences to modern systems:
- Wing Commander: Privateer
- Wing Commander: Academy
- Wing Commander: Armada
- Strike Commander
- Theme Hospital
- Crusader: No Remorse
- Crusader: No Regret
- Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness
- Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress
- Ultima III: Exodus
- Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar
- Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny
- Ultima VI: The False Prophet
- Ultima VII: The Complete Edition
- Ultima VIII Gold Edition
- Ultima IX: Ascension
- Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss
- Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds.
Vessella collaborated closely with the Wing Commander fan community for over two years, iterating on restorations and playtesting builds to address technical issues and implement feedback. He detailed troubleshooting efforts, including an instance of spending hours hunting down a specific crash by replaying missions under various parameters.
Ensuring the quality and completeness of these releases involved painstaking work, particularly with the Wing Commander series' extensive use of Full Motion Video (FMV) and cinematics. Collaboration with GOG's game preservation team engineers was instrumental. For games like Road Rash, Vessella's team undertook the complex task of clearing music licenses. In one instance, after months of searching for a band member to secure a license, a last-minute contact allowed the music to be included in the final release, preventing its removal from the 30th Anniversary Edition.
The collection is currently available at a discount of over 50 percent on both Steam and GOG.